Tariq Ramadan: master of Islamic doublespeak

Mar 03, 2008, Melanie Phillips:

THE Swiss Islamic activist Tariq Ramadan has been invited by Griffith University to be the keynote speaker at its conference opening in Brisbane today.

The fact that Australia is allowing Ramadan to enter the country at all will raise eyebrows in security circles elsewhere. Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood: the spiritual backers of al-Qa'ida and Hamas and whose goal is to Islamise the world.

While it is, of course, unfair to tar someone with his grandfather's views, there is ample reason to think that in the case of Tariq Ramadan the apple has not fallen far from the tree.

Ramadan has been banned from entering the US because of his alleged association with extremists. The Geneva Islamic Centre, with which he is closely associated, has been linked to terrorists of the Algerian FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) and the GIA (Armed Islamic Group). A Spanish police report claimed that Ahmed Brahim, an al-Qa'ida leader jailed in Spain, was "in frequent contact" with Ramadan, a claim he has denied.

Yet the Swiss activist has not only been allowed into Britain but is ensconced at St Anthony's College, Oxford as a research fellow and is much lionised by the British establishment, appearing at security seminars on Islamism and even serving as an adviser to the British Government on tackling Islamic extremism.

So how to explain this wild divergence of views about Tariq Ramadan? And does Australia have cause to be concerned?

Ramadan's message is highly seductive to a Western world terrified by Islamic radicalism. For Ramadan preaches the comforting message of an unthreatening Islam that can accommodate itself to modernity and to the West. He does so in a charismatic style combining high intellect, a winsome French accent and impossibly hip glamour. To the desperate British establishment, the picture he paints so beguilingly of a way out of the Islamist nightmare has made him into the rock star of the counter-terrorism circuit.

But closer scrutiny of what he actually says - and perhaps even more importantly, does not say - suggests the talented Mr Ramadan is an Islamist wolf in moderniser's clothing. To the Islamic world he says one thing; to credulous Western audiences quite another in language that is slippery, opaque, manipulative and disingenuous.

His reputation as a Muslim reformer owes everything to the wishful thinking of those who want so much to believe in him that they fail to grasp what he is really saying ...

Far from offering a way to modernise Islam, he proposes instead to Islamise modernity. And he is all the more dangerous precisely because his weapon is not a bomb-belt but his tongue. Some may say that, even if his thinking is reactionary, that is no reason to refuse to let him into the country. This naive view ignores the fact that the Islamists' war of civilisation is being conducted principally on the battleground of ideas.

Terrorism merely backs up the Muslim Brotherhood's fundamental strategy of cultural infiltration, incitement, demoralisation and conquest.

As Fourest has written, the strategy of Ramadan is to globalise the Islamic awakening that is part of that strategy. In May 2003, the Appeal Court of Lyon agreed that language employed by preachers such as Ramadan "can influence young Muslims and can serve as a factor inciting them to join up with those engaged in violent acts". Wherever he goes, Ramadan is a pied piper leading the young to jihad by his mesmeric tunes. Through his appeal, he is probably the most dangerous Islamist in the Western world.

Thanks to the short-sightedness of the British Government, brother Tariq has been given a platform to radicalise innumerable young Muslims. Does Australia really want to follow suit?

Fitzgerald, 2004, A tribute to Tariq Ramadan:

Ramadan has a few select rhetorical tricks, but behind those tricks is this reality:

He wants to see the islamization of Europe. He thinks that Europeans suffer from a "spiritual emptiness" and that they are ripe for wonderful Islam. He has said that "the West is in decline, and the Arab-Islamic world is on the road to renewal" -- yet that "renewal," he believes, will take place when Islam conqueres, through his kind of Da'wa. His Da'wa, of course, is far more cunning, with far more roses than guns ...

But the goal of Ramadan is the goal of Bin Laden and indeed of all Believers: the victory of dar al-Islam over dar al-Harb, the removal of all obstacles in the dar al-Harb to the spread of Islam, and the subjugation of all non-Muslims -- who will be subjugated, as they have always been subjugated over 1350 years of Muslim conquest (with not a single exception anywhere) and, as dhimmis (where not killed or converted outright), subject to a permanent status of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity ...

Ramadan is kaput as a propagandist among the Infidels. No one takes him seriously. His job in Geneva had come to an end. He was desperate to find innocent Infidels elsewhere -- and to start over where they would not, he felt, know him as well as the French and Swiss had come to know him ...

Fitzgerald, 2008
Tariq Ramadan and How He Got His Chair At Leiden:

Tariq, appears in the "Islam" issue of The New York Times Book Review, where he identifies himself as at present a "professor at Oxford." He is no such thing. He has been a temporary lecturer at St. Antony's College, in the Middle Eastern wing (the other wing is Russian and East European Studies), which ever since its inception was the fiefdom of the late Albert Hourani, described by J. B. Kelly as "a plump abbot dispensing his favors," who allowed the place to be a diploma mill for all kinds of doubtful people. The D. Phil. does not require courses, but only a thesis, and every Rashid, Hamid, and Yusuf could get a D. Phil. at St. Antony's, as long as Hourani was ruling the roost. Now he's gone, and possibly things are changing there. But not completely, for Tariq Ramadan was given his temporary post.

Now the Arabs have got together, and the most "respectable" of them -- the government of Oman -- has simply given a large sum of money, not only for a chair, but with a specific non-negotiable candidate, the Arab Muslim candidate, to fill it, at the otherwise respectable University of Leiden. That's right, the same University of Leiden that has a distinguished history in Islamic studies, where Joseph Schacht, having left Germany in disgust in 1933 (Schacht was not Jewish), ended up for a while, and where C. Snouck Hurgronje has a center named after him, is giving Tariq Ramadan a grand title -- "professor," I presume, or possibly "director" of some "institute" created just for him by fellow Arab Muslims. And that will be convenient. That will allow him to lecture, and to write articles, billed as "Tariq Ramadan, professor at the University of Leiden."

But don't believe a word of it. His chair is entirely bought and paid for. It's to make his propaganda, his presentation, more impressive, more effective, more convincing.

Tariq Ramadan is a worthy grandson of that grandsire who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, Hassan al-Banna, the demagogue who used to whip up Cairene crowds so that, in fits of post-speech enthusiasm, they would then go out and attack Copts and Jews. He refuses to distance himself from his great relative: "he was my grandfather," he says, his voice full of filial piety. Would that answer satisfy you if instead of Tariq Ramadan, the person being interviewed was, say, the grandson of Martin Bormann?

Why he should be taken seriously, or treated with respect, at this point, this sly creature who wears on his sleeve his slyness, is beyond me.

Now, if I hadn't set all this out, you might have been fooled. You might have thought "ummmh, so Tariq Ramadan is a full professor at the University of Leiden. And the University of Leiden has been such a center of Islamic studies. Well, well, well."

Now you won't. But others, who will not have read about Tariq Ramadan and How He Got His Chair At Leiden, may still be. No one is forcing American Infidels to play the gull, the fool, the sap made fun of throughout history, now buying a bottle of political patent-medicine, now sending money to a Nigerian who apparently needs it in order to obtain the proceeds from his late father's bank account, which proceeds will of course be shared with the kind American who sends a nominal sum -- oh, $25,000 will do nicely for now. But the idiocy of those who refuse to study Tariq Ramadan, who refuse to understand his roots, his friends, his supporters, his aims, his insidiousness -- well, unlike the man who sends his life savings to a post office box in Nigeria, the folly in this case affects the rest of us, damages us, makes us all less secure.

And those doing this damage include people who give valuable space, at book reviews, for articles on Islam, to people just exactly like...Tariq Ramadan.

Mar 01, 2008, Rebecca Weisser:

TARIQ Ramadan has been called a Muslim Martin Luther and one of the most dangerous Islamists in the West.

His support for the emergence of a new European form of Islam has raised the hopes of some in the West who yearn for a more engaged Islamic community that adapts to the challenges of modernity.

His critics, however, are deeply suspicious, accusing him of a dual discourse, speaking a conciliatory message to the West while delivering the hard-line, anti-Semitic fundamentalist message of Salafism to Muslims ...

Ramadan created a public furore in France in 2003 during a television debate with then French interior minister and now President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy brought up the point of view expressed by Ramadan's older brother, Hani, who supports women who commit adultery being stoned to death. The most Ramadan could do was call for a moratorium. As Berman observed, "Some six million French people watched that exchange. A huge number of Muslim immigrants must have been among them: the very people who might have benefited from hearing someone speak with absolute clarity about violence against women. Ramadan couldn't do it."

Mar 04, 2008, Letter to the Australian
Dr Mervyn Bendle - James Cook University , Qld
Vital to tell the truth about Islamist ideologues:

YOU are to be commended for your comprehensive coverage of radical Muslim activity, most recently the articles about the visit of Tariq Ramadan, the world’s leading Islamist proselytiser (Opinion, 3/2).

However, why is there no mention of the fact that the conference at which Professor Ramadan is the keynote speaker is at Griffith University, which received a gift of $1 million from the Saudi Arabian Government last year, much to the dismay of many people in Australia, including the local Muslim community.

The main worry then was that this funding would allow the Saudis to extend the influence of fundamentalist and sectarian versions of Islam (as espoused by al-Qa’ida) at the expense of the more moderate versions that exist in Australia, and now this is happening _ with the assistance of $50,000 provided by the Queensland Government.

While it is vital to reveal the truth about ideologues such as Professor Ramadan, it is even more important to expose the affects of influence-buying on important public institutions ssuch as our universities.

Mar 03 2008, Banned Muslim advised Coalition:

TARIQ Ramadan - the Muslim academic banned from entering the US - was consulted by the Howard government last year on how to prevent the radicalisation of Muslims in Australia.

The professor of Islamic studies at Oxford University advised eight Department of Immigration officials via a video conference last June ...

"Professor Ramadan has already made an important contribution to Australian government thinking on Islam and the West, through a video-link discussion between London and Canberra last year," he said.

A Department of Immigration and Citizenship spokesman confirmed the department had sought the advice.

"Professor Ramadan was approached by DIAC because of his work in the area of Islamic integration into Western societies," he said. "This was of direct relevance to the work DIAC was doing under the National Action Plan to Build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security."

The National Action Plan was established after the 2005 London bombings to help integrate Muslims into Australian society...

Professor Ramadan said it was possible for Muslim immigrants to belong to the international Islamic community without undermining their loyalty to their adopted country.

Ibn Warraq reviews Caroline Fourest’s Exposé on the Cultural Jihadist Tariq Ramadan ...
The Pious Fraud: Tariq Ramadan, Islamist and equivocator:

Fourest has rendered an invaluable service. She demonstrates with great skill that Ramadan is a dangerous radical who, far from modernizing Islam, is in fact attempting to Islamize modernity. Of undoubted ability and charisma, but with no respect for or allegiance to Western values of liberty, Ramadan is poisoning the minds of young Muslims in the West. He spreads his message through personal appearances and with the sale of tens of thousands of cassettes through Tawhid, an Islamist publishing house with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Under Ramadan’s influence, Islamist youths develop a hatred for Western values and dream of creating a totalitarian Islamic theocracy, not only in the heart of Europe, but eventually the entire globe, until, in the words of al-Banna, “the Islamic banner . . . waves supreme over the human race.”

Jihad Watch, 2004
Tariq Ramadan's Two-Faced Islam. The West Is the Land of Conquest:

A Muslim intellectual has achieved star status in French-speaking Europe. He draws crowds of young immigrants and speaks to them with charismatic fervor. He enchants the anti-globalization left and the readers of “Le Monde Diplomatique.” He cites with equal mastery the Koran and Nietzsche, Heidegger and the sayings of the Prophet. He is admired by Fr. Michel Lelong, the leading Islam’s scholar of the Church in France. He sells thousands of cassette recordings of his sermons. His name is Tariq Ramadan. . . .

In recent months he has been accused of anti-Semitism. He has had harsh confrontations with influential Jewish intellectuals such as Bernard-Henri Levy, André Glucksmann, and Bernard Kouchner. “Le Monde” and other important newspapers have published critical reviews about him. But for Ramadan, this is all proof of the rightness of his position and of the West’s innate hostility toward Islam ...

But his ideological allegiances are more important than his ancestry. Tariq Ramadan – working within the very heart of the West – weaves together Islamic politics and the radical criticisms of Western rationalism made by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Cioran, Guénon, and neo-Marxist and anti-global currents. . . .

Tariq Ramadan also sees the West in decline. And into the spiritual void left by Judaism and Christianity, Islam can enter and overcome, no longer enduring modernity, but islamicizing it. The Western public likes Ramadan because his vision includes elements of democracy, equal citizenship, and free expression. He debates both secularized Muslims and those who separate themselves in closed communities. He announces the birth of a fully European Islam. And he ventures on this long journey armed with the doctrine of the taqiyya, or the art of dissimulation, a typical Islamic practice on enemy soil ...

There have certainly always been in France, and there still are, fundamentalist currents of complete hatred and refusal toward Western culture. But these instances from other times have never been able to demolish or even exploit the juridical and mental structures of our society.

The new ideology is now well defined. Its spokesman, at least in France and all of Western Europe, is Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan does not hide himself or devise conspiracies. While affirming his Muslim faith, he presents himself as a great Western intellectual. Young and handsome, he speaks with mastery and clarity the language of the intelligentsia of Western Europe. He teaches philosophy, French literature, and Islamic studies at the University of Geneva. At the same time, he works for Muslim groups like “Young Muslims of France,” and has assured himself of a role as an expert among the commissions that revolve around the European parliament. His media presence does not cease growing. He is author of more than a dozen works, including “Les musulmans dans la laïcité,” “Aux sources du renouveau musulman,” and “Les musulmans d’occident et l’avenir de l’islam.” He is a frequent guest on television and radio, and he circulates pamphlets in French or Arabic among young Muslims.

He proposes a “reformist” and “all-encompassing” Islam. His aim would seem to be that of bringing forth a body of values beginning from Islamic sources, an embodiment of the universal vocation that would take the place of the values of Western civilization. What matters to him is affirming Muslim identity and presenting it as the source of true universality.

Beginning from the statement that the fulcrum of historical movement is now constituted by the Europe-North America combination, with the Muslim countries relegated to the periphery, Ramadan notes how there are nonetheless many Muslims, especially intellectuals, who have succeeded in becoming part of the nucleus. He thus invites them to refashion it and, little by little, islamicize it: “References to Judaism and Christianity are being diluted, if not disappearing altogether” (“Les musulmans d’occident e l’avenir de l’islam,” Actes Sud-Sinbad, 2003). “Only Islam can achieve the synthesis between Christianity and humanism, and fill the spiritual void that afflicts the West” (“Islam, le face à face des civilisations,” Tawhid, 2001).

And again: “The Koran confirms, completes, and corrects the messages that preceded it” (“Les messages musulmans d’occident”). Some Christian personalities whose charitable works cannot be misconstrued – Mother Teresa, Sister Emanuelle, Abbé Pierre, Fr. Helder Camara – are exceptions who show only that all good people are implicitly Muslims, because true humanism is founded in Koranic revelation. Thus, both directly and through this humanism, the “Muslim City” can be founded upon the earth. “Today the Muslims who live in the West must unite themselves to the revolution of the antiestablishment groups from the moment when the neoliberal capitalist system becomes, for Islam, a theater of war […] The revelation of the Koran is explicit: whoever engages in speculation or cultivates financial interests eneters into war against the transcendent” (“Pouvoirs,” 2003, n. 164).

Tariq Ramadan then insists – justly – on the long-neglected intellectual riches of the great Muslim thinkers like Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, but he forgets to situate them in their relation to Greek, Jewish, and Christian thought, and presents them as the true originators of humanism.

Jacques Jomier has efficiently summed up the goal that drives Tariq Ramadan: “His problem is not the modernization of Islam, but the islamification of modernity” (“Esprit et Vie,” February 17, 2000). We must not forget that Ramadan is the nephew of Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Islamic movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a man Ramadan considers an eminent representative of “reformist” Islam, capable of bringing about an endogenous alternative culture from within modernity (“Peut-on vivre avec l’islam?”, Favre, 1990) ...

2004, Robert Spencer:

... the connection that this article makes between Ramadan and the Muslim Brotherhood is significant. In Onward Muslim Soldiers I explain how careful he has been to present himself as a moderate Muslim, although there are numerous questions about his real connection to radicals. The Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is the father of virtually all modern-day Islamic terror groups.

Social cohesion, harmony and security - Tariq Ramadan style? No thanks.

More from AIM:
- Laurie Ferguson asks ‘How High do I jump?”
- What Muslims Want

By Dr Mervyn F. Bendle:
- Secret Saudi funding of radical Islamic groups in Australia