The Pious Fraud
Tariq Ramadan, Islamist and equivocator
05 May, 2008
Book Review
Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan,
by Caroline Fourest; foreword by Denis MacShane
(Encounter Books, 262 pp., $23.95)
In the 1990s, Western liberals,
alarmed at the presence of Islamic fundamentalists in their midst,
turned in desperation to Muslims whom they dubbed “reformers” or
“modernizers.” They hoped that these figures would have a moderating
influence on disaffected Muslim youths who refused to integrate into
Western society. One such “reformer” is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born
academic. Ramadan has won the confidence of many in the West,
including the British government, which asked him to serve on its
task force for preventing Islamic extremism. But as Caroline Fourest
shows in her superbly documented book, which first appeared in
French in 2004, Ramadan is not a worthy figure.
Fourest reveals Ramadan’s art of duplicity, which encompasses an
entire repertoire of rhetorical subterfuges, from doublespeak and
equivocation to euphemism and lies of omission. Ramadan claims that
he accepts the law in Western democracies—so long as the law “does
not force me to do something in contradiction with my religion.” He
calls the terrorist acts in New York, Madrid, and Bali
“interventions.” He claims to be a “reformist,” but defines the term
to exclude the concept of “liberal reformism.” He tells a television
audience that he believes in the theory of evolution, but neglects
to mention that his book, Is Man Descended from the Apes? A Muslim
View of the Theory of Evolution, argues for creationism. He
criticizes Saudi Arabia as “traditionalist and reactionary,” but
fails to mention that his own revered father helped the Saudis
become the sponsors of Wahhabism. It’s no surprise that, according
to the Belgian Permanent Committee for the Control of Intelligence
Services, “State security also reported that the moderate speeches
that Tariq Ramadan gives in public do not always correspond to the
remarks made in confidential Islamic settings, where he is far more
critical of Western society.”
Ramadan’s doublespeak is part of a carefully calibrated, long-term
strategy of dissimulation, perfectly justified by the Islamic
doctrine of taqiyya, a doctrine of “pious fraud” or religious
dissimulation. That Ramadan is an impostor is evident even in the
titles that he freely accords himself. He claims that he is
“Professor of Islamic Studies (Faculty of Theology at Oxford),” and
the biography in the inside flap of his Western Muslims and the
Future of Islam describes him as “Professor of Philosophy at the
College of Geneva and Professor of Islamic Studies at the University
of Fribourg in Switzerland.” But as journalist Gudrun Eussner has
shown, Ramadan is merely a research fellow at St. Anthony’s College,
Oxford, where has has given just three lectures. Nor is he a
professor at Geneva, especially not at the university there. He was
a teacher at a sub-university level in the Collège Saussure, and he
served as a “scholarly associate” at the University of Fribourg,
teaching a two-hour course every two weeks, “Introduction to Islam.”
That Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna—founder of the
Muslim Brotherhood, and a fundamentalist fanatic who wanted to
impose Islamic totalitarianism on the world—would not be fair to
hold against him if not for his laudatory writings on his
grandfather. In television interviews, Ramadan proudly displays a
photograph of al-Banna. “I lay claim to this heritage since, if
today I am a thinker, it is because this heritage has inspired me,”
he told the Belgian Journal du Mardi in 2004. He was even more
explicit in his interview with Alain Gresh of Le Monde diplomatique:
“I have studied Hassan al-Banna’s ideas with great care and there is
nothing in this heritage that I reject. His relation to God, his
spirituality, his mysticism, his personality, as well as his
critical reflections on law, politics, society and pluralism,
testify to me his qualities of heart and mind. . . . His commitment
also is a continuing reason for my respect and admiration.” In fact,
Ramadan wrote a university thesis on al-Banna that was nothing short
of hagiography. The jury at the University of Fribourg rejected it
for being too partisan and unscientific.
In November 2003, in a televised debate with Nicolas Sarkozy, then
France’s interior minister, Ramadan was asked about his brother Hani,
who had justified stoning adulterous women to death. Instead of
condemning the custom outright as barbaric, Ramadan replied, “I’m in
favor of a moratorium so that they stop applying these sorts of
punishments in the Muslim world. What’s important is for people’s
way of thinking to evolve. What is needed is a pedagogical
approach.” In other words, Ramadan wanted, as my dictionary entry on
the word informs me, “a legally authorized postponement of the
fulfillment of an obligation”—a temporary ban.
Fourest provides many examples of Ramadan’s brazen lies, but one
stands out. It involves the al-Taqwa bank—founded by leaders of the
Muslim Brotherhood, and shut down by the Swiss government in
December 2001 for sponsoring terrorism, with links to Hamas, al-Qaida,
and the GIA in Algeria. Ramadan claims that his family had no
involvement with al-Taqwa: “We never had any sort of contact with
the bank. The fact that our name appears in its address file doesn’t
mean a thing.” This is untrue; Said Ramadan, Tariq’s father, was one
of the founders of al-Taqwa. (Other al-Taqwa founders were active
supporters of Hitler during World War II.)
Does Ramadan condemn terrorism? Again with much ambiguity, he claims
that terrorist acts are justified “contextually.” At the height of
the riots by young Arabs in France in 2005, Ramadan told the
television channel France 5, “The violence is legitimate.” Though
Ramadan has always denied having any contact with terrorists in
Europe,
Jean-Charles Brisard, an international expert on terrorism
financing, has gathered evidence suggesting otherwise. Brisard cites
a 1999 Spanish Police General Directorate memo, for example, that
states that Ahmed Brahim (now serving a ten-year sentence on charges
of inciting terrorism) maintained “regular contacts with important
figures of radical Islam such as Tariq Ramadan.” Brisard also points
to Djamel Begal, who in his first court appearance after his
indictment by a French judge for participating in a foiled terrorist
attack against the U.S. Embassy in Paris, stated that before 1994,
he “attended the courses given by Tarek Ramadan”—an indication of
the influence that Ramadan’s teaching has had on budding Islamist
radicals. Beghal was sentenced to ten years in prison in March 2005.
Brisard cites prosecution documents chronicling Beghal’s
interrogation by UAE authorities in which Beghal states that “his
religious engagement started in 1994,” when “he was in charge of
writing the statements of Tariq Ramadan” — by which he meant,
according to a translation from the Swiss daily Le Temps, that he
helped prepare Ramadan’s speeches. Finally, Brisard cites a Swiss
intelligence memo of 2001 that states that “brothers Hani and Tariq
Ramadan coordinated a meeting held in 1991 in Geneva attended by
Ayman Al Zawahiri and Omar Abdel Rahman.” Al Zawahiri is a major al-Qaida
leader and one of Osama bin Laden’s lieutenants; Rahman was the
planner of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, now serving a life
sentence in the United States.
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.”
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Ibn Warraq is the author of Why I Am Not a Muslim and the editor of The Origins of the Koran, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, and What the Koran Really Says.
Name: THIS IS EVEN BETTER THAN YOUR'S!
Date: Sunday May 04, 2008
Time: 10:19:25 -0700
Comment
http://truereligiondebate.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/what-is-common-between-an-dog-a-crow-a-wom
Name: Ibn Kammuna Thank you editors for publishing this article.
Date: Sunday May 04, 2008
Time: 13:53:08 -0700
Comment
Thank you Islam Watch. In the past I have read some of Ramadan's work and some info about him and thought he was actually a true reformer. What a shame, with Taqiyya, it is hard to even trust western Islamic thinkers. What a liar Mr. Ramadan is.
Name: jo
Date: Sunday May 04, 2008
Time: 14:09:56 -0700
Comment
So in other words he is not a trator like you, may be he has some dignity , he also doesn't like to be known as THE LICKER.
Name: Mohammad
Date: Sunday May 04, 2008
Time: 22:36:28 -0700
Comment
It's interesting how Ibn Warraq, a respected academic among anti-Muslims felt the urge to write this piece. Doesn't he have anything more important to say or do? Is this what people do to their opponents when they can't defeat them in civil discussions? It's sad how Ibn Warraq is trying to link Ramadan to Al Zawahiri. It reminds me of how hard the Bush administration tried to link Saddam to Al Qaida. Ibn Warraq would have probably made a good agent for the KGB with his god-given skill of portraying people as the devil himself. This piece was cheap journalism.
Name: klaxonwarning
Date: Monday May 05, 2008
Time: 11:50:12 -0700
Comment
Thank you Ibn Warraq for your scholastic approach to Islam from both an apostate's and journalist's view. I am grateful.
Name: DH
Date: Tuesday May 06, 2008
Time: 08:28:31 -0700
Comment
The only Muslim "reformer" that is to be conceivably trusted is the one who says "I RENOUNCE ISLAM"!