The Flight of the Intellectuals: The Controversy Over Islamism

The Flight of the Intellectuals: The Controversy Over Islamism and the Press

Called "important and devastating in its conclusions" by the New York Times, now with a new afterword by the author

Twenty years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini called for the assassination of Salman Rushdieâ€”and writers around the world instinctively rallied to Rushdieâ€™s defense. Today, according to writer Paul Berman, â€œRushdie has metastasized into an entire social classâ€â€”an ever-growing group of sharp-tongued critics of Islamist extremism, especially critics from Muslim backgrounds, who survive only because of pseudonyms and police protection. And yet, instead of being applauded, the Rushdies of today (people like Ayan Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq) often find themselves dismissed as â€œstridentâ€ or as no better than fundamentalist themselves, and contrasted unfavorably with representatives of the Islamist movement who falsely claim to be â€œmoderates.â€

How did this happen? In THE FLIGHT OF THE INTELLECTUALS, Bermanâ€”â€œone of Americaâ€™s leading public intellectualsâ€ (Foreign Affairs)â€”conducts a searing examination into the intellectual atmosphere of the moment and shows how some of the Westâ€™s best thinkers and journalists have fumbled badly in their efforts to grapple with Islamist ideas and violence.

Bermanâ€™s investigation of the history and nature of the Islamist movement includes some surprising revelations. In examining Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, he shows the rise of an immense and often violent worldview, elements of which survives today in the brigades of al-Qaeda and Hamas. Berman also unearths the shocking story of al-Bannaâ€™s associate, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who collaborated personally with Adolf Hitler to incite Arab support of the Nazisâ€™ North African campaign. Echoes of the Grand Muftiâ€™s Nazified Islam can be heard among the followers of al-Banna even today.

In a gripping and stylish narrative Berman also shows the legacy of these political traditions, most importantly by focusing on a single philosopher, who happens to be Hassan al-Bannaâ€™s grandson, Oxford professor Tariq Ramadanâ€”a figure widely celebrated in the West as a â€œmoderateâ€ despite his troubling ties to the Islamist movement. Looking closely into what Ramadan has actually written and said, Berman contrasts the reality of Ramadan with his image in the press.

In doing so, THE FLIGHT OF THE INTELLECTUALS sheds light on a number of modern issuesâ€”on the massively reinvigorated anti-Semitism of our own time, on a newly fashionable turn against womenâ€™s rights, and on the difficulties we have in discussing terrorismâ€”and presents a stunning commentary about the modern mediaâ€™s peculiar inability to detect and analyze some of the most dangerous ideas in contemporary society.
Country USA
Manufacturer Melville House
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 2011-03-29
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781935554448

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Melville House
Binding	Paperback
ReleaseDate	2011-03-29
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781935554448

The Flight of the Intellectuals: The Controversy Over Islamism and the Press

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