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The pompous Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, explains in this SwissInfo interview how it is and how it should be.
Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan tells swissinfo that Muslims in Europe should not be defined by religion, but seen as members of the society in which they live.Ramadan, who recently took up an advisory role for the British government on Islamic extremism, says that Islam is now a European religion, and should be recognised as such.
swissinfo: Does your new position at Oxford compensate the fact that you were barred from a teaching position in the US?
T.R.: No, and there is no need for compensation. I was ready to move to the US permanently. Academic circles there gave me huge support when the American authorities revoked a visa I got after two months of clearance procedure. Even in the Bush administration people like [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell understood that they made a mistake and asked me to re-apply. Other people in this administration do not want my strong critical voice to be heard in the US.
When I see how this administration behaves, to be banned by it is more a recognition than a humiliation. But I don't hold a grudge. The position I have now in Britain is interesting and there seem to be some good opportunities for the future.
British society is more knowledgeable about the Muslim world than Americans are. The British have a different approach to the US. But we shouldn't confuse the United States with the few neo-conservatives who are close to President Bush and ruling the country.
Why? Because the Brits allowed Mr. Ramadan to settle in their country?
swissinfo: Some sections of the media don't seem to like you. Why?
T.R.: There are a lot of people who support my work, just like there are many who criticise it. I knew from the beginning that not everybody would appreciate my work. I try to build bridges between two worlds that don't know each other very well. There are people who consider that I am too much of a Westerner and others who think I am too Muslim. I disturb people because what I say goes against their old certainties, some of their prejudices and even their doubts. I accept the criticism I face in the Muslim world, just like I take criticism from Westerners.
The vast majority of my critics come from France. I think I disturb people [there] because I talk about religion, which has always been, beyond Islam, a hot-button issue. There is also a problem for some with the fact that Muslims are now French citizens who want the same rights as everyone else. I'm not appreciated because I tell the French they need a reality check and I personify their fears. I accept that as well, it is a transitory but necessary tension.
swissinfo: You seem to be saying there are second-class citizens in France. Given the events taking place there now, has integration of other communities, such as Muslims, failed?
T.R.: I think it's wrong to say a system has failed. Each society can find solutions to problems such as those faced by France if there are politicians brave and creative enough to take them on. But it's true that in France the debate on Muslims has focused on religion, secularism and the veil – which is in my view wrong - rather than the fact that most Muslims are perfectly culturally and religiously integrated.
We have to realise that Islam is now a European religion, that French Muslims are first French citizens and democrats. The problems are social and we are dealing with a socio-economic crisis. The situation in France is such that there are second-class citizens who are not recognised by society and have no access to jobs or decent accommodation.
swissinfo: So what is the place of a Muslim in Europe today?
T.R.: Our identities have multiple dimensions. I am used to saying about myself: I am a Swiss by nationality, my culture is European, my heritage is Egyptian, I am a Muslim by religion and my principles are universalist. To be able to say this means that you are self-confident. It's when you don't feel comfortable with yourself, with society, that you reduce your identity to one single and closed dimension.
To be confident, you have to respect yourself, feel respected, understand the diversity of society, and be recognised by that society. A contemporary European Muslim today must be a citizen of his country, be a witness to his beliefs and be coherent in his actions. And I feel this should be the same for a Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist or an atheist.
Please read it all.
Posted by at November 12, 2005 8:01 AM
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Yep, Tariq ramadan's first statement is right.
Muslims coming to Europe should not be defined by their religion.
I would take that one step further: Muslims in Europe should leave their religion behind.
Not only because islam is thoroughly incompatible with europeanness, but just because of the simple reason:
"In Rome do as the Romans do."
Ancient wisdom.
Posted by: rocky![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 12, 2005 8:27 AM
The West should not define Muslims by their religion, despite the proclamations of untold numbers that "I am not British,American,Danish,etc, I am Muslim". Despite the fact that Islam only divides the world into two camps. Despite national boundaries being seen as "nonsensical lines".
Despite the command to attribute no partners to Allah, thereby committing heresy by acknowledging government.
Shhhhh, return to your slumber little dhimmi, just a bad dream. Sleep, sleep now.
Only we Muslims need to define ourselves by our religion right now. A small detail best not to trouble yourself with. After all, you want to believe we're just like you, don't you?
Posted by: t-ham at November 12, 2005 9:11 AM
Shame on Britain to have invited and let this so called scholar Ramadan,live and teach in Britain. He is nothing but a Islamist apologist cloaked in western garb.Islam is not and will never be a European religion. Its a 7th century arabic evil, death cult. If Islam is so wonderful why does he not live in Egypt, where his grand father started the virulent, murderous, anti west, anti christian, anti secular hard line "Muslim Brotherhood". How could one have common ground between Muslims and the West, when their 'holy book' calls for the killing of all non-believers. The faithfull seems to follow this stupid book. Islam is not at all compatible with secular/christian concepts - whichever way one tries to 'whilte wash' Islam. All Muslims are brain washed from birth and they can never think out of the 'box'. If any one tries a critical examination of Islam he is dubbed a racist or islamaphobe, and may be slaughtered. We see it every day around the world. Muslims slaughtering non- believers.
"To think that people raised on submission to theocracy ("Islam" = submission) could ever entertain a democratic, individualistic thought, could ever respect individual human life, could ever countenance the existence (let alone "right to exist") of any other creed than their seventh-century rabid demonology".
By accepting a violent man as their prophet and violent book as their book of Guidance they give moral support to the violent extremists and terrorists. Period
at November 12, 2005 10:07 AM
I try to build bridges between two worldsHe's the combat engineer of Islam. The invasion force follows. Posted by: Beagle
at November 12, 2005 11:04 AM
Ah - so Christianity and Judaism are Middle Eastern religions also?
Well sure - as long as they know how to keep their place.
Should we then do as the tolerance of islam does?
Geoff
Posted by: Geoff at November 12, 2005 11:18 AM
So what is he saying, that his allegences are to whatever country he lives in, before they are to the teachings of Islam? No! he is simply applying a different choice of palatable words for his audience.
European Muslim,now what is that? As far as I can see, it simply defines that it is a muslim living in Europe and nothing has changed. Islam still has its agenda, it still cannot assimilate into European culture, every where you look the multiculteralists are bending to the will of muslims so as not to offend them by hiding their cultural differences. Never mind that they have in effect perverted the original intent of multiculteralism in that other cultures should respect the rights of others to display their culteral differences without offending anyone that is of course with the exception of muslims.
" British society is more knowledgeable about the Muslim world than Americans are."
Yes Only if they hold to the way that he wants them to perceive Islam, by being good little dhimmis' Intead of the bad little neocons who for some strange reason of which I have no Idea why, have been seeing something sinister in Islam. Taraq Ramadan probably addresses his audiences by asking how those imperalist thugs,the neocons came to that conclusion about the "Religion of Peace".
If you have a moment , read Clifford Mays peace in townhall.com this morning that he wrote after he attended a discussion at trinity college in Dublin, Ireland titled; BLAMING AMERICA FIRST.
Posted by: Mackie at November 12, 2005 11:19 AM
What a pompous ass, now I know why Euros are always accusing Americans of being anti-intellectual, if this jerk is any indication.
Michael Crichton (http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote05.html) was right. If people do away with religion they don't stop believing in anything, they start believing in everything. Europe has completely abandoned it's Judeo-Christian roots. Now that the tree has no roots the parasites are attacking the tree, and it will soon be destroyed.
Posted by: JadeDragoness at November 12, 2005 11:31 AM
Frere Ramadan had a piece this week in the Globe and Mail "Why is Paris burning?"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051110/CORAMADAN10/Comment/Idx
Posted by: spencerd at November 12, 2005 11:31 AM
That Muslims happen now to live in Europe in large numbers -- as of course they did when the Ottoman Empire controlled the Balkans, Rumania, Bulgaria, even Hungary -- is an observable fact. What this means, to Tariq Ramadan, in his sly and sinister proposition, is that the "fact" of these people having been allowed to move to, and settle within, many countries of Western Europe therefore changes the nature of European civilization or, rather, the observation metamorphoses into something very like a threat: Europe must change, to "accommodate" this new fact, even if that "accommodation" will necessarily lead to changes to Europeam laws, customs, manners, freedoms, even its predominant modes of artistic expression, even its engagement in free and skeptical inquiry, even the central role it gives to the individual and not to the group. For Islam stands for changes in those laws, those customs, those manners, those means of artistic expression, that encouragement of free and skeptical inquiry without which the enterprise of science cannot take place.
In other words, Islam is not part of what makes Europe Europe. To ask the superior civilization of Europe -- call it pagan-Christian, Hebrac-Hellenic, Christian, Judeo-Christian, post-Christian, call it what you will -- to succumb, to submit to the obviously crude and cruel world of Islam, to a Total (and totalitarian system, when it possesses the means) Sysem, that subsumes the individual in the group, the community, the umma al-islamiyya, that attempts to efface any interest in the non-Islamic history of those subjugated to Islam, that for 1350 years has been based on texts that simply do not admit of real pluralism (as this has been understood in the modern non-Muslim world), that would deny free and skeptical inquiry, that would limit, if it could, artistic expresion, that would destroy the hard-won equality of the sexes, that would substitute, ideally in Islamic eyes, for the freedoms we sometimes in the West misuse, for a Complete and Mindless Reuglation of Life (not just food, but hairstyles, not just hairstyles, but how you perform your various ablutions and how you wipe yourself), and with it, a cruel and blind loyalty not to one's Fellow Man, a concept which has no place in Islam, but to one's Fellow Muslim, the Brother who can do no wrong no matter what he does, as long as he remains a Muslim. And finally, that Total Explanation of the Universe which has Muslims busily seeking, in the interstices of this or that Qur'anic passage, all of the subsequent discoveries of science -- of science, it might be added, that for a thousand years has been a Western enterprise, and now is an enterprise engaged in by the entire world, with the exception of its grim, mind-manacled, Muslim component.
No, Islam is not part of Europe. Its principles are against absolutely everything that makes Europe Europe. It is anti-Europe. Its introduction, and its acceptance, would destroy Europe.
This must not be allowed to happen. A superior civilization must not yield to a crazy cult, just because members of that cult were allowed to settle within the Bilad al-kufr, behind enemy lines -- the lines that they, forever, will regard as enemy lines.
This must not -- and will not -- happen. Because people will come to their senses in time. And will do whatever they must to save themselves.
Posted by: Hugh at November 12, 2005 11:44 AM
Tariq Ali a Force to Be Reckoned With
I saw Ali on a History Channel production on the Crusades. It was a dhimmi history all right. The producers interviewed English historians of the Crusade and two Arab historians of the crusades.
Tariq Ali wrote a book on the Arab hero Saladin so he was presented as a historian of the Crusades. The History Channel accurately pointed out that Saladin probably murdered his mentor, a king of a medium-sized city-state, and his mentor's son. Ali mused as follows "Was Saladin ruthless? Probably yes, but you had to be ruthless to survive." No actually, Saladin chose to be ruthless to gain power and control of territory and to do so, he murdered someone who had virtually adopted him as a son.
At one point Ali acknoledges that Saladin beheaded about 600 Knights Templar and Knights Hospitalier. Ali referred to this act as "shock and awe." The reference to the American campaign in Iraq. Clever arguments encased in that. No one can criticize Saladin for the beheadings because after all American supposedly did something similar. [THIS IS A COMPLETE LIE AND DISTORTION OF THE TRUTH, but, HE slips it in so quickly that is quite disarming unless you are very prepared to notice it and to challenge him]
However, when Richard the Lion Hearted beheaded Arab knights, he was referred to as "cruel." Both actions were cruel by today's standards but there were probably CUSTOMARY by the standards of the time. Remember the entire idea of "rules of war" which is really an oxymoron, is Western and it developed many centuries later in the Geneva Convention.
The History Channel allowed Ali to describe violent act committed by Christian armies as "atrocities" and "war-crimes." This is making the mistake of importing today's ideas of the rules of war back to the 11th and 12th centuries. However, identically ruthless and bloody acts by Saladin were accepted as normal for the time period and somehow necessary.
Ali is a very formidable intellectual opponent. He is extremely articulate in English and is a master of propaganda. I am SO RELIEVED that the U.S. Department of State did not let him into the United States. He wanted to establish his vipers nest in Notre Dame University. This is no accident. It is the leading Roman Catholic University in America and he would have loved to seduce those students away from their Faith, their country and their culture.
What was the net effect? The net effect was to destroy a Western hero. When I was growing up I was taught that Richard the Lion Heart was a hero of England. Now people who see this will believe he was a "war criminal." This is a very, very insidious form of propaganda. Destroy all the heroes of a culture and there is nothing left to love or be proud of. This is happending all the time.
Let is us pray that future State Department do not let him in. He is truly dangerous.
Lord help us all.
Posted by: Athena at November 12, 2005 11:48 AM
Tariq Ramadan is not the same as Tariq Ali. The latter lives in England, shares the politics of Harold Pinter, and underneath that Marxist garb he's been wearing for the past 30 years, is Islam, Adult-Onset Return to Islam, for how better nowadays to express one's hatred of the West, or pretend-hatred since you would scream bloody murder if booted out of that West back to the Muslim non-West that you couldn't endure for a minute, than Islam itself?
Tariq Ali is more comical; Tariq Ramadan more sinister. Whatever the tough talk of the first, or the sweet talk of the second, it doesn't matter. Everything else is epiphenomenal. The phenomenon is Islam.
Posted by: Hugh at November 12, 2005 12:11 PM
Islam is not as the title suggests, a European religion, it is Europe which is fast becoming a Muslim region.
To say that the Muslims who riot in France are French citizens is false, to take part in violence against your own country you have either been disenfranchised or disenfranchised oneself.
Either way the rioters are Muslims first, French a long way down their list. If people are Islamic first then they have no part in a country or society where to be a citizen of that country requires loyalty.
No loyalty = danger. Danger = deportation and that is the only option.
Posted by: IceDragon at November 12, 2005 12:53 PM
Reading his article in today's Guardian, one has to congratulate him for the beguiling left wing prose in which it is couched that the chattering classes will be eagerly lapping up. I wonder if in their befuddled minds, they question how a 7th century religion can have possibly have anything in common with their liberal views on homosexuality, free love and feminism? I am beginning to see a connection now though between the thought control and Orwellian brainwashing of the masses through the mult-culti social engineering experiment, the speech police and multi-culti brigade who instruct us to "celebrate diversity" at every opportunity and the deeply autocratic and authoritarian nature of Islam.
Posted by: londongirl at November 12, 2005 12:55 PM
I too watched the history channel production of the Crusades. It was completley one sided. The savage, Tariq Ali slipped in his point of view (attacks on Christianity) in his smooth articulate voice. At one stage he referred to the Crusaders as Barbarians; when every one fully well knows who the Barbarian was. I fully agree with the comments made by Athena & Hugh and so glad that he is persona non grata in the US
Posted by: faqi at November 12, 2005 1:06 PM
Sorry, Hugh, I stand corrected
Sorry. I did confuse Tariq Ali with Tariq Ramadam. Ali is very articulate in English and he is a good propagandist. I don't know whether he is barred from the U.S.
Sorry bout that.
Posted by: Athena at November 12, 2005 1:26 PM
Athen~ Why so sorry? You are talking the difference between a rattlesnake and a Mamba.
Posted by: Gary at November 12, 2005 3:24 PM
"for how better nowadays to express one's hatred of the West, or pretend-hatred since you would scream bloody murder if booted out of that West...?"
Actually, expressing (and even screaming) actual hatred of the West has been a fond pastime of millions of Leftist Westerners for decades, with not only utter impunity but indeed accolades and encomiums (e.g., Noam Chomsky, the #1 "intellectual" of the World).
Posted by: Dr. Pepper at November 12, 2005 3:27 PM
I.e., Tariq Ali would have no fear being booted out of the West that has come to love those who hate it.
Posted by: Dr. Pepper at November 12, 2005 3:27 PM
Beagle,
Great lines, like everything you write here and on LGF.
at November 12, 2005 3:36 PM
We shouldn't forget that Tariq Ali and Tariq Ramadan, and so many others, have profitted brilliantly from Western academic fashions and follies in the past 3 decades or so. They've mastered the world-view, themes, tropes and lexicon of neo-Marxists, deconstructionists and post-colonialists. Graduate schools are the ultimate breeding grounds for this innanity and indoctrination.
This fact should not be forgotten--ever. Islamists have internalized the deconstructionist axioms that "no (Western) text says what it says," no fact is free from interpretation, and no fact can be discerned outside (Western) structures of power and dominance.
Needless to say, they don't apply the same methedology to Islamic texts.
The cleverness and "intellectual power" some writers seem to admire are just kinds of ventriloquism, mimmicking western-type of argument in order to turn it against itself.
Learn to read thru their lines, folks. It's all about--I'm not shy about making this grand statement--deception.
at November 12, 2005 4:29 PM
"pompous Tariq Ramadan" hardly describes it. As for the Globe & Mail fawningly printing his opinions, I guess that's why I only buy the thing on Saturdays for the crossword.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at November 12, 2005 7:51 PM
Islam a European religion? So what?
Nazism was in Europe too, at one time. Does that mean it should have persisted there?
Political Geoff
Posted by: Geoff at November 12, 2005 8:39 PM
One Muslim's Thought Process:
"I don't care whether I may be dis-respecting any elder cause what you are publishing extremely wrong verses and any other material. When I read the sayings of many people, I concluded you are the son, grandson, greatgrandson of a BITCH!!!! SHUT THIS WEBSITE UP!!! All your conclusions you made are wrong. I have a clear feeling that you may be a jue or whatever. Your conclusions are wrong! It won't be long after you die, your really gonna find out what our Islam meant. I don't want to say anything more. You are the most worst people I have ever seen! Thanks & you may be ruined very soon!"
at November 13, 2005 12:19 AM
British society is more knowledgeable about the Muslim world than Americans are.
Better developed attitude of dhimmitude in British Society. Give us time, we're working on it.
Posted by: Kemaste at November 13, 2005 2:47 AM
The pompous Tariq Ramadan ......
What a smug pompous ass he is. As if Islam deserves to be in Europe and hijack Europe. He personifies a cultured Islam triumphalism. He personifies a soft soap taqiyya that will gull the hapless Eloi EUropeans. The colonizers become the colonized.
/ And the first one now / Will later be last / For the times they are a-changin’
- Dylan
Posted by: dennisw at November 13, 2005 9:41 AM
Rumoret: where's that from?
Posted by: Geoff at November 13, 2005 11:03 AM
"Ramadan, who recently took up an advisory role for the British government on Islamic extremism...T.R.: Our identities have multiple dimensions. I am used to saying about myself: I am a Swiss by nationality, my culture is European, my heritage is Egyptian, I am a Muslim by religion and my principles are universalist. To be able to say this means that you are self-confident."
An advisor to the government? This dangerous man?
"Universalist" principles? I suppose those prinicples involve working toward the establishment of the worldwide caliphate. He's in a good position to promote the goal because he's an advisor.
How stupid can the West be?
Posted by: WatchfulEye at November 13, 2005 11:44 AM
GEOFF: Where is that from?
It was a letter written on the following site.....lots of interesting comments from Muslims.
http://knowislam.info/drupal/letters
Posted by: rumoret at November 13, 2005 12:19 PM
Intead of the bad little neocons who for some strange reason of which I have no Idea why, have been seeing something sinister in Islam. posted by Mackie
Last I looked it was the neo cons (a/k/a Trotskyites) who were saying nice things about Islam, such as Condoleeza Rice, Wolfwitz (of Ayatollah al Hakim "The Abraham Lincoln of his country")
You need to find your way back out of the rabbit hole and leave Alice's world behind, or are you trying to drag us into George Orwell's little world, by turning up into down, out into in, white into black?
Posted by: Nariz at November 13, 2005 8:31 PM
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