Some Recommended Things

by Cliopatria

Corine Hegland,"Guantanamo's Grip," National Journal, 3 February, is a remarkable piece of reportage. It comes recommended by our own Chris Bray and, now, by more conservative bloggers, as well.

At Chapati Mystery, Sepoy speaks of"Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World."

Mark Grimsley,"After the Knee-Jerk, Part I," Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, 9 February; Tom Bruscino,"Blaming the Victim," Big Tent, 9 February; Grimsley,"After the Knee-Jerk, Part II," Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, 10 February; and Grimsley,"After the Knee-Jerk, Part III," Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, 11 February, is a discussion about apologetics for military history.

Ignatius Insight sees irony in the fact that Wheaton College in Illinois terminated its philosophy professor, Joshua Hochschild, last spring when he announced that he had become a Roman Catholic; and that Notre Dame has just announced that it is hiring Wheaton's Mark Noll to follow George Marsden, who is retiring as ND's Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History. Both Marsden and Noll are a part of the"evangelical mafia" that has renewed American religious studies in the last quarter century. Not all contrasts are ironic. Wheaton is a small evangelical college that still requires a creedal affirmation of its faculty members. Notre Dame is a Catholic university that aspires to be a catholic University. American higher education is sufficiently diverse to include both kinds of institutions. The irony is that Notre Dame is sufficiently catholic to have hired Tariq Ramadan onto its faculty; but the United States is fearful and provincial enough to have denied him a visa. Thanks to Dave Merkowitz at Cincinnati Historian for the tip.

comments powered by Disqus

More Comments:

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

To Ralph:
No, it's not just he headline. Here's the operative passage:

Professor Ramadan has previously justified suicide bombings. Asked by one Italian magazine if the killing of civilians was morally right, he replied: “In Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, there is a situation of oppression, repression and dictatorship. It is legitimate for Muslims to resist fascism that kills the innocent.”

Asked if car bombings were justified against US forces in Iraq, he answered: “Iraq was colonised by the Americans. Resistance against the army is just.”

The passage says he was specifically asked about suicide bombings, and gave the answers in question. So either we have to assume that he was answering the question, or that he was completely ignoring the question asked and answering one of his own. On the first assumption, he is defending suicide bombings. On the second assumption, he is evading the question altogether. In any case, if we assume that the quotation is accurate, it's unclear what else he could mean by defending the Iraqi "resistance," since suicide bombings rank high in its repertoire.

As for Manan's claim via Whittaker that Ramadan was misquoted, at this point we're just reduced to a he-said he-said scenario. Misquotations do happen in journalistic contexts with alarming frequency, so I wouldn't rule that out, but if it's a misquotation, we need to know what was really said. Technically, he could call it a "misquotation" so long as a word or phrase was omitted or erroenously added, even if the claim was materially the same. Until and unless he clarifies, I think the reader is entitled to take him at face value. If the quotation is wrong, however, I will retract my comment. (Then I'll blame the interviewers.)

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

That's an interesting item about Notre Dame and Wheaton. As it happens, I went to grad school with Joshua Hochschild.

I do think your assessment of Notre Dame could use some perspective, however. ND is under the excellent stewardship nowadays of John Jenkins, but not long ago (i.e., five or six years ago), it was hardly as catholic an institution as your post suggests.

When I was there, one of the top experts on the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Mark Jordan (author of Ordering Wisdom, and now at Emory) left in part because of what he took to be a general hostility to his sexual orientation--he's gay. The Law School hired John Finnis, whose career as far as I can see focuses essentially on the degredation of philosophical argument in the service of such dogmas as the "unnaturalness" of homosexuality.

Similarly, in the 1990s, the ND philosophy department made a bid to hire Arizona's Jean Hampton to fill the shoes of Alasdair MacIntyre (who had left for Duke); but when it was revealed that she was pro-choice on abortion, a hue and cry arose, and the administration began to take a dim look at the idea of hiring a person who, though Christian, was not Catholic and had heterodox views on abortion. Unfortunately, Hampton met an untimely death in an accident around this time, but the department was in deep conflict over the propriety of hiring her.

There is something odd about a university that underwent such trauma over the possibility of hiring a pro-choicer like Hampton, but has absolutely no problem hiring a guy who has openly praised suicide bombing (Tariq Ramadan).

I don't disagree that ND is in many respects an intellectually fascinating place, but it certainly has its quirks.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

I blogged it a few months ago. I'll call it up again.

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Here it is:

http://hnn.us/blogs/comments/13136.html

Manan Ahmed - 2/14/2006

Hence, my assertion that one _should_have more than a single 'disputed' quote to make a judgement, no?

Manan Ahmed - 2/12/2006

One italian interview isn't really cause for you to write that he has "openly supported suicide bombings". At least Brian Whitaker reports that Ramadan claims to have been misquoted. I would need more unequivocal statements to overlook his other public output.
But, thanks for the link.

Ralph E. Luker - 2/12/2006

The Times' headline accuses him of being a supporter of suicide bombings, but there is nothing in the article itself that sustains the accusation. If you accept that article as evidence of the claim, then it includes everyone who believes that Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is justified.

Manan Ahmed - 2/12/2006

Yeah, I'd like to see some them as well.

Ralph E. Luker - 2/12/2006

Thanks for the comment, Irfan. I think that's right. Notre Dame obviously lives in some tension between its Catholicity and its catholicity. My only reservation would be about the enthusiasm of Tariq Ramadan for suicide bombing. I'd like to have some citations for that.