Tariq Ramadan

Jointly written with Nudnikette

Monday night, driving home from the beach we happened to catch The Connection, a radio program on one of the local NPR radio stations. The guest on that show was Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan recently had his visa to teach at University of Notre Dame revoked by the Department of Homeland Security. He was introduced by Dick Gordon, the host of the show as one of "Europe's most influential Islamic thinkers. Revered by the Muslim youth on the continent, his unique brand of contemporary Islam is quickly gaining ground in the U.S." The only thing that was mentioned about his background was that his family moved to Switzerland in the mid 1950s. He was referred to as one of the "moderate" Muslims. He was politely questioned, never pressed on any issue, sharing a comfortable camaraderie with his interviewer. He spoke softly, gently and with the prerequisite academic lingo. The cloud of suspicion over his visa denial seemed unjust, unexplainable. But there was a huge, glaring omission. Fouad Ajami, in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (alas, for subscribers only, so here are excerpts that can’t do justice to the fullness of his writing) sets the record straight:

Tariq Ramadan [is] no ordinary academic, and the people who authorized this appointment at Notre Dame no doubt knew that. In the world of New Islamism, Mr. Ramadan was pure nobility. He was the maternal grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the Supreme Guide and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who lit the fuse of this religious radicalism back in 1928. Banna… was struck down by an assassin… in 1949. A village boy and a chameleon, a plotter who preached [a] simple but deadly doctrine… Banna made his appearance when a fragile modernism was struggling to take hold in Egypt. His targets were the classic themes of nativism…the moral pollution of modernism…His favorite disciple and son-in-law, Said Ramadan, made it to the safety of Switzerland, when the Nasser regime, in the mid-1950s, launched a brutal campaign of suppression against the Brotherhood. It was in Switzerland, with the help of Saudi money and patronage, that Said Ramadan… stayed true to the legacy of Banna, and raised to sons, Hani and Tariq, who would stay with the family business – the intersection of religion and politics… and the call to faith.

Daniel Pipes, a few weeks ago, in his matter of fact but no less effective style fills in these gaps in the real life of Tariq Ramadan:

He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam."

Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris.

Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999.

Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan.

Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11.

He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement.

Intelligence agencies suspect that Mr. Ramadan (along with his brother Hani) coordinated a meeting at the Hôtel Penta in Geneva for Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy head of Al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, now in a Minnesota prison.

Mr. Ramadan's address appears in a register of Al Taqwa Bank, an organization the State Department accuses of supporting Islamist terrorism.

Fouad Ajami eloquently expands on Ramadan's true views and shows that they are decidedly not ones that are in accord with a liberal society or ones that promote a peaceful coexistence with the Muslim world.

Why does The Connection not mention any of this? Why does it bill him simply as an important academic? This is part and parcel of our inability, or unwillingness to make judgments and define our enemies; all viewpoints are permitted because they are all equal.

Ajami explains to the reader held in the dark by such "investigative reporting" as witnessed on NPR why, beyond the ominous facts presented by Pipes, Ramadan’s visa denial is imperative (emphasis mine):

Pedigree was only one weapon in Tariq Ramadan’s remarkable odyssey. He had come of age when Islam in Europe was taking hold… Charismatic and telegenic, he had taken to the TV and the Web. Even after allowing for repetition, the 20 books and 700 articles and 170 audiotapes attributed to him are a testimony to the man’s drive and missionary impulse. The new Islamists were practitioners of the art of taqiyya (dissimulation: you never owe the truth to unbelievers), and this extraordinarily talented man had this art down to perfection. There was pluralism in the West, and he would use it for his purposes. His big theme was the fate of Islam in the new lands of the West; not for him the theme of assimilation. His was a different prescription, artfully stated: The Muslims would live the life of faith within Europe, for Islam, he maintained, had always been a fact of Europe’s life. France was zealously republican and lacité, secularism was its civil religion. The Muslims of France had not been parties to that secularism, and they ought to be free to challenge its basic canons.

But there was a limit to this artful way. A struggle erupted in France over Israel and the Palestinians, over the Iraq war, the Jews of France had become increasingly unnerved by the open displays of anti-Semitism…Mr. Ramadan had stepped into the breach. Some old family atavisms, and the requirements of leadership… were to bring him into open combat with some of France’s leading intellectuals: Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alain Finkelkraut, Bernard Kouchner, Alexandre Adler, Andre Glucksmann. Mr. Ramadan was now done with subtlety: He saw those “new philosophers”… to become apologists for Israel, and practitioners of “communitarian politics”. Put starkly, these public intellectuals were no longer men of the French republic of letters, but Jews above all… No wonder Bernard Kuchner, the founder of Doctors Without Borders, dubbed [Ramadan] a “most dangerous man.”

We have nothing in the public record that would explain why Mr. Ramadan has chosen to make his way to the American heartland… Nothing in his writing reveals an appreciation of America or a real knowledge of its culture… In my most favorite, and most exquisite piece of unintended irony – in an essay he published on the Web site Oumma.com on Aug. 30 – he wrote that he makes a distinction “between equitable trade and commerce of the World Trade Organization or McDonald’s, between [Victor] Hugo and Dallas,“ and that he opposes “economism, individualism, imperialism.” This piece of irony is priceless: The man condemning McDonald’s was coming to an academic institute funded by an endowment granted by McDonald’s heiress, Joan B. Kroc. A chip of the old block is Tariq Ramadan: His grandfather has sought and obtained the largesse of the Suez Canal Company for his Brotherhood even as he agitated against the foreign “defilement” of Egypt.

It would be fair to assume that French intelligence and the French Ministry of Interior have weighed in on the decision to deny Mr. Ramadan entry to the U.S… The liberty of an open society can never be a suicide pact, and the freedom of the academy is never absolute.

Ajami ends his piece with a cautiously optimistic projection of the future of Islam in the USA:

Would it be too irreverent and heretical to suggest that the Krocs can rest easier, now that Me. Ramadan has been spared an association with the “deleterious worldwide effects” of their empire. He can and will no doubt continue his work while the Muslims in North America cast about for a measure of peace in this new world. For them, there is a path of assimilation. It was, after all, the legacy of Hassan al-Banna that pushed them to these shores.

Whether or not this optimism is founded, Ajami's op-ed, his narration of the biography of Tariq Ramadan not only contains in embryonic form the history of the Islamic revolution that occurred in the 20th century, but warns against the dangers inherent in an open society. What happens if one of the designated watch-dogs in a democracy, the press, decides to sleep on its watch, as the routinely slumbering NPR?