Chesler Chronicles

October 11th, 2007 10:13 am

Ibn Warraq Slays Tariq Ramadan in the Battle of Ideas

On October 9th, in London, Ibn Warraq debated Tariq Ramadan and he won the high-profile debate hands-down. The debate, known as Intelligence Squared, and sponsored by the Spectator, demands that the audience vote before the debate and again at its conclusion.

The subject was: ‘We Should Not Be Reluctant to Assert the Superiority of Western Values’. Ibn Warraq was joined by Douglas Murray and David Aaronovitch. Opposing them were Tariq Ramadan, William Dalrymple, and Charles Glass. At the end of the dramatic two-hour debate, the 700 audience members cast their votes.

The result was a stunning victory for those who believe that Western values are worth defending: 465 votes were cast in favor of the resolution; only 264 people voted against this. Apparently, the audience was persuaded by the debate to change their votes.

Ibn Warraq called me the moment his plane touched down to verify this. As the author of many books, including the forthcoming “Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism,” Ibn Warraq (a pseudonym) was well prepared.

Before he left, I told him that he was my–our–Knight going into battle and that he must slay this overly glamorized dragon on the field of Ideas. And so he did.

Stay tuned for my interview with Ibn Warraq in November and my review of his new book. I am trying to find a link to a recording of this debate but have so far failed. If anyone out of there can do so, please post it as a comment on the blog.

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24 Comments

1. David Thomson:

You may inform Ibn Warraq that Amazon.com is finally shipping out his book. It has been a long wait. I personally ordered Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism on November 16, 2006! The odds are that I will receive my copy by Saturday. I also promise to write a brief (and most likely positive) review on the Amazon.com customer page. It won’t be great, but it’s the thought that counts.

Oct 11, 2007 - 11:13 am 2. KeithP:

“Stunning Victory”?

I would scarcely say 66% is a stunning victory. What is more appalling is the large number who did not believe that western values are superior.

Oct 11, 2007 - 2:26 pm 3. Daniel Messing:

What was the vote BEFORE the debate?

Oct 11, 2007 - 4:38 pm 4. Adil:

Ibn Warraq had the best quip of the evening: ‘I don’t want to live in a society where I get stoned for committing adultery. I want to live in a society where I get stoned. And then commit adultery.’

The man is a gem.

The audio of the night’s proceedings can be accessed here:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/intelligence/we-should-not-be-reluctant-to-assert-the-superiority-of-western-values.mp3

Adil

Oct 11, 2007 - 5:17 pm 5. mike jacobs:

Messing and Keith, your comment and query addressed by the numbers in the Spectator’s report. Do your homework.

Oct 11, 2007 - 6:36 pm 6. KeithP:

I stand by my earlier statement.

66% is hardly a stunning victory.

Moving from a 3-2 to a 2-1 is… well in a word mediocre. Now, if it had been a move from 3-2 to 9-1. Now, that is compelling.

Again, the fact that ~33% remain unconvinced that Western Values are worhty is disturbing— at least for me.

Oct 11, 2007 - 6:57 pm 7. b:

Keith is the arbiter of debate characterization terminology.

Oct 11, 2007 - 7:15 pm 8. Benson:

Could it be that fully one-third of a representative sample of Britain’s thinking, concerned residents agree that Koranic values are equal or superior to Western values? I hope the vote on this debate is NOT a fairly accurate measure of the public’s commitment.

This is not about “terminology,” but the value a free people place on their own Liberty. It is truly stunning that so many — one third! — voted to abandon reason in favor of unevolved religious tyranny.

Phyllis, how can you justify your comment that the Islamist Tariq Ramadan was (metaphorically) slain?? His side scored the stunning victory. Any time a religious fanatic and his Quisling allies can get one third of an interested and informed audience (that is willing to listen to two hours of debate and then vote) to agree with them, we should be literally terrified by the implications. This fraction translates into the deaths of many randomly-selected members of the public. Isn’t that obvious??

There is an erosion of the will to self-defense in Britain. George Galloway remains a public figure, artistic representations of pigs are anathmatized, lunatic medical studnts refuse to study their entire curriculum — and the reaction of many is not outrage and utter intolerance of the insanity, but to reject their own heritage.

One third. That’s a large enough fraction to bring a civilization down.

Oct 11, 2007 - 11:19 pm 9. David Thomson:

“One third. That’s a large enough fraction to bring a civilization down.”

This is especially true if these people possess power disproportionate to their numbers. It is also reasonable to assume that in the Western left-wing political parties—their numbers might increase to majority status.

I also strongly argue that we must primarily focus on marginalizing these individuals. Trying to convert them should be a secondary goal. It is highly likely that the vast majority will go to their graves as nutty as they currently are.

Oct 12, 2007 - 3:27 am 10. Dr. Ellen:

Sharia law and Arab customs, strictly applied, would have me killed thrice over. Western law and American customs would not.

The West definitely gets my vote. Always has been that way.

Oct 12, 2007 - 10:26 am 11. Bruce:

Is 1/3 against Western values a problem?

My take is that given the likely makeup of the audience, it’s not at all representative of what the results would be with the population at large. But still, having 1/3 of the voters hold on to their beliefs that the West should not assert its value is disturbing and perhaps even dangerous, and needs to be countered over and over again by people like Warraq and Chesler.

Oct 12, 2007 - 10:32 am 12. geekWithA.45:

I am reminded of Eric Hoffer.

Mass movements are not propelled by their strength or virtues, but on the weakness of the order they propose to supplant.

Oct 12, 2007 - 11:15 am 13. Wildmonk:

Could it be that, due to the topic, there were a fair number of Muslims in the audience? If so, the 1/3rd may not be *quite* as bad as one would think if this was truly a cross section of the English population.

Oct 12, 2007 - 11:17 am 14. M:

Tariq Ramadan chooses to live in the West to enjoy it’s amenities and freedoms.

He declines to live in “Islamic” countries lacking these amenities and freedoms.

Debate over.

Oct 12, 2007 - 11:56 am 15. greginsocal:

Given the incessant hammering of the (government supported) PC nazis that run rampant in England, I’m surprised that it was only 1/3.

Oct 12, 2007 - 12:37 pm 16. Classical Values:

Quote of the Day

I think it’s hard to beat this remark from Ibn Warraq:I don’t want to live in a society where I get stoned for committing adultery. I want to live in a society where I get stoned. And then commit adultery….

Oct 12, 2007 - 12:54 pm 17. Mike:

“informed audience”

Define Informed? Slavery over Freedom?

OOOOOOOOOOOO K!

Oct 12, 2007 - 1:28 pm 18. John:

This vote is symbolic of nothing since it is likely that the audience is largely composed of college age young adults seeking to rebel at anything and everything, and people at the political fringes who could be bothered to sit through such a debate (and I don’t mean that as a pejorative).

The average man on the street has no time for such debates because it is so painfully obvious to him that western values are superior that he does not actually feel they are threatened and thus takes little interest in their defense as he goes about his business.

Randomly select 1000 people off the street to hear such a debate and I would be surprised if 3% rejected western liberal democracy in favor of a medieval, Sharia-driven muslim theocracy.

Oct 12, 2007 - 1:30 pm 19. Tim Morris:

KeithP:

In political circles a 60% margin of victory is called a landslide.

Oct 12, 2007 - 1:48 pm 20. comatus:

Tim Morris, I think you mean a 60% victory, not a 60% margin. That margin would yield 80/20, or 4 to 1.

Oct 12, 2007 - 4:18 pm 21. Linda Grant:

I attended this debate earlier this week and voted for the motion. The price of the tickets is £25 ($50), which is pretty high, and the audience consisted in the main of well-dressed. middle class individuals with an average age, I’d say, of 45 or even older. Perhaps 50+. Very few college kids, if any.

The debate was not between Western values and Islamic values, the debate was whether one should assert the superiority of western values. Those who voted against, judging by the questions asked from the floor, were questionig whether, given the 20th century history of totalitarianism, particularly the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany regarded Jews as alien and eastern, we have a right to preach. Tariq Ramadan’s point was that Islam was more likely to be persuaded of western values if they were not imposed, or arrogantly asserted.

I don’t agree with these positions, hence my vote for the motion, but clearly some in the audience did. They were not voting for the superiority of non-Western values.

Oct 13, 2007 - 8:39 am 22. Linda Grant:

Might I add, that I also had a chance to congratulate Ibn Warraq on his truly superb speech.

Oct 13, 2007 - 8:43 am 23. Kevin R.C. 'Hognose' O'Brien:

I would think that attendance was heavily leavened with academics. That would gibe with Linda Grant’s observation of their appearance.

An audience of academics is likely to support any kind of loopy resolution (or in this case, loopily oppose a resolution), particularly when given an argument like Ramadan’s, that is dressed in the vestments of multicultural cant.

I mean, if you can’t tell the difference between a tribal subculture of honour killing, female genital mutilation, and slavery on the one hand, and a culture of individual freedom on the other, you’re probably a professor of something. Something that involves lots of emotion and little arithmetic….

Oct 15, 2007 - 11:15 pm 24. Hendrianus:

Do the same for a dominated moslim audience and let’s see what a “stunning victory” the outcome will be.

May 24, 2009 - 1:01 am