RUTHFULLY YOURS

So should we sheer at Europe’s renewed fondness for irrationality?  One only has to remember the political avatars of Nietzsche and Heidegger to answer no.  Or, playing the smart aleck à la Foucault and Derrida, I would say that the answer is both yes and no -but mostly no.

What I mean by “Europe’s renewed fondness for irrationality” is a tendency to abandon reason out of fear.  Most European politicians are no longer willing to resist the demands of their expanding and wahhabi-educated constituencies -whether it’s establishing sharia courts, wearing the burqa, or treating Israel as the enemy of the Prophet.  A new political party, “Sharia for Belgium,” intends to impose sharia law in that country and then in the rest of Europe.  Those Europeans who are not happy with sharia, says the party’s founder, will be welcome to leave.

In his new book A State beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel, Robin Shepherd argues that Europe should be berated for “lacking a moral compass, for hypocrisy, wickedness and appeasement” and for “succumbing to an obsession, of giving in to irrationalism and anti-intellectualism.”  Focusing on anti-Israeli sentiment inside the mainstream of the public discourse, the book argues that Israel has been pushed beyond the pale of polite society across Europe and that, as a result, Europe is putting itself beyond the pale by descending into bigotry.

Shepherd’s book is more analytical than Oriana Fallaci’s passionate La Forza della Ragione, but its bottom line is similar: Europe’s irrational attitude toward Israel is the symptom of a cultural and intellectual surrender.

There are a few résistants.  José Mariá Aznar’s newly founded Friends of Israel Initiative is not altruistic.  It simply understands, to use Aznar’s own words, that “If Israel goes down, we all go down.”  There is also hope that sane Muslims will speak out and be brave.  Dr. Tawfik Hamid, for example, has become a forceful and outspoken advocate of Islam’s embrace of rationality and tolerance.

Europeans simply need to stop being intimidated.  True, Descartes and Kant sometimes wrote nonsense like everyone else, but reason is what shall set Europe free.  After all, the Discours de la Méthode’s most famous sentence (“cogito ergo sum”) could also be understood as a warning: If you stop thinking, you’re dead.