Tariq Ramadan, the revocation of his visa barring his way to a professorship at Notre Dame, throws down the gauntlet to his critics in the International Herald Tribune:
I remain in Switzerland, hoping this mistake will be rectified and reflecting on how I am constantly being told the "truth" about who I am: "You are a controversial figure." "You engage in double talk, delivering a gentle message in French and English and a radical, even extremist one in Arabic or to Muslim audiences in private." "You have links with extremists." "You are an anti-Semite." "You despise women." And so on.When I ask about the source of this information, invariably the response is: This is well-known; check the Internet and you will find thousands of pages referencing it.
A closer examination reveals journalists and intellectuals quoting each other, infinitely repeating what others have said. The response to this finding is: "Well, there has to be some truth in all that." A strange truth indeed!
I have written 20 books and 700 articles, and 170 audiotapes of my lectures are circulating. I ask my detractors: Have you read or listened to any of this? Can you prove the "links" to terrorists? To repeat allegations is not to prove. Where is the evidence of my "double talk?" Have you read the articles in which I call upon fellow Muslims to condemn unequivocally radical views and acts of extremism?
What about my statements on Sept. 12, 2001, calling on Muslims to condemn loudly the terrorist attacks and to acknowledge that some Muslims betray the Islamic message? What about the articles in which I condemn anti-Semitism and criticize Muslims who do not differentiate between the political dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the unacceptable temptation to reject Jews because they are Jews?
Are you familiar with my writings promoting women's rights and an Islamic feminism, and rejecting every kind of mistreatment and discrimination?
Finally, are you acquainted with my extensive study of the Islamic scriptural sources and efforts to promote a new understanding, a way for Muslims to remain faithful to their principles and, at the same time, face the challenges of the contemporary world?
Daniel Pipes is up to the challenge:
But on July 28, just nine days before the Ramadans were to leave for America, Mr. Ramadan was informed that the Department of Homeland Security had revoked his work visa. A DHS spokesman, Russ Knocke, later explained this had been done in accord with a law that denies entry to aliens who have used a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity." The revocation, Mr. Knocke added, was based on "public safety or national security interests."Of course, Mr. Ramadan dismisses the revocation as "unjustified" and due to "political pressure." He even blames me for the DHS decision.
What's up? The DHS knows much more than I do, but it is not talking. A review of the press, however, gives an idea of what the problem is. Here are some reasons why Mr. Ramadan might have been kept out:
• 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.And here are other reasons, dug up by Jean-Charles Brisard, a former French intelligence officer doing work for some of the 9/11 families, as reported in Le Parisien:
• 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.Then there is the intriguing possibility, reported by Olivier Guitta, that Osama bin Laden studied with Tariq's father in Geneva, suggesting that the future terrorist and the future scholar might have known each other.
Ramadan denies all ties to terrorism, but the pattern is clear. As Lee Smith writes in The American Prospect, he is a cold-blooded Islamist whose "cry of death to the West is a quieter and gentler jihad, but it's still jihad."
And here is Tariq Ramadan's reply to Pipes, in which he denies everything. As Pipes notes at his website, the only one not talking in all this is the Department of Homeland Security.
Everything. A sly,Taqqiya, smooth talking son of
a gun/Jihadist who uses his position, funds and contacts to lull the West into thinking he is 'Mr Nice Guy.'Ramadan be Damned! Go and practise your lies somewhere else.
Thank you Daniel Pipes.
Tariq Ramadan, more dangerous than terrorism, a smooth-talking taqiyya and kitman specialist. Let the Swiss keep him.
Ramadan, it has to be repeated endlessly, has precisely the same goals as Bin Laden, or Qutb, or Qaradawi, or Nasrallah the head of Hezbollah, or Rantisi. He wishes for the complete domination of the world by Islam, which he regards as the faith that the decadent West, all anomie and aimlessness and angst (in his view, for his is the caricatured view of a certain kind of comical "intellectual" with his hand-me-down thoughts from Paris and points west). He differs in how he thinks this can best be achieved. Do not speak too much, he counsels his followers, about Bin Laden or terrorism. Do not reveal too much about the necessity of imposing the Shari'a, or what that system will mean for Infidels (one wonders if he thinks no one is capable of reading Antoine Fattal, or Bat Ye'or, or a hundred other scholars -- he really takes us for fools, and possibly, in the case of his supporters among the Notre Dame administrators, he is absolutely right). He counsels a sly and outward conformity with as much of Western moeurs as is possible, because he realizes, it is clear from his speeches and jejune writings, that he understands that Muslims in the West are not yet strong enough to rip off the mask and show themselves as he, and they, know themselves to be. Better to bide one's time. From his point of view, Bin Laden's terrorism is a mistake. Not a moral mistake, but a political mistake, one that revealed Islam's hand a bit too early, before the forces of misinformation, disinformation, denial, and appeasement were completely in control. One hopes that mistake will prove, for Ramadan and his ilk, equally damaging.
It is up to Infidels to educate themselves, because a demented and biased press and television and radio will not dare to discuss, in any intelligent way, the tenets of Islam, preferring the nonsense of looking high and low for every explanations for Muslim terrorism, and Muslim cruelties, and Muslim breaking of all treaties and promises, and Muslim persecution and murder of non-Muslims or even of non-Arab Muslims (as in Darfur, in Kurdistan, or even among the Berbers persecuted intermittently in Algeria), every explanation except the obvious one -- Islam itself, its teachings, the attitudes and atmospherics those teachings create. We are all supposed to be looing around for some other explanation -- poverty, American foreign policy, "colonialism" (the French ruled Syria for little more than 20 years; the British were in Iraq between 1919 and 1932, all of 13 years; there never was any Western colonialism in Saudi Arabia nor in most of Yemen, nor in the Gulf sheikdoms (unless the British garrisons there which trained the local armies, and protected the local rulers, can be called "colonial" armies which is certainly a misnomer: in Egypt, the British ran the civil service from 1883 to 1922 -- and that was the extent of the "colonialism"). Jordan owes its very existence to the British, who carved it out of territory that was originally intended to be for the Mandate for Palestine, and hence for the Jewish National Home, the sole reason for being of that same Mandate.
Should we keep up the farce, like O. J. Simpson, of "looking for the real killer" or should we look at Islam steadily and whole, and see it for the dangerous ideology it is, not least to its own adherents. Our choice. How intelligent are you feeling today?
Not very. More 'light unto the Muslim lands' from Laura Bush this evening.
And Kerry is ready to cut a deal with the mullahs in Iran. My God. I am a social liberal and that policy alone is sufficient, in my opinion, for a vote against Kerry. That policy, which implies permitting Iran nuclear weapons, will inevitably cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands, at the very least. I will forgo all differences in domestic social policy with the Republicans and vote for Bush in the hope that that Iran will be stopped.
Laura Bush does not realize that the same belief system that forces a female athlete to wear pants also views Infidels, including herself, as morally worthless. And upon that foundation, 'the difference', 'the worthlessness' of the nonbeliever, all Jihad is built.
Tolerance per se is not a virtue. Why can't we lean that?
Beautifully said JTF.
"Tolerance per se is not a virtue"...aaah.
I too am a cetrist - a scoial liberal but an 'economic and military' conservative, if you will. Have endured hours of pointless persuasion from liberals to vote out Bush. Well, granted I don't approve of all that Bush has done or plans to do but Kerry is a disaster - plain and simple....
An interesting article on how the otherwise peaceloving Nepalese have reacted violently to the iraqi beheading of 12 of their countrymen for being foriegners and followers of Buddha.
http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/sep/01nep.htm
Interesting thing is they burnt the jama mosque in kathmandu, the biggest in the country. Time the mussies realise not everyone will tolerate crimes committed in the name of alla.
Kerry said to his people: Reporting for duty.
I'm waiting for the day when our people says to him: Here's your discharge!
Or: Your Fired !
Kleo2x in Anderson