Andrew F. March: The Flight of the Intellectuals and Tariq Ramadan
[Andrew F. March is Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University. He is the author of Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (Oxford), which won the Award for Excellence from the American Academy of Religion, and multiple scholarly articles on Islamic law and liberalism, including three on the thought of Tariq Ramadan.]
PAUL BERMAN has written an odd book. It is not intellectual history–he rightly does not claim for himself any expertise in Islamic legal, theological and political thought, and he makes no effort to fully explicate Ramadan’s own doctrines in light of those traditions. It is not political biography–he is not telling Ramadan’s personal story except in select snippets. It is not quite political argument–he is not giving an analysis of the social and cultural situation of Muslims in the West and telling us What is to Be Done. It is not even a plea for vigilance–he insists in numerous places that Ramadan is not an Islamist extremist and certainly no threat to anyone.
What is Berman’s book about, in the end? It is an attempt to arrive at a judgment about a very important public intellectual while admonishing educated Westerners about how we treat Muslim dissidents. In doing so, the book discusses Ramadan’s thought and the wider phenomenon of Islamic militancy, but it takes a skipping-stone approach to the subject: glancing off many various surfaces and edges rather than patiently probing the depths. Berman is aiming at a profile-cum-exposé of Ramadan, but he is entangled in an awkward set of questions which he thinks need to be raised about Muslim intellectuals: Should we trust him? Should we like him? Should we praise him? Should we support him? Berman never explicitly discusses what kind of judgment we need to make about a figure like Ramadan, but my feeling (a standard Berman uses often in his own appraisal of Ramadan) is that Berman wishes he could prove to us that we shouldn’t trust him and that we are permitted to condemn him, but since he can’t prove that, he has to settle with showing us that we should not like him....
Berman’s Ramadan is part French philosopher-intellectual, part politician. Berman’s Ramadan has ideas, but he is also presumed to have motives and judgments. Berman acknowledges the conceptual distinction between these two activities, but he does not disentangle them. At times, Berman’s call is to pay closer attention to “the nature of [Ramadan’s] philosophy and its meaning for France or Europe or the world” (FI, 20, 130), but he himself has not done this. His probing of Ramadan all pertains to his family origins and his failure to make the right public denunciations at the right time....
Berman would probably be the first to admit that he is out of his depth on internal Islamic legal and moral reasoning. Thus, we need to untangle some of his themes and claims to get back on dry ground.
As noted, Berman portrays Ramadan as a man with genuinely reformist and liberal instincts, but whose utterances are filled with caveats and silences. This is certainly true, but there are two problems here. First, Berman never gives an account of what Ramadan’s reformist project actually consists of–its concerns and anxieties, its opponents, its modes of argument and persuasion, its doctrines. Given that this is almost the entirety of what Ramadan does, that is troubling for anyone who rejects Berman’s implicit assumption that a Muslim public intellectual is defined negatively in terms of what he or she has or has not denounced. Berman mentions that Ramadan’s reformist ideas exist, and occasionally quotes a favorable statement, but the reader of this book will come away with no idea of what Ramadan actually stands for and why people take an interest in him. Rather, they will think that the reformist statements are scattered and random, and the equivocations on Islamist violence are his main contribution....
Ramadan’s views have gradually become less conservative, less indebted to Muslim Brotherhood ideology, over the years. But two features are present from the beginning. The first is an effort to dissolve the psychological antagonism toward non-Muslims and the West on the part of believing Muslims. In fairness, Berman does report and appreciate this, although the extent to which Ramadan has sought to bring about a mental and attitudinal shift amongst Muslims away from Qutbism and Qaradawism cannot be exaggerated. What is ironic about this in the context of Berman’s approach is that Ramadan’s focus has always been on telling Muslims that they should define themselves in terms of their positive values and contributions and not in terms of what they oppose or denounce in Western values and practices. Berman’s insistence on defining Ramadan in terms of what he does or does not denounce is thus particularly misguided and tone-deaf and the perfect mirror image of Ramadan’s Salafi and Brotherhood opponents.
The second theme in his work has been the reformation of Islamic law. But instead of beginning with its details, particularly its most odious features like the criminal punishments, Ramadan has sought to get Muslims to rethink their general attitudes towards the Law and their assumptions about what it is. There are many Muslim scholars who have sought to reform Islamic positive law in its details with the aim of ending up with a new Islamic family law or criminal law (Abdullahi An-Na’im in his early work and Mohammad Hashim Kamali are two authors who write on this in English). But while this is what Berman seems to want from Ramadan, it is actually a more conservative strategy than Ramadan’s own....
I would like to conclude with some thoughts on how we non-Muslim left-liberals talk about Islam and Muslim public intellectuals. We’re not good at this.
We are not good at posing the right questions to Muslim intellectuals. They are often asked to answer for all Muslims and the entire Muslim world. They must submit to constant inquisition and second-guessing as a precondition for speaking for themselves, and often in place of speaking for themselves. We want perfect clarity, transparency and the erasing of all ambiguity. We assume that Muslim reform must not only lead them towards us, but do so in the shortest path possible and in a very specific language. We insist on choosing figures to support and tout, but then get outraged when others suggest that some Muslims may be more authentic and authoritative for fellow believers than others. Worst of all, Muslim intellectuals are defined and judged not in terms of what they have done or said or thought, but in terms of what and whom they have denounced.
We are not good at posing questions to ourselves. We assume a certain power and prerogative for ourselves. This often results in considerable narcissism when we talk about Islamic debates. “Whom should we support? Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq or Tariq Ramadan?” “What can we do to help the dissidents and the reformers?” We assume that too much curiosity, too much humility, is not a virtue but a weakness in need of an alibi.
Read entire article at Dissent
PAUL BERMAN has written an odd book. It is not intellectual history–he rightly does not claim for himself any expertise in Islamic legal, theological and political thought, and he makes no effort to fully explicate Ramadan’s own doctrines in light of those traditions. It is not political biography–he is not telling Ramadan’s personal story except in select snippets. It is not quite political argument–he is not giving an analysis of the social and cultural situation of Muslims in the West and telling us What is to Be Done. It is not even a plea for vigilance–he insists in numerous places that Ramadan is not an Islamist extremist and certainly no threat to anyone.
What is Berman’s book about, in the end? It is an attempt to arrive at a judgment about a very important public intellectual while admonishing educated Westerners about how we treat Muslim dissidents. In doing so, the book discusses Ramadan’s thought and the wider phenomenon of Islamic militancy, but it takes a skipping-stone approach to the subject: glancing off many various surfaces and edges rather than patiently probing the depths. Berman is aiming at a profile-cum-exposé of Ramadan, but he is entangled in an awkward set of questions which he thinks need to be raised about Muslim intellectuals: Should we trust him? Should we like him? Should we praise him? Should we support him? Berman never explicitly discusses what kind of judgment we need to make about a figure like Ramadan, but my feeling (a standard Berman uses often in his own appraisal of Ramadan) is that Berman wishes he could prove to us that we shouldn’t trust him and that we are permitted to condemn him, but since he can’t prove that, he has to settle with showing us that we should not like him....
Berman’s Ramadan is part French philosopher-intellectual, part politician. Berman’s Ramadan has ideas, but he is also presumed to have motives and judgments. Berman acknowledges the conceptual distinction between these two activities, but he does not disentangle them. At times, Berman’s call is to pay closer attention to “the nature of [Ramadan’s] philosophy and its meaning for France or Europe or the world” (FI, 20, 130), but he himself has not done this. His probing of Ramadan all pertains to his family origins and his failure to make the right public denunciations at the right time....
Berman would probably be the first to admit that he is out of his depth on internal Islamic legal and moral reasoning. Thus, we need to untangle some of his themes and claims to get back on dry ground.
As noted, Berman portrays Ramadan as a man with genuinely reformist and liberal instincts, but whose utterances are filled with caveats and silences. This is certainly true, but there are two problems here. First, Berman never gives an account of what Ramadan’s reformist project actually consists of–its concerns and anxieties, its opponents, its modes of argument and persuasion, its doctrines. Given that this is almost the entirety of what Ramadan does, that is troubling for anyone who rejects Berman’s implicit assumption that a Muslim public intellectual is defined negatively in terms of what he or she has or has not denounced. Berman mentions that Ramadan’s reformist ideas exist, and occasionally quotes a favorable statement, but the reader of this book will come away with no idea of what Ramadan actually stands for and why people take an interest in him. Rather, they will think that the reformist statements are scattered and random, and the equivocations on Islamist violence are his main contribution....
Ramadan’s views have gradually become less conservative, less indebted to Muslim Brotherhood ideology, over the years. But two features are present from the beginning. The first is an effort to dissolve the psychological antagonism toward non-Muslims and the West on the part of believing Muslims. In fairness, Berman does report and appreciate this, although the extent to which Ramadan has sought to bring about a mental and attitudinal shift amongst Muslims away from Qutbism and Qaradawism cannot be exaggerated. What is ironic about this in the context of Berman’s approach is that Ramadan’s focus has always been on telling Muslims that they should define themselves in terms of their positive values and contributions and not in terms of what they oppose or denounce in Western values and practices. Berman’s insistence on defining Ramadan in terms of what he does or does not denounce is thus particularly misguided and tone-deaf and the perfect mirror image of Ramadan’s Salafi and Brotherhood opponents.
The second theme in his work has been the reformation of Islamic law. But instead of beginning with its details, particularly its most odious features like the criminal punishments, Ramadan has sought to get Muslims to rethink their general attitudes towards the Law and their assumptions about what it is. There are many Muslim scholars who have sought to reform Islamic positive law in its details with the aim of ending up with a new Islamic family law or criminal law (Abdullahi An-Na’im in his early work and Mohammad Hashim Kamali are two authors who write on this in English). But while this is what Berman seems to want from Ramadan, it is actually a more conservative strategy than Ramadan’s own....
I would like to conclude with some thoughts on how we non-Muslim left-liberals talk about Islam and Muslim public intellectuals. We’re not good at this.
We are not good at posing the right questions to Muslim intellectuals. They are often asked to answer for all Muslims and the entire Muslim world. They must submit to constant inquisition and second-guessing as a precondition for speaking for themselves, and often in place of speaking for themselves. We want perfect clarity, transparency and the erasing of all ambiguity. We assume that Muslim reform must not only lead them towards us, but do so in the shortest path possible and in a very specific language. We insist on choosing figures to support and tout, but then get outraged when others suggest that some Muslims may be more authentic and authoritative for fellow believers than others. Worst of all, Muslim intellectuals are defined and judged not in terms of what they have done or said or thought, but in terms of what and whom they have denounced.
We are not good at posing questions to ourselves. We assume a certain power and prerogative for ourselves. This often results in considerable narcissism when we talk about Islamic debates. “Whom should we support? Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq or Tariq Ramadan?” “What can we do to help the dissidents and the reformers?” We assume that too much curiosity, too much humility, is not a virtue but a weakness in need of an alibi.