Use of the Other

This week I am cautiously exploring the ideas of Paul Berman, one of America's foremost leftist intellectuals who believes that the confrontation with radical Islam is a globalised continuation of the West's twentieth century struggle against its own internal "totalitarian rebellions".

I am generally sympathetic to such calls for us to take a principled stand against total systems. However I already have some issues with Berman's position. Islamism may represent the most obvious threat, but it is only part of the problem. Focusing on it exclusively is allowing us to externalise some of the tensions between freedom and its enemies at home, and it does so in a way that inherently demonises another culture, and perhaps also ethnic otherness in general. (Indeed, the Duck of Minerva has suggested that Pope Benedict was himself caught out last week using Islam "as a convenient rhetorical shorthand for currents of Christianity that he disapproves of." )

Another concern is that the pluralism v totalitarianism model isn't really that much better a guide for holistic historical understanding and future action than the good vs evil one. And ideologies worth fighting for are also ideologies that habitually discount an awful lot of unnecessary killing.

Anyway, I'm certain to come out of Terror and Liberalism with more questions than answers. Right at the outset Berman qualifies his choice of enemy with this statement: "Islamism, the radical political movement (not to be confused with Islam the ancient religion)." But is it really so "not to be confused"? Is Islamism an ideology tacked on to a religion or is there something particularly ideological about Islam? And might globalisation be speeding up its conversion into an ideology?

What drives the feeling of violent revulsion that fundamentalists the world over feel about the principles of liberalism? What are they afraid of and is there anything we can do, short of confining our womenfolk, to alleviate it in any significant way?