Arnaud de Borchgrave no doubt takes a dim view of the Notre Dame dhimmis who wanted Tariq Ramadan to teach at Notre Dame this year. Here's his take on Ramadan, from the Washington Times, with thanks to Ali Dashti:
Tariq Ramadan is radioactive. Speak to any Christian in the Arab world, and "roadkill" is the nicest thing you'll hear about him. For the left -- especially the far left -- the grandson of the founder of the incendiary Muslim Brotherhood, the most important Islamist movement of the 20th century, is just in from a little stroll on the Sea of Galilee.For France's influential Jewish intellectuals -- Bernard-Henri Levy, Andre Glucksmann, Bernard Kouchner -- Ramadan is a dangerously skillful anti-Semite....
In a televised debate with France's then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy late last year, Mr. Ramadan declined to condemn "lapidation" -- the stoning of adulterous wives as mandated by a strict interpretation of the Koran. Instead, Mr. Ramadan said he favored a "moratorium" in the practice.
A multimillionaire from the sale of countless thousands of cassettes of his mesmerizing sermons, Mr. Ramadan is lionized by the jobless, North African slum-dwellers that cling barnaclelike to France's major cities. The neo-Marxist, anti-globalization left has also hitched its bandwagon to his star-status in French-speaking Europe.
Swiss-born, this handsome 42-year-old is a resident of Geneva, which the U.N.'s European headquarters has made the smallest international city in the world. Banned in France by one interior minister as a dangerous provocateur, he was reinstated by the next interior minister. Mr. Ramadan's apocalyptic, nihilistic vision appears to some as a scene-setter for the center-stage appearance of Osama bin Laden Superstar.
The author of a dozen books, Mr. Ramadan lets fly staccato-style, at the speed of an AK-47 on full automatic, quotations from Nietzsche, Heidegger and the Koran, to prove a central point: Decadent Europe will give way to an Islamized Europe.
The 21st century, he says, will see a second role reversal between Islam and the West: "The West will begin its new decline, and the Arab-Islamic world its renewal" and ascent to seven centuries of world domination after seven centuries of decline.
The fully European Islam, he predicts, presupposes a violent upheaval against the Western values Mr. Ramadan rejects. But he quickly cushions the supposition with hosannas to democracy and free expression. He is a past master of dissimulation and disinformation.
"To Be a European Muslim," published in 1999, was translated into 14 languages. The European Parliament consults him as an expert voice of reason in a cacophony of extremist epithets.
Criticism of this Islamist intellectual troubadour is quickly rejected as Islamophobia. Mr. Ramadan speaks the language of Europe's intellectual left. A frequent lecturer in U.S. universities, his brilliantly articulate perorations mesmerize his liberal fans. "Only Islam can achieve the synthesis between Christianity and humanism, and fill the spiritual void that afflicts the West." All good people are implicitly Muslims, he maintains, "because true humanism is founded in Koranic revelations."
"Today the Muslims who live in the West must unite themselves to the revolution of the anti-establishment groups from the moment when the neoliberal capitalist system becomes, for Islam, a theater of war," is another thunderclap that says "jihad" to his detractors and sweet reasonableness to his fans.
Marxism failed because it slavishly followed the dictates of a bunch of aging klutzes in Moscow, according to the Ramadan school. Islam, he says, can now bring forth a body of values that would form the embodiment of this universal vocation.
This, in turn, would replace the values of Western civilization. Islam-centric thinking thus replaces Eurocentric rearview mirror nostalgia for what was once a great civilization.
Muslim identity is the only true source of universality, proclaims Tariq Ramadan. "It will fill the spiritual void that afflicts the West." Music to some, but a hidden Islamist agenda to DHS. Some would say, not so well hidden.
Isn't this the charming fellow that CAIR was so concerned about having his Visa revoked?
Isn't it sad that Pym Fontaine was murdered yet this cult-worshipping cockroach remains alive?
F'ng dickhead
Here is my rough translation of what the "Martin Luther of the Muslim world" said in an interview shortly after 9/11:
"No Arab or Islamic cause could profit from these (9/11) events, on the contrary: The Arabs and Muslims will suffer. With regards to those identified as the perpetrators, they drink, they go to clubs, they don't practice (Islam). Strange religious extremists. I ask myself whether or not Bin Laden is no more than useful terrorist like Saddam Hussein. A diabolical symbol one could use for alternate global strategies, both economic, and political."
"Ben Laden, coupable idéal?" La Gruyere (9/22/01) http://www.lagruyere.ch/archives/2001/01.09.25/article4.htm
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Mr. Ramadan has aligned himself with the lowest of the low by implicating Israel and the Neocons for 9/11.
What I find even more shocking is that this outrageous statement isn't making headlines.
europe and the west is under a curse for allowing islam in and joining with the moslems in condemning israel.
we are witnessing a tragic spectacle whose only remedy is the return of Yeshua (Jesus).
the moslems are confident in their triumph,and they do make valid charges of western decadence.
there is now a terrible price to pay for the western/secular god-less lifestyle.
It is very amusing to see people like Scott Appleby (why is he keeping his job, incidentally? Is there no one on the Board of Trustees, no one in the Notre Dame administration, no one on the faculty who could look into his stout support for Tariq Ramadan's "scholarship" and find out about the taqiyya-soaked siren song to the Western world, that decadent, angst-ridden, anomie-stunned, Western world in which we are all ripe for Islam -- and what better place to conduct Da'wa than from the Kroc Center, in the middle of the most refractory Infidel land, the United States of America. Call to Islam, from Notre Dame, itself, winning one for the Gipper, or -- well, you know.
And Diane Eck? After thanking Karen Armstrong for those kind words at Eck's wedding, no doubt she got back to self-promoting her self-promoting "Pluralism Project" which has become a Defense of Islam Act. You see, even though Islam is the ONLY belief-system among the world's religions that still rejects pluralism completely and whose adherents, whenever they can, subject non-Muslims to a regime of dhimmitude, and have done so over 1350 years, from Spain to western China, Eck seems to believe that Tariq Ramadan could not possibly support this kind of Islam. But of course he does; he wants what Bin Laden wants, but through the softly-softly of demographic conquest and conversion ("reversion") of Infidels from within. And while he pretends to deplore the superficiality of the West, with its celebrity culture and so on, he is himself an obvous beneficiary of that celebrity culture. That's what he is: a mediagenic celebrity, his grandfather's grandson. As for being a serious philosopher, because he drops in a line from Heidegger or Husserl -- puh-leeze!. Everyone knows that a small army of unemployed Ph.D. recipients in philosophy is marching across this land, completely without hope of gainful permanent employment, and the painful and primitive gibberish of Ramadan, in thrall to a belief-system that abhors free and skeptical inquiry, that is indifferent to scientific curiosity and artistic creation outside of calligraphy and mosque building, and has been for at least a thousand years -- this is what a self-respecting univesity, this is what the Diane Ecks (she knows nothing, incidentally, of Islam, has not put in the time necessary to study it in depth, has not read Schacht, Margoliouth, Snouck Hurgronje, Abel, Vajda, Papoulia, Dadrian, and a hundred others -- one can be sure of that). Please, spare us. You want to listen to Ramadan -- go ahead, buy his tapes, play them for your students. Should be fun. But the rest of us, who do not posture about "free speech" (for god's sake, this isn't Bertrand Russell, a real independent thinker, whatever his faults, who is being kept out, but a taqiyya-master who has made his views very clear, to those who know what taqiyya and kitman are).
What renewal, pray tell, is that? Will there be a burst of scientific and artistic creativity? In the last 30 years, the Muslim oil states have received the largest transfer of wealth -- and unearned wealth at that, the result of an accident of geology. What have they done with it? The Shah spoke of Iran becoming the second greatest industrial power, after Japan, in a few years. Look at Iran now. Saudi Arabia has received --- what? One trillion? Two trillion dollars? That's a lot of poules de luxe, a lot of diplomats and journalists bought up, a lot of "Centers for Islamic and Arab Studies" to pay for at the University of Exeter, Georgetown, and the odd professor of PLO studies hither and yon. But really -- what has Saudi Arabia done with all that money? Aside from the palaces and the mosques everywhere and the madrasas? What are the great scientific achievements? For 30-odd years any Saudi could have pursued, at state expense, science or the arts, one assumes. What was achieved? Show us. What about the U.A.E., Kuwait, Bahrain, and so on? Where are those achievements?
Literature -- try reading Muhsin al-Musawi's potted summaries of the "Post-colonial Arabic Novel" which, of course, reduces literature, as most of the 100-odd novels mentioned, also do, to a department of politics. "Post-colonial" indeed.
Art-- ah yes, where is the artistic flourishing? Thoste statues to Saddam Hussein? Would that be it?
The "renewal"? Tell us more. Give us more evidence.
"Islamic Civilization". Now there's an oxymoron if there ever was one!
"All the true believers of our time - whether Communist, Nazi, Fascist, Japanese or Catholic - declaimed volubly (and the Communists still do) on the decadence of the Western democracies. The burden of their talk is that in the democracies people are too soft, too pleasure-loving and too selfish to die for a nation, a God or a holy cause. This lack of a readiness to die, we are told, is indicative of an inner rot - a moral and biological decay. The democracies are old, corrupt and decadent. They are no match for the virile congregations of the faithful who are about to inherit the earth."
p. 147, The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer (first published 1951) (New York: Perennial Library edition, 1966)
Does the above sound familiar? It should. I recommend that everyone read this most brilliant book, The True Believer.
As far as Mr. Ramadan's musings, we will crush Islam as we crushed the Axis.
I am actually a bit more hopeful for the long term than I have been in some time, only because of a thought that struck me as I was drifting off to sleep last night.
We all know that the Islamic jihad against the West has two main components: open war/terror and dawa/immigration/reproduction.
In other words, they'll happily blow us up where they can, hoping to sow fear and confusion and soften us up for the ultimate invasion.
And they'll just as happily move into our domains as "economic refugees," "guest workers," "students," "visiting scholars," etc., opening mosques, Islamic Studies Centers, halal meats stores, and what have you. Of course a good number of the economic refugees and guest workers don't even know they're part of a plan, that is, they're perfectly legitimate as individuals, even innocuous, but taken in the aggregate they make up a huge fifth column whose strategic purpose is to spread Islam by preaching, teaching and lack of birth control.
Now, the thought that came to me last night is this: The two means of expansion are actually mutually exclusive. That is to say, the more incidents we have like 9/11, Madrid, Beslan and the rest, the less innocuous the on-site invasion begins to look.
Not that people in the West are there yet, but given another 9/11 or worse, the dawa/immigration project will certainly be seen for what it is. That's when we can expect the backlash.
If only they could have been patient, if only they could simply have carried on with the immigration/reproduction prong of the attack, Islam might well have reached the point where all it needed to do was give the West (and in particular Eurabia) a small kick from the inside and the whole edifice would have come crumbling down like rotten wood and moldy plaster.
But they can't wait, because at the same time as they were building up their presence and expanding their population base in the West, their own culture at home and abroad was being undermined by their exposure to the very West they're trying to destroy.
So instead of limiting the violent jihad to places no one in the West really cares about (e.g. Israel!), they made the fatal miscalculation of upping the ante.
Now the mask is slipping more and more, to the point where even some of their natural allies, the dhimmis in the media and academe, are beginning to see the true face of Islam.
So my contention is that they'll soon find themselves losing on both fronts. There will be a rollback in immigration, and a meaningful policy of zero tolerance for terrorists.
It won't be pretty, but it will be the beginning of the end of Operation Destroy the West. And then they'll find themselves bottled up in their own parasitical, nonproductive societies with no one to murder but each other.
That won't be pretty either, but at least they'll be leaving us alone.
Interesting that the |\beslan jihadist murderers released the Infants.
Then I read that all infants are born 'muslims' before their parents corrupt them with christianity or judaism.
One wonders if this was the reason for this only act of unbestiality.
I have not heard nor read some of Ramadan's flurry of quotations from the Koran, Nietzsche and Heidegger...
It is really hard, you know, to keep up on this crap. Its like reading Mein Kampf over and over again. Once is enough for me. After the little I did read of Ramadan I wanted to throw up in confusion; fascist faire in sheeps clothing, and not very intelligent fascist faire at that.
How in the hell can this guy actually get paid by Notre Dame to come over here? Jeez...
I suppose we will all find 'authenticity' in the 'universality' of Islam...that point at which culture 'coverges'....God dang, give me a break.
A journalist interviewed on Newsnight tonight had been invited to meet Vladimir Putin at his datcha, along with a few colleagues, for a private interview. The actual words spoken were not relayed to us by the trusty Beeb, but one could gather by reading between the lines that Putin has realized the connection between the Chechen terrorists and the Global Jihad. He was apparently incandescent about the attacks on his country by these thugs.
It is, I think, significant that the leader of a Christian country - and a powerful one at that - has realized the truth.
The west now desperately needs a credible leader - one who is fully aware of, and has rejected, dhimmitude.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man? The hour is late, and maybe Putin is our man.
I believe Cato the Elder has a very valid point. If 9/11 hadn't happened for another twenty years can you imagine the inroads the muslims would have made into the West. As it is the sleeping populations of the West are slowly stirring (despite the best efforts of CNN, the BBC and our politicians to stop them from waking) and a backlash is on it's way. It's not there yet and in the quiet before the storm the muslims in the West are strutting and crowing. The women wear their medieval clothing with pride and their men believe the infidels are already defeated. But mark my words, within five years no muslim woman will dare to flaunt her religion on the streets of London, Detroit or even Paris. The storm clouds are gathering and the cult of Islam will soon be flushed into the gutters of history.
"The West will begin its new decline, and the Arab-Islamic world its renewal"
An example of a lie within a boast. The assumption in the statement is that there was a glorious Islamic past, which then fell. The reality is, that there never was a glorious Islamic past. Islam was born in the desert, metaphorically and otherwise, and has continually dragged more advanced people to the cultural desert.
The much vaunted glorious Islamic past was nothing but the flickering light of a more advanced and dying culture that the Muslims/Arabs had conquered. If ever there is a renewal of Islam, then it will be like in the past, on the corpse of another civilisation; in this case, Western civilisation.
Ramadan, if he is half the scholar he purports to be, knows that there never will be an Islamic revival. Besides he would be the most agrieved if that ever came about, as he would be out of a cushy tenure.
No. This is all just grandstanding, publicity and good fun. Good fun, as long as no one takes it seriously and affects the good academic's life style.
Son Of Albion:
Yes, it is the quiet before the storm.
Cato:
I agree about 9/11. Risking the wrath of Americans very soon after 9/11, I did write on LGF, that but for 9/11, the Islamist take over of the West was proceeding quite merrily. It is hard to say so even now, as so many lives were destroyed on that day.
RAM IT UP WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE RAMADAN!
"Muslim identity is the only true source of universality, proclaims Tariq Ramadan."
Yea, that is why every single Islamic country is a poverty stricken hell hole full of murdering, raping, buggering theives.
Notice please that Tariq Ramadan has no desire, not the slightest, to live in Egypt. Been there, done that. He hated it. He loves the West. He cannot bear to live in an Islamic society, even though, of course, he is making every effort to islamize the society which, precisely because it is not islamic, is so attractive. Compare this to those who, like Ibn Warraq or Anwar Shaikh or Ali Sina or Irfan Khawaja, are quite capable of seeing Islam afresh, and as if from a distance, and to draw their own conclusions about it. Now, as it happens, most of those who become ex-Muslims are from the subcontinent, Pakistanis, or Iranians. Almost none are Arabs. Why? Well, because Arab amour-propre is so tied up with the idea of Islam, the supposed wonderfulness of Islam, that for an Arab to turn his back on Islam would require enormous self-assurance, and intellectual acuity. It would mean declaring: the culture or civilisation which I was born into is ruled by, defined by, a belief-system that stifles human thought and creation, and I will not continue to owe it allegiance. Some Egyptians manage to break away; some Berbers, and Kurds, inflamed by the Arab treatment of them. But it is hard. And one should honor those who manage to do so, for apparently, it is not only a question of fear of being punished as apostates, but a matter of psychic desarroi.
i see your point, hugh. it's sort of metaphorically like arundahti roy's journey -- only with the correct thoughts and for the correct reasons