Bostom:Islamist Appointed to University Chair Evidence of European Decay

The University of Leiden, the oldest in the Netherlands, has appointed a professor with known Islamist leanings to a highly visible and prestigious position. FSM Contributing Editor Dr. Andrew G. Bostom demonstrates how this signals the intellectual and moral decay that is spreading in Europe.

EXCLUSIVE Where is the Modern Day Huizinga?

Islamist Appointed to University Chair Evidence of European Decay

By Andrew G. Bostom

More evidence of Western Europe’s moral and intellectual decay, and capitulation to the Ur Fascism of the Islamic Jihad emerged on Wednesday November 7, 2007, with this announcement:  

Tariq Ramadan is to hold the Sultan of Oman chair of Islamology at the University of Leiden. Education and Culture Minister Ronald Plasterk said yesterday in the Lower House that he does not object to Ramadan's appointment.  

The appointment was a sickening reminder of its diametric opposite: the principled stand taken at Leiden by Huizinga in 1933 as described in “Huizinga before the Abyss: The von Leers Incident at the University of Leiden, April 1933,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1997, 27:385-44.  Johan Huizinga, the great Dutch historian, then serving as rector of Leiden University, withdrew university hospitality to the Nazi scholar, Johannes von Leers, who was attending an international student conference at the university. Huizinga acted on the grounds that von Leers had published an anti-Semitic election pamphlet in which he knowingly presented the blood libel of Jewish ritual murder as a historical fact, and contemporary threat. Despite subsequently winning public approval, Huizinga stood in courageous isolation when he took this action, suffering both personal criticism and significant problems in his dealings with German and Swiss publishing houses in the aftermath of the affair. (Ultimately, he died in Nazi detention, during 1945.) Thus in sharp contrast to his modern heirs at Leiden University, Huizinga had a very definite sense that a university had to judge its behavior according to concepts of intellectual honor and dignity which von Leers’ actions infringed upon.

Go read it all. Ugh.

Comments

[Surak]

Thanks, Ms. Geller!!! I just forwarded this article to our college administration, which is planning to host von Leers' modern successor. Please God we will not learn our lesson with the death of 20 million people, because we would not listen to the warnings...

[Wimbledon Womble]

It also shows how willing the West to sell out to $$$ and Euros. Herr Ramadan's position is the Sultan of Oman chair of Islamology at the University of Leiden. So it was Euros from the Sultan of Oman that bought this position for Ramadan at the University of Leiden. Of course, the same thing happens in the US: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2350.

[Wimbledon Womble]

It also shows how willing the West to sell out to $$$ and Euros. Herr Ramadan's position is the Sultan of Oman chair of Islamology at the University of Leiden. So it was Euros from the Sultan of Oman that bought this position for Ramadan at the University of Leiden. Of course, the same thing happens in the US: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2350.