McCarthy on Ajami

I’ve pointed out for years that Fouad Ajami, whom I once liked, had become little more than a mouthpiece of neocon orthodoxy. At the Corner, Andrew McCarthy take apart Ajami’s statements about the reality of “moderate” Islam. Normally establishment conservatives, like courtiers, are very careful never to differ in any significant way with each other in public, especially when it comes to the subject of Islam. McCarthy breaks that mold, and he’s been doing it more and more boldly lately. In the past, whenever he disagreed with a fellow conservative about the nature of Islam, he would preface it with what I sometimes considered excessive praise for the individual whose position he was about to refute. In his current piece the obligatory courtly gestures have been reduced to, “despite my admiration for Mr. Ajami,” and then he just launches right into it. I think McCarthy’s willingness to tolerate pious evasions of the deadly truth about Islam has reached the end.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 14, 2010 10:10 PM | Send