Dhimmi Watch: Groups Decry Muslim Scholar's Visa Denial

September 17, 2004

Groups Decry Muslim Scholar's Visa Denial

I too think they should explain. Otherwise the visa denial becomes a propaganda victory for Ramadan, which, if there really are sound national security reasons to keep him out of the country, he should not be given. From AP:

INDIANAPOLIS — Scholars and critics worldwide are demanding that the U.S. government explain why it revoked the work visa of a Muslim scholar hired at the University of Notre Dame, saying the action threatens academic freedoms.
But few answers are forthcoming from the Department of Homeland Security, which cited security concerns when it barred Tariq Ramadan from entering the country.

That silence has sparked protests from at least four U.S. scholars' groups, led a United Nations-sponsored institution to issue an academic freedom alert and inspired appeals from Jewish organizations.

Robert O'Neil, who is chairman of an academic freedom committee for the American Association of University Professors, said Ramadan's case could have a chilling effect on an academic community already facing security measures stemming from the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"It does suggest ... foreign scholars may be scrutinized more carefully and may be denied entry on the basis of something less than overt terrorist activity or association," said O'Neil, whose group has written Secretary of State Colin Powell and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to protest the decision.

The State Department issued Ramadan a work visa in May but revoked it in July. The action came just weeks before the scholar was scheduled to begin a tenured position as professor of religion, conflict and peace-building at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Russ Knocke, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said last month that the visa was revoked based on "public safety or national security interests." Knocke has not responded to recent requests for interviews from The Associated Press.

Many who have rallied in Ramadan's support believe the scholar's controversial profile, including sharp criticism of Israel, the war in Iraq and U.S. policy in the Middle East, was the real reason for the revocation.

"We fear that pressures were applied to reverse the granting of the visa by people who disagree with Dr. Ramadan's views as a scholar," two groups, the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the American Academy of Religion, stated in a joint letter to Powell and Ridge.

Posted by Robert at September 17, 2004 2:08 PM
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Check this out
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/archives/001033.php

Posted by: Bar

at September 17, 2004 2:30 PM

CAIR is complaining about this bastard being denied infestation into the U.S. That should say something in itself.

From the article: Scholars and critics worldwide are demanding that the U.S. government explain why it revoked the work visa of a Muslim scholar hired at the University of Notre Dame, saying the action threatens academic freedoms.

First, Scholars and critics worldwide should know that we don't owe these bitches any form of explanation, and that they're not in the position to be demanding anything.

We don't want this piece of shit here, so he isn't here. This is one that didn't get in here to spread his anti American, anti-West, Anti Jewish Islamotrash.......And the country is better off for it.....Kudos to the Department of Homeland Security......Now, id we can find a way to remove the ones that have slithered in here making their bullshit demands, then we'll have it made.

Posted by: DCWatson

at September 17, 2004 3:07 PM

Correction: if

Posted by: DCWatson

at September 17, 2004 3:07 PM

I second DCWatson's remarks. Tariq Ramadan and his dhimmi friends can piss off.

Posted by: Rottweiller

at September 17, 2004 3:47 PM

We've had our fill of slick, Muslim propagandists that fill the minds of the young impressionable idealists, for University students are at a age between childhood and full adulthood.

It's easy to be infected by a dangerous meme by one so slick and well-spoken. As Hugh has said, and he would know, Tariq Ramadan's scholarship is suspect, and his gift of gab is his only asset.

Keep him in Europe with all the rest.

Posted by: epg

at September 17, 2004 4:05 PM

Thank you Homeland Security.

Tariq Ramadan is a dangerous man,
more dangerous than any jihadi
pumped up by a sermon
in the mosque on Friday.
His is a war of taqiyya
in honeyed words, not with a sword.
Read his book Western Muslims and the Future
of Islam . . . here's an excerpt:

". . . the Prophet wanted above all to adress the people and not to seize power. The tradition shows that he always decided to fight the rulers because of their murders, treachery, and injustices and that he never fought against populations because they refused to convert to Islam. He wanted them to choose Islam in full knowledge of what it was;"

Posted by: the poetess

at September 17, 2004 4:15 PM

If ever we needed Dick Cheney to drop the F-Bomb, it would be here.

Posted by: Mike

at September 17, 2004 4:25 PM

I'm amazed at how quickly CAIR foregets
their own protests to ban certain people
from American when they disagree with Visa
restrictions.

CAIR should never be running the Immigration and visitor's Visa Department,this only shows
CAIR's real goals to want National control of
letting in Jihadists and suicide-Bombers.
CAIR is the enemy of America and the Constitution,Mr.Hooper works on inciting violence
and repeating lies to other Muslims to fill them with rage and revenge.
Islam IS NOT a faith of love and Peace,the Quran orders Muslim to claim the World for Allah so Shariah Law will rule the live of those submiting
to Islam and Allah.

NO ISLAM - KNOW PEACE

Posted by: ala-sux

at September 17, 2004 5:19 PM

Tariq Ramadan is a example with Abu Hamza, Mula krekar, the fuengirola´s iman, that brittish islamic cleric, this people must be executed for being a danger for western, they don´t deserve to live, greetings

Posted by: Franze

at September 17, 2004 5:59 PM

Would Churchil;l have allowed Goebbels to lecture at Oxford in 1938?

Why do otherwise intelligent intellectuals somehow expect the US to host Ramadan?

I'm a PhD candidate and am on my way to becoming an academic myself, but you can be sure I won't suffer fools in my classroom...

Posted by: voletti

at September 17, 2004 6:30 PM

I know I have posted this before, but I want more thinking people to be aware of what the "Martin Luther of the Islamic world" had to say a few days following the 9/11 attacks:

"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." (2001)

"Ben Laden, coupable idéal?" from an interview in La Gruyere (9/22/01) http://www.lagruyere.ch/archives/2001/01.09.25/article4.htm

Implicating Jews (or the Bush administration) for 9/11 is rather unbecoming behaviour for an alleged "Martin Luther of the Muslim world."

The stupidity and ignorance of the professors who praise him takes my breath away.

Posted by: Rublev

at September 17, 2004 8:55 PM

The U.N. -- of course. With Edward Mortimer and the rest of the Islamintern International calling the shots, what else could one expect?

The four "scholars groups" -- ah, let me see. Would John Esposito, Michael Sells, Rashid Khalidi, Jonn Zoll, Yvonne Haddad, Hamid Dabashi, Joseph Massad, Molly Greene, Ian Lustick, Joel Beinin, Diane Eck, Carl Ernst, Cornel West be among those so-called "scholars"? But who isn't on the list? Is Ibn Warraq or Ali Sina or Azam Kamguian or a thousand or ten thousand ex-Muslim scholars, or scholars who themselves have endured the status of dhimmitude, such as Walid Phares?

Every professor in this country had a chance to sign those little letters of protest. How few actually did. And every one who did not, shows the he or she does not regard this as quite the same thing as Joseph McCarthy with the Hollywood Ten, or HUAC keeping out Bertrand Russell. There are belief-systems that are fascistic; there are propagandists who are far from innocent, and whose presence, in promoting Da'wa in a cunning fashion, pose a threat to the rest of us, including those of us who may not be professors, and who would prefer measures undertaken for our safety to be judged by the Department of Justice, and the Office of Homeland Security, not by Rashid Khalidi and Diane Eck, thank you very much.

Ramadan seeks to spread Islam across the globe. His goals are the same as those of his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, or of Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, or of Osama Bin Laden. Only his methods differ. And he has not hestitated to behave in a manner that intelligent, measured people, such as Alain Finkielkraut, regard as naked antisemitism. Perhaps the signers of these letters do not care about such charges, or regard them as exaggerated, or find the likes of Alain Finkielkraut just a little -- too sensitive, shall we say?

What do those who have endured the full Islamic upbringing, but managed, in the West, to leave Islam, and to analyze the belief-system, such people as Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Azam Kamguian, and tens or hundreds of thousands of ex-Muslims in this country, have to tell us about taqiyya and kitman, and their relation to Mr. Tariq Ramadan's efforts at Da'wa? Only those intimately familiar with Ramadan's work, and who grasp what he is sinisterly about (Diane Eck assures us she has read everything, and finds nothing at all to worry about, but she has long been noted for her foolishness when it comes to Islam) have earned the right to an opinion.

Of course, if you think that Mr. Ramadan is an innocent, if you find his answers to such questions as whether he supports the execution, by stoning, of a woman convicted of adultery (look it up), and his other non-answer answers to a host of similar questions perfectly straightforward, if further you find, upon inspection and study, Islam to have been a remarkable force in encouraging free and skeptical inquiry, intellectual curiosity about matters well outside Islam, a force for artistic creation in art and music, a force that has for the last thousand years produced some remarkable intellectual achievements, well then you should by all means welcome Mr. Ramadan, and perhaps convert, or "revert," yourself to encourage others.

But if you think Islam is the reason for the political, economic, intellectual, and moral failures of the Islamic world, if you are horrified by the fact of Islam's disinterest in everything pre- or non-Islamic, if you understand why there is hardly any music or art in Islam, and no real scientific inquiry (save for all that military technology and weapons programs -- now you're talking) for the past 1000 years, when the Christians and Jews were no longer a stimulating force in Islam -- well, then you may have quite different ideas.

Yes, he has a good deal in common with Goebbels. And those people who think nothing of endangering the rest of us because they happen to have climbed the greasy pole of tenure, so often by promoting one another and keeping out those of real merit, should realize that they are not quite William James, or Jacques Barzun, or Raymond Aron, or Roman Jakobson. And we, whose lives are at stake, are not impressed.

Perhaps before signing such a document, one should read the analaysis offered at www.secularislam.org by Ibn Warraq, taking the main defining characteristics of Fascism, and comparing them with Islam. Some people, at least, will perhaps hesitate, or refuse to join in with quite such negligent or vicious alacrity. And refuse they should.

Posted by: Hugh

at September 17, 2004 8:59 PM

I am going to take the time to write a serious letter to the editor of AP with this evidence. If I can get the email addresses of some of these professors, they will hear from me too.

You all should write too. My biggest regret is my not having written to the Washington Post when that idiot Donelly praised this dirtbag as a "Martin Luther of the Islaming world."

My God! I haven't heard so much stupidity since Harrison Salisbury praised Kim Il Sung's central planning in 1972!!!

Posted by: Rublev

at September 17, 2004 9:04 PM

MESA huh? Why not just ask for a fatwa from Al-Qaradawi asking if he thinks there is any reason to keep Ramadan out of America? How stupid do they think we are? Do the members of MESA think they are regarded with the same indifference that they were regarded 2-3 years ago? Do they think they are immune to criticism from those who are learning about the very subjects they should be teaching, but are not -- Qur'an and hadith and sira, and not in a sanitized version? The days of "postcolonial hegemonic discourse" by these people are over, kaput. Some may cling to their jobs, but that is it. Government money should go around, under, over, but not to them. University officials should be required to investigate just what is being taught, and which classrooms have become centers of indoctrination, and what subjects (dhimmitude, anyone?) are not being taught, and what is on the syllabi, and what happens when an innocent student (as one of my acquaintance can testify) answers a question in his final exam in a course on Islam, and because he writes, re the "Night Journey" or "miraj" of Muhamamd, that this is the "apocryphal" journey of Muhammad to Heaven and back -- and is given. by the Arab grader, who wrote on the margin "So you think it was apocryphal?" and gave this student a 2 out of 10. From ranting in the classroom, to intimidating and bullying poor frightened assistant professors into signing letters denouncing Israel (oh please god, just give me tenure and then I won't have to do this anymore, they think to themselves)and no doubt, requesting that Tariq Ramadan, that "scholar," be admitted to the United States, to the grading system, to the empty scholarship-- wasn't Michael Cook's book on the commanded and the forbidden in Islam worth far more than the entire production of every single Muslim member of MESA last year? Can one name a single serious book by a Musim on the subject of Islam that meets Western standards of scholarship and sobriety? No, there is none such. For the origins of the Qur'an, for studies of Islamic law, for studies even of the archeology of the Near East (undertaken, and developed, solely by Europeans and now Americans), one has to go to non-Muslims. An incredible commentary on how Islam stunts the mental growth. And, as a Total System, and Total Explanation of the Universe, it has to.

Posted by: Hugh

at September 17, 2004 10:00 PM

To all anti-jihadis:

It feels good to talk to like-minded people, but it doesn't get the message to the people who desperately need it.

Here are all the journals I found that are printing the AP story. I only published the websites of journals that let you in for free.

Maybe 1 in 10, maybe 1 in 1000 of our letters to the editor will get published, but mark my words:

A liberal who discovers he/she has been duped is the next best thing to an ex-Muslim.

Posted by: Rublev

at September 17, 2004 10:32 PM

Speaking as an ex-visa officer, the State Department probably isn't talking because it would have to compromise some sources that gave it sensitive information on the applicant if it did. Kudos to some alert vice consul.

Posted by: Kepha1

at September 18, 2004 12:46 AM

Age does not necessarily ensure wisdom, maturity, mental clarity, & understanding the whole picture.
Followers of Islam still dream of the fairytales & fantasies of the 7th Century world, long gone away.

Muslims have grown accustomed to believing they already have all the answers in the Koran, no sense reforming the book. Muslims understand the content of the Koran as fact.

Non-Muslims understand the world is dynamic & evolving, and no abstract (snapshot 7th Century) is able to keep up with current times & ideas, wisdom, maturity, mental clarity, & understanding the whole picture. Old beliefs are later disproved with new knowledge. An article just off the press becomes old rather quickly. All facts in the article can be proven false in a short time after publication.

This is the reason, Islam, in the long term, will never dominate the West.

Posted by: SFOD

at September 18, 2004 2:12 AM

I can't believe I finally got back on!!!!!
Sorry Robert, I just had to celebrate there for a moment.

Now, to the topic at hand.......................

Our schools have become the breeding grounds for these so called "Islamic Scholars". This has to be stopped.

On Front Page Magazine yesterday concerning this subject. I strongly urge everyone to take a look and sign the petition.

"Kill the Jews" These were the words chanted at previous Palestine Solidarity Conferences, held at UC Berkely and the University Of Michigan.

Duke University has agreed to host the fourth conference.

www.frontpagemagazine.com/content/lettertoduke.asp

Plese sign the petition.

Posted by: susan_b

at September 18, 2004 3:31 AM

Thank you Susan,

I was not aware of the petition. I will sign it today.

To everyone else,

I just spent half an hour emailing copies of my letter to every journal that had a contact link I could use (about 25 journals total). Here is a copy of the letter I wrote:

I would like to comment on your September 17 story regarding Tariq Ramadan (Groups Decry Muslim Scholar's Visa Denial). Organizations like the ACLU are required out of principle to defend speech that its members find morally repugnant. Some scholars who express indignation over Tariq Ramadan’s visa denial may be acting out of this same ethic and others may be acting on the sincere belief that overzealous government officials are depriving Notre Dame of a great scholar. But given that columnists like Paul Donnelly have praised Dr. Ramadan as the "Muslim Martin Luther" (The Ban on a Muslim Scholar," Washington Post, Page A25 8/28/04) I believe that most of these scholars fall in the latter group. A little bit of homework and a lot of French lessons can make a world of difference. Below is my careful translation from an interview of Dr. Ramadan that took place a few days after the 9/11 attacks:

At worst, Ramadan is implicating Zionist Jews…at best…Halliburton? Either way, any conspiracy theory that shifts the blame away from Muslims for 9/11 is very unbecoming of any serious scholar, much less a "Muslim Martin Luther." Homeland Security may never be able to reveal the true reason for revoking Ramadan’s visa. For my part, I will not lose sleep knowing that this anti-Semitic pity-peddling demagogue stays put.

Posted by: Rublev

at September 18, 2004 9:49 AM

given the penchant of the hard left to embrace anti-american conspiracy theories, it's little wonder that ramadan would find this choir singing his praises and rushing to his defense

Posted by: ted

at September 18, 2004 11:32 PM