In “When in Rome…” in the New York Sun, Rachel Ehrenfeld tells a story of official indifference and dhimmitude:
Tariq Ramadan, who is barred from the U.S., is invited to speak at a conference on May 4-5, 2006, sponsored by the American Embassy in Rome, on “Immigration and Integration: Islam in Europe and Islam in the U.S.” The conference is organized by the Centro Studi Americani in Rome, which according to the Web site of its affiliate, John Cabot University, is “one of the major American institutions in Europe.” The American Ambassador, Ronald P. Spogli, is scheduled to open the conference.
Ramadan, a Swiss citizen and grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hasan al-Banna, had his visa revoked by the Department of Homeland Security on July 28,2004. The visa was revoked under the Immigration and Nationality Act, amid press speculation that the revocation stemmed from the section barring entry to persons with a “position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity,” or who have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
While no specifics were detailed for this revocation, apparently his activities, lectures and writings in support of the Islamist agenda were the cause for this decision. According to a Spanish judge, Balatasar Garzon, Ramadan had “routine contacts” with Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian believed to be the financial chief of Al Qaeda and the financier of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
In 1995, during a series of terrorist attacks in Paris perpetrated by the Algerian Armed Islamist Movement, or AIM, the French interior minister, Jean Louis Debre, forbade Ramadan to enter France because of his connections to that terrorist group.
Read it all.