parliament than in the U.S. Congress. She neglected to mention that Iran's parliament is a figurehead, and that there are no women on the Guardian Council, the group of clerics that actually runs the country. Scott went on to claim that the imposition of the hijab has "very little to do with feminist issues," and that Ramadan's idea of a Muslim moratorium on stoning -- as opposed to banning the practice -- "is not a bad one." Her presentation illustrated perfectly our era's strangest bedfellows: Islamists and leftist Western academics.

The sole bright spot on the panel was New Yorker journalist George Packer, who used his allotted time to pelt Ramadan with questions about his views of his grandfather Hassan al-Banna's connections to the Nazi ally and Mufti ofJerusalem, Haj Amin al-Hussayni. Citing Paul Berman's research from his soon-to-be-released book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, Packer noted that al-Banna was an admirer of fascist Italy and Germany and quoted al-Banna as saying, "Hitler was sent by Allah [as a punishment for] the corruption of the Jews." Packer then asked Ramadan whether he was willing to condemn al-Banna for his alliance with the Mufti and for his admiration of Hitler and Mussolini.

The normally dispassionate Ramadan was visibly unsettled. Claiming that he had already been asked three times about Berman's book since arriving in the States, he said, "I put this in the context of the [19]30s and '40s." In remarks following these, Ramadan employed the terms "context," "contextual," and "contextualized" at least four times, obfuscating the issue