Reading Paul Berman in Beirut
What does it mean to be a liberal in the West and in the Arab world?
Paul Berman has not been offered a seat at the table of so-called specialists on the Middle East. For them, his fault is to take words at their value in a region where the truth is said to lie in the nuances. But his fault happens to be a liberal one; clarity alone can bring on genuine dialogue. Credit Berman with taking that step, by slicing through the adroit elusiveness of Tariq Ramadan.
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Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut and author of The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle, which the Wall Street Journal listed as one of its 10 standout books for 2010.