In Foreign Affairs, Mark Lynch criticizes Paul Berman’s new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, which calls for vigorous opposition to people like Tariq Ramadan, the non-violent, relatively moderate Islamists living in the West and elsewhere, out of a concern for safeguarding liberalism.
Lynch agrees that Ramadan and Co. are not good Western liberals, but he deems Berman’s analysis overly broad, such that it lumps together genuinely distinct Islamist perspectives, and unfairly connects the worst of radical Islamists to moderate Islamists. He concludes that non-violent, moderate Islamists present a legitimate and viable vision for how very religious minorities can live in and contribute to democracy.
There’s a quasi-empirical disagreement at the core of the debate here. Lynch’s argument for engagement with non-violent Islamists assumes that they cannot actually threaten liberalism in the West and elsewhere, while Berman seems to worry that liberalism is acctually in danger.
There’s are more theoretical disagreement, too. One is how much respect a liberal owes a non-liberal or a quasi-liberal (very little on Berman’s view, at least in terms of respecting their beliefs and political participation). And another is how much pragmatic considerations should affect our commitment to liberal values; should we be dogmatically liberal? On the latter, Lynch seems to be of the mind that a little a less liberalism for substantially more stability is a good trade-off. Whether he’s right that Ramadan and Co. really do offer more long-term stability is a separate question.