The French journalist Caroline Fourest has published a book-length study of Tariq Ramadan's sly duplicity, Brother Tariq. Fourest concludes that this much-lionized putative Muslim Martin Luther is actually anything but a reformer: in reality, Ramadan is "remaining scrupulously faithful to the strategy mapped out by his grandfather, a strategy of advance stage by stage" toward the imposition of Islamic law in the West.
Ramadan, she explains, in his public lectures and writings invests words like "law" and "democracy" with subtle and carefully crafted new definitions, permitting him to engage in "an apparently inoffensive discourse while remaining faithful to an eminently Islamist message and without having to lie overtly -- at least not in his eyes." Ramadan, she said, "may have an influence on young Islamists and constitute a factor of incitement that could lead them to join the partisans of violence."
And in this case, remember Muhammad's old adage: "war is deceit."
"Whither the Muslim Brotherhood?," by Tariq Ramadan in the New York Times, February 8:
[...] The Muslim Brothers began in the 1930s as a legalist, anti-colonialist and nonviolent movement that claimed legitimacy for armed resistance in Palestine against Zionist expansionism during the period before World War II. The writings from between 1930 and 1945 of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Brotherhood, show that he opposed colonialism and strongly criticized the fascist governments in Germany and Italy. He rejected use of violence in Egypt, even though he considered it legitimate in Palestine, in resistance to the Zionist Stern and Irgun terror gangs. He believed that the British parliamentary model represented the kind closest to Islamic principles.
Notice how Ramadan calls Stern and Irgun "terror gangs," but never uses such language of the Brotherhood, despite the fact -- also unmentioned by Ramadan -- that it not only "claimed legitimacy for armed resistance in Palestine," but that Hamas styles itself as the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. And Hamas is undeniably a terror group that has included its murders of civilians in restaurants and pizza parlors in what it calls its "glory record."
And as for the Brotherhood's supposed nonviolence in Egypt, scholar Martin Kramer notes that the Brotherhood had "a double identity. On one level, they operated openly, as a membership organization of social and political awakening. Banna preached moral revival, and the Muslim Brethren engaged in good works. On another level, however, the Muslim Brethren created a 'secret apparatus' that acquired weapons and trained adepts in their use. Some of its guns were deployed against the Zionists in Palestine in 1948, but the Muslim Brethren also resorted to violence in Egypt. They began to enforce their own moral teachings by intimidation, and they initiated attacks against Egypt's Jews. They assassinated judges and struck down a prime minister in 1949. Banna himself was assassinated two months later, probably in revenge."
Al-Banna's objective was to found an "Islamic state" based on gradual reform, beginning with popular education and broad-based social programs. He was assassinated in 1949 by the Egyptian government on the orders of the British occupiers. Following Gamal Abdel Nasser's revolution in 1952, the movement was subjected to violent repression.Several distinct trends emerged. Radicalized by their experience of prison and torture, some of the group's members (who eventually left the organization) concluded that the state had to be overthrown at all costs, even with violence. Others remained committed to the group's original position of gradual reform.
Many of its members were forced into exile: some in Saudi Arabia, where they were influenced by the Saudi literalist ideology; others in countries such as Turkey and Indonesia, Muslim-majority societies where a wide variety of communities coexist. Still others settled in the West, where they came into direct contact with the European tradition of democratic freedom.
Today's Muslim Brotherhood draws these diverse visions together. But the leadership of the movement -- those who belong to the founding generation are now very old -- no longer fully represents the aspirations of the younger members, who are much more open to the world, anxious to bring about internal reform and fascinated by the Turkish example. Behind the unified, hierarchical facade, contradictory influences are at work. No one can tell which way the movement will go.
"Fascinated by the Turkish example"? Is Ramadan actually saying that some in the Brotherhood do not want an Islamic state, but want a secular state on the model of Turkey? This is a wild claim, akin to saying that the movement, or part of it, has entirely discarded its initial goal and is working against it. It is unbelievable on its face.
[...] The West continues to use "the Islamist threat" to justify its passivity and outright support for dictatorships. As resistance to Mubarak mounted, the Israeli government repeatedly called on Washington to back the Egyptian junta against the popular will. Europe adopted a wait-and-see stance.Both attitudes are revealing: at the end of the day, lip-service to democratic principle carries little weight against the defense of political and economic interests. The United States prefers dictatorships that guarantee access to oil, and allow the Israelis to continue their slow colonization, to credible representatives of the people who could not allow these things to continue.
Citing the voices of dangerous Islamists to justify not listening to the voices of the people is short-termist as well as illogical. Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, the United States has suffered heavy losses of credibility in the Middle East; the same is true for Europe. If the Americans and Europeans do not re-examine their policies, other powers in Asia and South America may begin to interfere soon with their elaborate structure of strategic alliances....
Ramadan is suggesting that the "Islamist threat" is a bogeyman created or exaggerated by the U.S. and Israel to justify their support for dictatorships in the Islamic world. Let's consider that in light of the words of Mustafa Mashhur, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from 1996-2002, which you can find here.
- "It should be known that Jihad and preparation towards Jihad are not only for the purpose of fending-off assaults and attacks of Allah's enemies from Muslims, but are also for the purpose of realizing the great task of establishing an Islamic state and strengthening the religion and spreading it around the world..."- "...Jihad for Allah is not limited to the specific region of the Islamic countries, since the Muslim homeland is one and is not divided, and the banner of Jihad has already been raised in some of its parts, and it shall continue to be raised, with the help of Allah, until every inch of the land of Islam will be liberated, the State of Islam will be established,..."
-"Then comes the power of arms and weapons,... and this is the role of Jihad."
- "Prepare yourself and train in the art of warfare, and embrace the causes of power. You must learn the ways and manners and laws of war. You must learn them and embrace them and adhere to them, so that your Jihad will be the one accepted by Allah."
- "Allah is our goal, the Prophet is our leader, the Quran is our constitution, the Jihad is our way, and the Death for Allah is our most exalted wish."
- "The Jihad is our way and death for Allah is our most lofty wish", this is the call which we have always called,... Many of our beloved ones have already achieved this wish,... We ask Allah to accept all of them,... and may He join us with them, ..."
- "Honorable brothers have achieved Shahada (Martyrdom) on the soil of beloved Palestine, during the years 47' and 48', [while] in their Jihad against the criminal, thieving, gangs of Zion. The Imam and Shahid (Martyr) Hassan Al-Banna is considered as a Shahid (Martyr) of Palestine, even if he was not killed on its soil."
Good piece. I also did a comment on this a couple of days ago in letter to the New York Times:
http://thebattleoftours.blogspot.com/2011/02/whither-muslim-brotherhood.html
And letter to the BBC when they did an obsequious interview with "Brother Tariq" on their WorldService
http://thebattleoftours.blogspot.com/2011/02/lawrence-of-arabia-and-brother-tariq.html
There's also a good piece over at American Thinker by Barry Rubin.
The more this odious snake is revealed to be the liar he is, the better.
(from my iPad so sorry no use of HTML...)
Meeker in Hong Kong (aka Peter F)
"Video of Tom Trento of the FSC on The Muslim Brotherhood"
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/32590
ROBERT: "Is Ramadan actually saying that some in the Brotherhood do not want an Islamic state, but want a secular state on the model of Turkey? This is a wild claim, akin to saying that the movement, or part of it, has entirely discarded its initial goal and is working against it. It is unbelievable on its face."
More likely, they're lauding the Turkish road to Sharia...gradualist and through the ballot box. In the warped Islamic ethos, it is NON-VIOLENCE that must be rationalized as "the ends justify the means."
"He believed that the British parliamentary model represented the kind closest to Islamic principles."
LMAO
And here's Barry Rubin response to this op-ed:
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/02/egypt-with-ludicrous-lies-muslim.html
I read the book, very recommendable. Frère Tariq is a disgusting asshole, he can't deny being al Banna's grandson, two thugs of a kind.
Doom and Gloom
from the piece you cited, by Barry Rubin:
'I call it "the test," a frequent experience in the Middle East. When you meet someone they try a silly lie on you. If you catch it, they are more frank and respect you more. If you don't, they treat you like an idiot and tell you the utmost garbage.'
This reminded me of something I read here in jihadwatch, from years ago. An English poster was talking about the lying that he had constantly encountered, from Muslims.
In the comments to this thread:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/07/pro-jihad-weblogs-celebrate-london-bombings.html
'I am always amused at the unsophisticated way the Muslim men I know and read about, can lie - for example, that British troops are raping muslim women.
'**Although I will not draw broad generalizations, the Muslim acquaintances I know will try lie after lie to me, until one of them sticks and I am deceived** {my emphasis - dda}
' They are not talking politics or religion, just everyday subjects.
'The general derision that Muslim men hold for the rest of us causes them to underestimate our powers of reason, and over-estimate our naivete.
'Does anyone else have this experience of Muslim statements that would be comical, if they were not delivered with such seriousness?
'If the Muslims in general become better liars, we will all be in trouble.'
- Posted by: VoiceOfReason at July 14, 2005 7:54 AM
I wonder, now, whether 'VoiceofReason' had experienced the sort of 'tell a lie to test the hearer' garbage that Rubin describes.
Though I think it's more than just 'testing'.
Another poster, in a thread from 2005:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/07/putting-islam-on-the-stand.html
"Actually I have a friend who was raised a moslem in pakistian. He no longer believes in god period.
" But he stated to me any nonmoslem who thinks he can be friends with a moslem is a fool. Never beli[e]ve what they say.
"To lie or deceive a nonmoslem is a great honor ...
"Tempster [name of poster the writer was replying to] you sadly don't know what you are talking about. The fact is having a Phd in this field does little to qualify you for the facts about the honorable use of taqiyya and kitman. Maybe if you open your eyes you can learn about them."
- Posted by: ecil_man at July 8, 2005 7:52 AM
Another poster, in another thread, had an interesting take on the matter; he'd picked up on the fact that for Muslims, the objective truth or falsehood of a statement are completely irrelevant, what's relevant is manipulating the perception of the hearer just long enough, to make them do what *you* want...and I would add that if the hearer is an infidel, one can be quite, quite sure that what the Muslim wants will NOT be good for the infidel, whether in the short or the long run. In the discussion of *this* article:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/09/saudi-arabia-jihad-in-iraq-wrong-says-grand-mufti.html
"One gets to develop, in listening to Muslim voices, a third ear:
"it’s not what they say, because that is totally unreliable, whether it be lies, taqiyya, bad things or pleasant statements;
"it’s not how they say it, because it is usually angry or upset - and that seems to be endemic with the religion of peace;
"but it’s rather - **how is the speaker trying to influence or manipulate you? - and here the analysis better be good, because your life depends on it** {my emphasis - dda}
May the House of Saud be destroyed."
- Posted by: dgene at September 19, 2005 10:19 PM
And finally, another jihadwatch poster from five years ago, 'certiorari', a Briton, speaking from bitter and mind-bending experience.
'Sorry about the word 'scum'.
'One gets used to thinking about them that way because my experience, and that of my colleagues, is that they can never, never, never tell the truth.
'Ask them the time and they will lie for the sheer pleasure of having lied.
'Their testimony, even from the seemingly nicest of them, will always contain more lies than truth. It seems that they just can't help themselves.
'All the time, it's like dealing with a two year old caught raiding the biscuit barrel.
'It just gets very wearing after all these years and we tend to use insulting words more to protect our own sanity than to insult - it's some sort of distancing mechanism, I think, - otherwise we would all go mad because of their childish and immature approach to the world.
'According to some teachers who I know, the children and the adolescents are just the same - constitutionally incapable of telling the truth or, worse, relating to the real world…'
- Posted by: Certiorari at January 13, 2006 10:38 AM
And then the poster, by profession a lawyer, tells a specific story:
"…three years ago I took on my very last mohammedan client. (After the case was over I took the decision that that client would be my last, I should say, for reasons that will become apparent.)
'My client was innocent - I know, I know, we all say that but in this case he really was.
'All my client had to do when called to give evidence was tell the truth as he saw it, and his testimony, combined with the evidence I and my team had assembled, would convince even the most cynical jury in the world of his innocence.
'Well. Come the day he was called to the stand, and was sworn on the koran. He was questioned in the usual way and I was stunned.
'Almost every word he uttered was a lie.
'He responded to the prosecutors questions with lies, as well as to mine. He denied the evidence that would have cleared him, he denied his own name and date of birth, he denied his business and bank account details and wove an intricate web of fabrication around all the facts in the case. I was, as is commonly said, gobsmacked.
'I had had difficult mohammedan clients in the past many of whom had come close to this sort of behaviour but I had usually managed to keep them on track in court, but this was something different entirely.
'Needless to say my client was sent down for three years and I never got paid by him and had to raise a separate action to recover my fee from him.
'At that hearing he also lied consistently as if he was living in a fantasy land somewhere - he even denied that I had represented him at all.
'When I raised his behaviour with his wife and (adult) children they just did not understand what I was getting at. {I'd say the slimy bastards were *pretending* not to know - dda}
'They, too, seemed to have no idea of what the objective truth actually was and they blamed the infidel court system for sending an innocent husband and father to gaol.
'I simply couldn't get through to them.
'Can anybody tell me why Mohammedans behave like this?
' I am sure you can see now why I have never accepted another Mohammedan client since that event.'
- Posted by: Certiorari at February 23, 2006 8:50 AM
It may make Mohammedans feel very clever to try to trick each other all the time, and then to tell more lies to the non-Muslims, to 'test' how much the Mohammedan liar can manage to get away with, and how much harm can be acheived...
but a habit of continual lying and trickery will rot the brain; and a society that values deception and treachery - practised continually upon its own members, and with malice aforethought upon its neighbours = and despises and never even begins to attempt truth and troth, will be a society that can neither build anything of real significance, nor maintain anything it may acquire from others.
Here is something that I have posted here several times before, but will do so again, for the benefit of any new readers and lurkers.
I came across it in the comments to an article about Tariq Ramadan. It was so striking that I copied and kept it.
http://chronicle.com/article/Vetting-Tariq-Ramadan/65620/
2. ellenhunt - May 24, 2010 at 12:00 pm
'There is no point in asking people like Tariq Ramadan to "explain" themselves.
'All anyone will get is lies.
'He is a man who is following the letter of islam. Islam instructs to lie to infidels, to decieve [sic: deceive] in the cause of conquest.
'That is what Ramadan is doing. Ramadan is working on the conquest of the nations of the western world from within.
'Many years ago I was talking with a Zoroastrian refugee from Iran who fled the Khomeni's revolution.
'I made some silly remark the exact content of which I don't even remember.
'But I will never forget his response. He sat back, his eyes widened, and he stared at me saying,
"You do not understand. These men are incredibly dangerous. You have no idea how dangerous. You cannot imagine it. You cannot imagine what they are capable of while smiling at you."
'He did not raise his voice, but the intensity with which he spoke gave it more power.
'He spoke to me after that for about 10 minutes warning me about the way these men walk and speak with total self-assurance, apparently normal, kind, honorable, soft spoken.
'And he told me what they did.
'He told me how they calmly ordered the slaughter and of neighbors.
'He told me how they lied for years, pretending to be friends and then betrayed those friends to their deaths.
'He told me how in their minds, because they are fanatics, they never have any qualms or human feelings about it.
'To them, if a person is not a muslim, they are nothing.
'To them, if a person is not a good muslim (fundamentalist, following to the letter) then they are a heretic.
'He asked me to never forget what he said because he had seen it.
'I had some contacts with such people later.
'When I refused to convert after one of them worked on me, he told me calmly that he would kill me on the battlefield.
'I also remember reading the description of the behavior of the 9-11 hijackers given by the people who used a cell phone before the plane went down in PA. The hijackers were very polite, smiling, apologetic to the passengers.
'Tariq Ramadan is a man to be feared. He is exactly the kind of incredibly dangerous man that the Iranian refugee warned me about.
'He is exactly the kind of man I met later.
'This is not a game.
'He has one purpose here in the west.
'He has the goal of destroying our society and everything we believe in.
'He has the goal of replacing it with Sharia and fundamentalist islam.
'That means that you, anyone who is not a muslim, are to be killed, or utterly subjugated.
' Do not be taken in by his pleasant manner, by his atmosphere of certainty. Know where it comes from. Understand him.
'He is so much farther into fundamentalism than the most notorious southern baptist that you who read my words here cannot imagine it.
' I know this. I could not have imagined it.
'He is a fanatic, and a liar extraordinaire because of his fanaticism.”
Something else, from April last year, posted by 4infidels (I have read the book 'Cairo to Damascus' myself, and vividly remember the passage quoted).
It is investigative journalist John Roy Carlson's 'take' on Ramadan's grandfather, Hassan al-Banna.
4infidels | April 25, 2010 9:15 PM | Reply
'Right. it [the MB] was about fighting British colonialism and building schools...
'Carlson on al-Banna: "I disliked him instantly and thoroughly. He was the most loathsome man I had yet met in Cairo."
'Gee, I wonder why the US founding fathers didn't think about the Koran as their constitution when they were fighting British Colonialism.
'Carlson, in Cairo to Damascus, wrote of meeting Ramadan's grandfather (taken from a post at the Solomonia blog):
'Here Carlson (Arthur Derounian) finally gets a meeting with Hassan el Banna (al Banna), leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who lays out the Brotherhood's plan for a new Caliphate. pp. 91-92:
"All that I had learned about Hassan el Banna and the unquestioned loyalty he inspired in his cutthroats only whetted my desire to meet him. It proved more difficult than I expected, because of his deep hatred of "Europeans."
"Finally one day, accompanied by my friend Gamal, I walked into Ikhwan headquarters for my audience with the Supreme Guide.
"He approached us -- a short, squat ratty-faced man with puffed cheeks and fleshy nose.
"He was dressed in European clothes -- a black pinpoint double-breasted suit -- and wore an extra tall tarboosh, which gave him the illusion of added height. His thin beard, running from ear to ear, crawled up, then down his upper lip like an ugly black hirsute vine. His manner was mousy and furtive. His eyes, beadlike and deepset, were like two dark slits across his face.
"We sat in the shade under the shield showing the Koran above a pair of crossed swords.
"The Moorshid spoke with a pious look on his face, his head bent slightly to the right, hands folded meekly in his lap.
"I disliked him instantly and thoroughly. He was the most loathsome man I had yet met in Cairo.
"Gamal sat next to us and faithfully interpreted.
- "The Koran should be Egypt's constitution, for there is no law higher than Koranic law," the Moorshid began. "We seek to fulfill the lofty, human message of Islam which has brought happiness and fulfillment to mankind in centuries past., Ours is the highest ideal, the holiest cause and the purest way.
- "Those who criticize us have fed from the tables of Europe. They want to live as Europe has taught them -- to dance, to drink, to revel, to mix the sexes openly and ion public."
'I asked his views on establishing the Caliphate, the complete merger of Church and State -- the Moslem equivalent of religious totalitarianism, as in Spain.
"We want an Arabian United States with a Caliphate at its head and every Arab state subscribing wholeheartedly to the laws of the Koran. We must return to the Koran, which preaches the good life, which forbids us to take bribes, to cheat, to kill one's brother {but calls for killing, robbing, cheating the non-Muslim - dda}.
"The laws of the Koran are suitable for all men at all times to the end of the world. This is the day and this is the time when the world needs Islam most."
'I could not help making a mental note that the word "Christian" has been similarly used and with similar fanaticism among Western exponents of authoritarianism.
"We are not eager to have a parliament of the representatives of the people," the Supreme Guide continued, "or a cabinet of ministers, unless such representatives and ministers are Koranic Moslems. If we do not find them, then we must ourselves serve as the parliament. Allah and the religious councils will limit our authority so that no one has to hear dictatorship.
'We aim to smash modernism in government and society. In Palestine our first duty as Moslems is to crush Zionism, which is Jewish modernism. It is our patriotic duty. The Koran commands it."
'He was silent, and then nodded, to indicate the interview was over. And with this Gamal and I took leave of Ikhwan's Moorshid and Egypt's Rasputin.
"What do you think of our Moorshid?" Gamal asked.
"He is a holy man," I said.' {Carlson, at the time, in order to obtain the interview, was posing as an admirer of the [defeated] Nazis, and as an Islamophile - dda}.
Just following 9/11 I was one of the multitudes of ignorant Americans who knew very little about Islam other than its Five Pillars and the Shaheda formula. That has all changed.
In my quest for information about Islam I turned to the mainstream media and remember reading fluff piece after fluff piece about or by the great "liberal" and "Islamic reformer" Mr. Tariq Ramadan.
Whodathunk it! It turns out that Mr. Ramadingdong is anything but a liberal reform and that the New York Slimes and other establishment papers have been misrepresenting his views and whitewashing his past.
Why? I don't know; but that they have done it, and that Ramadong is ANYTHING BUT a liberal reformer, are now established facts.
Hi D& G - I know what you mean by "the test". And it's so characteristic of Muslim behavior. It's equivalent to someone walking up to you, with a smile, and slapping you in the face for no apparent reason. And the reason is the Muslim is fairly sure he can get away with it. If not, he figures he can simply back off, stand back for awhile, and later try it again. It's lying as sneak attack, as aggression. It's not the usual kind of lying normal people engage in. It's not defensive, it's offensive. It's not evasion, it's going for the jugular right at the outset. Among non-Muslims it's rarely seen; but among Muslim "intellectuals" it's seen often. They should, in a perfect world, be treated as the punks they are, skipping the charade of "intellectual discussion" we are expected to always fall for.
I suspect the lying that people here are referring to is most prevalent among the Muslims who come from the most orthodox and dictatorial Muslim countries. I don't think you find that kind of deceptiveness nearly as much, for example, in Western converts to Islam.
There are things about growing up in a dictatorship that can easily inculcate character flaws such as promiscuous lying. It seems often a matter of survival. To live one must lie, more often than in an open society. The more totalitarian the society, the more is it so. In a totalitarian culture, where lying is rewarded and often necessary simply to survive, where the whole culture is to one or another extent an epic metastasizing lie enforced by the central authority and force fed into all the corpuscles of the society, children can have deceptive qualities relatively deeply insinuated into their impressionable souls. I think one sees this not only in people from Islamic dictatorships, but to some extent in people raised in any dictatorship or authoritarian culture that has lasted for more than a single generation. Lying perhaps comes more easily to them, is much more familiar to them, than it is to people raised in well-established open societies.
Islamic nations are to varying degrees dictatorial and orthodox, and I'll bet that the most deceptive peoples have in general been raised in the most dictatorial nations and authoritarian cultures.
"Tariq Ramadhan’s Prayer for International Jihad"
http://hurryupharry.org/2011/02/11/tariq-ramadhan%e2%80%99s-prayer-for-international-jihad/#comments
Although there has been much discussion of an Islamist takeover in Egypt if the Muslim Brotherhood takes power isn’t their another issue? As I understand it, the individuals who assassinated Sadat were not members of the Brotherhood but simply fundamentalists. There are people in Egypt other than the Brotherhood who are equally dangerous.
The idea that the Muslim Brotherhood is an “anti-colonialist” movement is a laugh. It is dedicated to resurrecting the Caliphate, one of the ultimate examples of colonialism.
THIS IS THE SAME GAME THE IRANIAN REGIME IS PLAYING,WE ARE NOT DEVELOPING NUCLEAR WEAPON.IN FUTURE THE WEST WILL NO THAT THE WORST MISTAKE THEY MADE WAS TO PUT AL-BAREDE AS THE HEAD OF IAEA,COS HE HELPED IRAN TO ACHIEVE THEIR AIM.