As noted by Rachel Donadio in her recent post on the New York Times’s Paper Cuts blog, the Muslim political thinker Tariq Ramadan has joined the chorus of voices calling for the boycott of Turin’s book fair. Turin’s book fair has invited Israel as the guest of honour for this year’s edition–something that triggered the ire of all the usual suspects. In a recent interview given to the Italian news agency AKI-Adnkronos, Ramadan was quoted as saying of the book fair that the time has come to “declare in a clear fashion that one cannot accept anything that comes out of Israel.” Ramadan argues that, because Israel’s policies are so oppressive, Israel should not be given the place of honor. This at least is what he said in a press release when his initial statement was extensively quoted across Italian and European media.

Does that mean that the Turin Book Fair should also not invite, say, Egypt, and its writers? Not even if one of them won the Nobel Prize for literature? Apparently not. Egypt, it seems, gets a free pass on Ramadan’s universal values. In offering factual background of the story, Ramadan suggests that Egypt was the original guest of honour, but the organizers somehow dis-invited the Arab country, preferring the Jewish state instead.The truth is that Egypt is the guest of honour for next year, whenTurin is also having a special round of events on Ancient Egypt. The combination of two such cultural highlights, the Egyptian and Italian governments thought, would increase attendance and exposure. But these minutiae are beside the point. How can Ramadan lament the (imaginary) exclusion of Egypt in favour of “a country that refuses to respect the rights and the dignity of peoples,” given Egypt’s abysmal record on human rights, the way it represses dissidents, persecutes the opposition, and treats religious minorities?

The organizers wrote back to Ramadan—who has been their guest in the past—reminding him that “the true guest of honour is . . . Israel’s free culture, because it is on culture, and nothing else, that one measures a country’s honour.” Ramadan informed his interlocutors that he did not buy into their distinction between culture and government. One assumes he’ll be coherent enough to call for a boycott of Egypt next year, on the same grounds.

Ramadan wishes to boycott a book fair because Israel’s literature—one that rightly deserves a place in the sun—is being honoured. The organizers’ cowardly and disingenuous efforts to distance themselves from Israel’s policies and draw a line between government and culture were clearly not right response. But if a country’s honor can be measured on its culture, the honor of an intellectual is clearly measured on his rigor and honesty. And if these be the parameters, it is hard to see how Ramadan can qualify.