Birds Without Wings Redux

As I have pointed out somewhere else, the intellectual dustup surrounding the varied reception of Muslim thinkers Tariq Ramadan and Hirsi Ali, mentioned in Paul Berman’s The Flight of Intellectuals, has taken place mostly in the rarified heights of our smarter periodicals. Carlin Romano has his say, commending Berman for raising difficult questions that Ramadan is obliged to answer: “It now behooves Tariq Ramadan to address his own praise of thinkers who make a mockery of his kinder vision if he wants readers and peers to continue to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Ron Rosenbaum, in a piece entitled “Bonfire of the Intellectuals,” rehearses the whole issue, but mainly from a point of indignation at the treatment of Hirsi Ali by progressives and other camp followers, concluding,

A certain kind of irreverent speech once valued in Europe since the time of Chaucer and Rabelais has been, it seems, powerfully threatened if not silenced, and the heirs to that intellectual tradition are too scared to speak out about that silence. Maybe Berman’s book will start intellectuals talking, and not just about each other. Maybe some of the previously silent will begin to speak out against the death squads rather than snark about their victims and targets. end quote

Of the writers joining this brouhaha, I have found  Pankaj Mishra’s “Islamismism” the most enjoyable read (who said these issues can’t be fun?), perhaps because of Mishra’s citations, leavened with a subtle humor:

The Flight of the Intellectuals