The charlatan and slippery weasel that he is, Tariq Ramadan has just scored a major coup in his appointment to the Sultan of Oman chair of Islamology at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Andrew Bostom has more on the misguided 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.
My parting words to the newly appointed Tariq Ramadan, in the words of Karnak the Magnificent: “May the flies of a thousand camels infest his armpits“. More here. *L* KGS
