Mark Lilla's cover article for the Sunday New York Times Magazine, "The Politics of God" deserves widespread attention. Lilla is one of a number of prominent authors, such as Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, who write for the New York Times Sunday Magazine and The New York Review of Books and argue that a Western overreaction to Islamic extremism is far more dangerous than Islamism itself.
Buruma and Ash see the danger coming from "Enlightenment fundamentalism," Lilla from the messianic tendencies in Christianity and Judaism. But what they share is a tendency to see the worst in Western culture while highlighting the best of what might be hoped for from Islamic fundamentalism. The structure of their argument resembles those of the anti-anti-Communists of the Cold War who thought anti-Communism far more threatening than Communism itself.
Lilla's history is dubious. He writes of political theology without mention of French Jacobinism which Tocqueville rightly saw as modern incarnation of Muslim fanaticism. And he seems entirely unaware of the close intellectual ties between German fascism and its Arab/Islamic admirers including Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Moslem Brotherhood, the organization from which Al Qaeda originates.
But more serious are his intellectual sleights of hand. Never mentioning the strong pagan streak in Nazism, he argues that fascism in Germany was a product of liberal Protestantism's inability to supply the spiritual needs of the German population so that they turned to redemptive politics. Then by analogy, he implies that the danger from Islam today is that the liberalizing tendencies which have taken hold will lead to a similar apocalyptic search for redemption. But he never tells where and when these liberal tendencies took hold; it's not clear if he's arguing about real developments or the dangers that might come from trying to liberalize Islam.
Our best option he argues, like Buruma and Ash is to support men like Tariq Ramadan, the grandson and spiritual heir of Hassan al-Banna. Ramadan, as Paul Berman explained in his lengthy New Republic essay on Ramadan is master of the double game. It is often unclear whether Ramadan, who has ties to groups which promote but don't actually carry out Jihad, wants to modernize Islam or Islamize Modernity. Ramadan, Lilla seems unaware, is politically and intellectually close to his great Uncle Sheikh Gamal al-Banna who described the actions of the 9/11 high jackers as "extremely courageous" as well as "dreadful and splendid", in opposition to the "barbaric capitalism" of the United States.
Lilla concludes by defending a more threatening version of the heckler's veto. "We need to recognize," he argues, "that coping is the order of the day, not defending high principle, and that our expectations should remain low. So long as a sizable population believes in the truth of a comprehensive political theology, its full reconciliation with modern liberal democracy cannot be expected." But Lilla never elaborates, which high principle(s)" need to go by the wayside. Is he referring to free speech, woman's rights, or the freedom to marry a partner of one's own choosing?
But in England where until recently "coping" has been the order of the day, home grown terror attacks have produced a shift in attitude. David Goodhart the editor of the liberal journal Prospect, who had defended Tariq Ramadan from Paul Berman's criticism in the New Republic, has now had second thoughts. The shift was prompted by a Ramadan article in the Guardian that pace Lilla called for a moratorium on the need for Muslims to integrate into England. It appears, says Goodhart that "the real Tariq Ramadan is the man who wrote that British Muslims `should refuse .....critical and self-critical understanding' and stay in `their intellectual, religious and social ghettos.'" This is the hope that Lilla lays out for us?