From Islam to Pro-West

The New Yorker looks at how American intellectuals are reacting to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tariq Ramadan, two authors born into Islam who now support the liberal-democratic project. Ayaan Hirsi, who has abandoned her Islamic roots, says individuals must make a choice between Islam and the values of a liberal democracy because the two are incompatible. Meanwhile, Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islam at Oxford University who speaks of integrating Islam into Western society, has drawn the ire of author Paul Berman in his new polemic “The Flight of the Intellectuals.”