Among the spate of books published in the aftermath of September
11, most cultural and political analyses concentrated on the
centuries-old war between Christianity and Islam, seeking to place
the suicide attacks in the context of a never-ending jihad, or holy
war. Paul Berman is one of the most original commentators writing
today, his work familiar to readers of the New York Times Magazine
and the New Republic. He draws on philosophical and historical
sources, from Marx and Camus to Sayyid Qutb of Egypt, one of the
most influential writers in the Islamist tradition, to support his
case that the war in which the world is currently engaged is one
between totalitarians and liberals - of all faiths - rather than
one between religions. He makes original leaps of thought to
illustrate unexpected connections between differing political
movements, and shows how individuals' reactions to America's
involvement in overseas wars, from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq,
cannot be easily categorized into groups of right-wing hawks and
left-wing doves. Berman himself is not scared to endorse unpopular
views. As he ruefully notes, his own left-wing, pro-war views at
the time of the 1991 Gulf War were probably espoused by only 15 to
20 people in the whole of the USA - and he supported war for
dramatically different reasons from the pro-war foreign-policy
'realists' in the Republican party. Instead, Berman identified
Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Socialists with the grandiose, murderous
fascist regime of the National Socialists in inter-war Germany. He
speaks controversially of the 'death cult' which has attached
itself to Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel and the Occupied
Territories; and explains how alliances of convenience between the
USA and various Islamic movements, which the Americans saw as less
threatening than the socialist Arab nationalism which they sought
to replace, blinded the rest of the world to the dangers of
fundamentalist Islam. Above all, Berman is a man of ideas, and his
elegant, readable prose will certainly shed new light on one of the
most pressing issues of our time. (Kirkus UK)
A manifesto for an aggressive liberal response to terrorist attacks. Paul Berman is one of our most brilliant writers on the impassioned and unpredictable life of ideas—especially the doctrines that lead masses of people to try to change the world. The Terror War is nothing new or unprecedented. It is the same battle that tore apart Europe during most of the twentieth century—the battle between liberalism and its totalitarian enemies. Islam is not the cause of this war. Islam is the arena in which the war is presently being fought.
Berman shows how a genuine spiritual inspiration can be twisted into a fanatical demand for murder. He offers remarkable insights into the trends and conflicts influencing Islamic radicalism. He illuminates the surprising connections between very different political movements, and he reveals the several ways in which Islamic extremism resembles some all-too-familiar episodes in American and European experience. He is the historian of good intentions gone awry.
Berman draws on sources that range from Albert Camus's The Rebel to the Book of Revelations; from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to the Islamist scholar Sayyid Qutb's magisterial In the Shade of the Koran. Berman condemns the foreign policy "realism" of the political right, and he diagnoses the naïveté of the political left. He calls for a "new radicalism" and a "liberal American interventionism" to promote democratic values throughout the world—a vigorous new politics of American liberalism.
Berman's ability to shine a spotlight of history and philosophy on the present era makes him a peerless interpreter of today's events. This short book of original argument and dazzling prose will remain a guidepost for discussion for years to come.
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