Ibn Warraq reviews Caroline Fourest’s Brother Tariq: the Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan.
Fourest reveals Ramadan’s art of duplicity, which encompasses an entire repertoire of rhetorical subterfuges, from doublespeak and equivocation to euphemism and lies of omission. Ramadan claims that he accepts the law in Western democracies — so long as the law “does not force me to do something in contradiction with my religion.” He calls the terrorist acts in New York, Madrid, and Bali “interventions.” He claims to be a “reformist,” but defines the term to exclude the concept of “liberal reformism.” He tells a television audience that he believes in the theory of evolution, but neglects to mention that his book, Is Man Descended from the Apes? A Muslim View of the Theory of Evolution, argues for creationism…
That Ramadan is an impostor is evident even in the titles that he freely accords himself. He claims that he is “Professor of Islamic Studies (Faculty of Theology at Oxford),” and the biography in the inside flap of his Western Muslims and the Future of Islam describes him as “Professor of Philosophy at the College of Geneva and Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.” But as journalist Gudrun Eussner has shown, Ramadan is merely a research fellow at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, where has given just three lectures. Nor is he a professor at Geneva, especially not at the university there. He was a teacher at a sub-university level in the Collège Saussure, and he served as a “scholarly associate” at the University of Fribourg, teaching a two-hour course every two weeks, “Introduction to Islam.”
Ramadan has been described by Theodore Dalrymple as “the second-hand car salesman of Islamic fundamentalism” – which seems a tad unfair to salesmen of used cars. For more on Brother Tariq’s habitual dissembling, and the contortions of his left-leaning groupies, see here.
Related. And. (h/t, Andrew Bostom.)
So the British Government must be getting a bit desperate in its search for the Muslim Ghandi, though the naifs at the BBC think they have found him.
A comment made in the Dalrymple link is of interest: “It was secularisation, not religious fanaticism, that led to this [Armenian Genocide] most appalling episode.”
Dalrymple is usually pretty thorough, but I think he is completely wrong here. The European powers were indeed pressurising the Ottomans to grant equality to all their citizens. But it was the outrage of the traditionalists (who later formed the Young Turks) to the emancipation of the long oppressed dhimmi Christians that led to the pogroms of the 1890s and the later genocide. This was a Jihad operation.
“But it was the outrage of the traditionalists (who later formed the Young Turks)…”
I don’t think describing the Young Turks as traditionalists really cuts it. Their’s was a movement inspired by nationalism and a desire to reform or modernise society. At various times they sought to minimise the role of religion or to change Islam to something more compatible with modernity. Initially the movement had a wide membership including minority communities but it gradually became dominated by Turks.
It is undoubtedly true that the Young Turks were responsible for the Armenian Massacre. The logical motivation would seem to be chauvinistic nationalism. The question arises as to why a movement that frequently set itself against what it considered a retrogressive Mosque could be considered to be Jihadist.
The Turks were not limited to massacres against Christians. Compare their treatment of civilians during the Arab revolt.
TDK
I submit that there were elements of nationalism and elements of jihad in this appalling event. What distinguishes the Armenian from subsequent genocides (I don’t believe that there were any events on this scale before 1915) was the furious hatred and raw cruelty with which it was carried out at all levels. The Holocaust, Nanking, Rwanda, Cambodia and the Gulags were all very nasty, but while hate was often cynically used to motivate the perpetrators, the aim was essentially surgical removal with the means being whatever worked. In events on this scale there would have been many individual events of extreme cruelty, but in the Armenian Genocide, uniquely I believe, cruelty was institutional, systematic and well researched – by that I mean that the perpetrators looked up as many cruel forms of torment as they could find. I also believe that the root of such hatred and cruelty was the Koran: “Allah will torture them at your hands”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/04/the_jihad_genocide_of_the_arme.html
You’ve modified your position between the comments.
I have no objection to identifying that Islam was a significant factor in the massacre, just as I would have no objection to anyone claiming that Christianity was used as a factor in the Holocaust. However, I reject reductionist attempts to claim that Nazism was just a product of Christianity in the face of all the evidence of the atheist or pagan background of Nazi leaders. So too am I suspicious of a claim that the Armenian massacre was purely jihadist.
Vahakn Dadrian says:
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=77A6620C-8E48-4A06-87D5-AE9DD0E2A139
“The authors of the Armenian genocide, the Young Turks, were almost entirely either atheistic or agnostic, they did not believe in religion, but they had to exploit the religious beliefs of the masses.”
I think that’s right and it’s notable that Vahakn Dadrian places Islamism in the context of non-Islamist leadership, a century of Imperial contraction at the hands of Christian Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia as Britain in Egypt, Russia in the Crimea, Italy in Libya. He doesn’t deny Islam any role but he tells a complex story involving many factors.
In your first comment you claim “secularisation” as being “completely wrong” and exclusively blame “jihadism”. I call that reductionist. In your second comment you open “I submit that there were elements of nationalism”. I have no problem with that.
TDK
I think we are mainly in agreement. Let me try to be a little clearer. My main point is that I think it could only have happened in a Muslim country, and the fact that the world barely knew or protested such behaviour gave succour to the likes of Hitler and Heidrich.
With Islam, politics and faith are difficult to disentangle, and even secularists are the product of the religious faith and traditions that framed their culture. For example, I consider myself a secular Christian agnostic, of which the “christian” is a significant component, even without the faith. I said in my first post that the resentment of the Armenian Christians derived in the later 19th century to the grudging lifting of their dhimmi status by the Turkish government under pressure from Europe. I find it outrageous that anyone could consider the dhimmi system in any way fair or just, but its removal is bound to bring up the most disgusting racist reactions, particularly when sanctioned by religion.
This last is the vital factor, because it removed the restraint that innate decency would have provided, and formed the seed of the later pogroms and the genocide.
I submit it would not have happened in a Christian country (you may disagree). In no way was Turkey hijacked by a ruthless demagogue as was Germany in the 1930s. An example of similar emancipation to that of the Armenians would be that of black slaves in Britain. While there were, sometimes violent, reactions to the anti-slavery movement, men like Wesley, Clarkson and Wilberforce stood resolute – solidly backed by Christian ethics – and slowly shamed the country into abolition.
It is difficult to get into the heads of such monsters as the perpetrators, but Islam comes up as a major driver. I submit that if a religion condones slaughter and even torture of “the other”, it will attract to it the basest members of any society. That is the essence of my disagreement with Dalrymple. In the article I linked to, jihad was cited as a major driver.
The Holocaust, by distinction, required the suppression of Christian values and intimidation of its leaders. The Nazis, like the Jacobins, tried to suppress Christianity, initially by removing it from schooling, and then by making Church leaders decide between Faith and Fatherland. Hitler called the Bishops traitors, and many priests ended up in the Camps. That others, and the Papacy, did not offer the resistance they should have is not the same as giving religious sanction to Nazi policies.
You could say that while Christianity may be guilty of a sin of omission, Islam is guilty of a sin of commission.
Regards.
“Let me try to be a little clearer. My main point is that I think it could only have happened in a Muslim country, and the fact that the world barely knew or protested such behaviour gave succour to the likes of Hitler and Heidrich.”
You are arguing for a kind of Islamic exceptionalism for this event which I don’t think is warranted by the facts.
I don’t want to get into a pissing contest about the relative (de)merits of various atrocities and their position on a league table. Both of us can reel off detailed lists of various gruesome deeds but it proves nothing. Is the clinical system whereby trainloads of victims were sorted, murdered and cremated within an hour worse or better than slowly digging a pit in woods, shooting and burying the victims, or perhaps locking people in a synagogue and burning it to the ground? Beyond a certain threshold of wickedness we need not trouble ourselves about the possibility that Pol Pot might or might not be worse than Hitler.
Some of the items in your list that you relegate to second division, display mind numbing cruelty: The Rape of Nanking included a decapitation contest, which was uncontroversial enough to be covered in a newspaper. Does this qualify as “surgical removal with the means being whatever worked”?
I also think that the exceptionalism you claim is a distraction from a real problem. Many Muslims deny or minimise the Armenian genocide and the ongoing genocide in the Sudan. Few know about the Muslim role in the African slave trade or the ongoing slavery today. Western apologists go out of their way to paint a flattering image of past and present Islam, or to claim credit for Islam for discoveries that predate Mohammed.
It’s not necessary to agree that the Armenian massacre was the worst. It is necessary that people, Muslims included, acknowledge it happened and that it was wrong.
I take all your points.
Regards.
As you would doubtless expect, the Archbishop of Canterbury is a Ramadan fan; he quoted him, not for the first time, in his infamous Sharia law lecture.