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Terror and Liberalism |
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Reviews |
| | Mr. Berman-A Neo-Con in sheep's clothing.  |
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I am not going to spend the time and effort to discredit this obvious neo-con view of the Middle East, but merely to identify it as such. Do some research about the author and you will see that he is certainly no progressive, disillusioned or otherwise, on Middle East matters. If you want to read more than you already have about the neo-con view of things on this subject, you may want to pick up this book; otherwise, it is a poor choice. |
| | Interesting viewpoint.  |
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The "liberalism" referred to in the title refers to a liberal society, a society that encourages individual freedom, debate and dissent, some separation of religion and government. Most of the Western world (US, Canada, Europe, etc.) consists of liberal societies; countries like Nazi Germany, the former USSR, or Saudi Arabia definitely are not.
Berman links the anarchists and nihilists of the late 19th and early 20th century, to the political assassinations in Russia, Europe and the United States (one of which started World War I), through Fascism (Germany/Italy/Spain), Communism (Russia) and the Axis-aligned pan-Arabism of the Middle East, all the way to the current Islamic extremism. All of these movements have in common an obsession with suicide and murder.
A lot of space is given to Sayyad Qutb's writings, and his unwillingness to accept liberal society, due to the limited influence of religion (any religion) therein. Instead, Qutb thought that all societies should be Shariah (Islamic) law. Secular Muslims (Ataturk) as well as non-Muslims (Jews and Christians, mostly) represented a threat to Islam and had to be dealt with--one way or another. Berman links the philosophies of Qutb to the actions of Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Al Qaeda.
An interesting point of view, although I'm not 100% convinced that everything can be so easily explained. |
| | Reasonable thesis, but is it worth a book?  |
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While his is a reasonable thesis and nicely written, Berman must have been under a rock for the past 30 years not to have noticed the growth in illiberalism. It is important for ideas and movements to be challenged by their own I concede, but I would have been more impressed if he had used his insider status and sensitivity to more critically examine the reasons why illiberalism took hold rather than just acknowledging its presence. Nevertheless it is courageous to challenge orthodoxy and requires a rare kind of honesty, and people with these traits can play a crucial role in an open society. |
| | Liberalism is a conservative solution to Terror |
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Berman shows totalitarianism, its causes, and impact on society, in a way that leaves liberalism as a more reasonable and, in comparison, conservative solution. He describes "liberal" in the philosophical sense based on liberty. His point is that it is the liberal societies that have prospered in the last centuries and that have produced successes. On the opposite side, or maybe both sides, of this success have been extremes that by their very nature all are totalitarian. Connecting those extremes and particularly Nazism, Communism, and Islamic Extremism is made clearer by Berman's use of Albert Camus's book the Rebel.
Camus shows that in a liberal society rebellion is expressed as skepticism and doubt but that process leads to freedom. Then in the world of terror, by contrast, there is no doubt or skepticism, only submission. Terror and totalitarian are one in the same. Camus shows that the society that demands submission then crosses into totalitarian and embraces nihilism as the only truth.
Another author that in a very different way suggested that the struggle between individualism and collectivism was the key to understanding the difference between these totalitarian cultures was William Buckley's in his first literary success, "God and Man at Yale". Of course Berman doesn't mention Buckley, and may find the comparison troubling, but his book does find a lot of things that a conservative thinker would embrace. Berman's book seems to indicate that it is the same struggle reproduced on another level.
His insight into the Islamic position, and why it's extremes present a threat, are most interesting.
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| | Balanced, Informative, insightful  |
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The negative reviewers of this book fail to judge the book on its merits. |
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