The Flight of the Intellectuals: The Controversy over Islamism and the Press - Paul Berman epub/mobi 

25 years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini called for the assassination of Salman Rushdie, as fellow writers rushed to his defence. Today, Berman claims that Rushdie has metastasised into a group of sharp-tongued critics of Islamic extremism. Paul Berman - a renowned leading intellectual - conducts a searing examination into current intellectual trends and shows how some of the West's' best thinkers have fumbled badly in their efforts to grapple with Islamic ideas an how journalists have been reluctant to grapple seriously with Islamist ideas and violence.
Berman’s investigation of the history and nature of the Islamist movement includes some surprising revelations. In examining Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, he shows the rise of an immense and often violent worldview, elements of which survives today in the brigades of al-Qaeda and Hamas.
In a gripping and stylish narrative Berman also shows the legacy of these political traditions, most importantly by focusing on a single philosopher, who happens to be Hassan al-Banna’s grandson, Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan—a figure widely celebrated in the West as a “moderate” despite his troubling ties to the Islamist movement. Looking closely into what Ramadan has actually written and said, Berman contrasts the reality of Ramadan with his image in the press