French journalist Caroline Fourest has published a book-length study of Tariq Ramadan’s sly duplicity, Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan. 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 now she reveals that Ramadan has at least four other victims besides Henda Ayari. “A request for religious advice turned into a compulsive sexual relationship, sometimes consented to, often violent and very humiliating, before ending in threats.”
Fourest had evidence. “I presented it to a judge. But Tariq Ramadan scared him too much…. I am well-placed to know the violence of the networks of the Muslim Brotherhood when one stands up to ‘brother Tariq.'”
Remember Muhammad’s old adage: “war is deceit.”
“The double life of Tariq Ramadan,” translated from “La double vie de Tariq Ramadan,” by Caroline Fourest, Marianne, October 27, 2017:
It took me years to demonstrate Tariq Ramadan’s double talk.
Since 2009, I knew that he also led a double life, as opposed to his many sermons on the “Islamic conception of sexuality.” Yet I could not write it. The most serious facts could not be revealed without solid evidence, without a victim filing a complaint. Others, though revealing a pathology as hypocritical as misogynistic, were his private life. I had enough evidence to demonstrate the duplicity of Tariq Ramadan not to go on this ground. But I alerted confreres and even lieutenants of Ramadan. Nothing was happening.
The preacher’s groupies continued to quote him as a reminder that sex outside marriage was haram . I smiled as I listened to his Puritan sermons about temptation and the duty of chastity. Like this tape on “the great sins”, where he gets carried away against men daring to swim in mixed pools: “You go there and inevitably it attracts you! In this sermon, he urges his flock to “militate” for “places where it is healthy,” meaning single-sex pools. The tone of these tapes is not that of Tariq Ramadan-policed television sets, but that of a preacher obsessed with sexuality. Which always betrays a more personal neurosis.
When I take stock of all the fundamentalist preachers, Christian or Islamist I have ever investigated, I do not think I have ever come across a man who has a balanced sex life, or simply complies with what he says. he preached. The world is full of homophobic televangelists with homosexual relations, pedophile priests and Islamist sex predators.
In the case of Tariq Ramadan, it seems that we are dealing with a behavior worthy of Harvey Weinstein, perhaps more violent. If I write this sentence today, when it could cost me the first trial of the principal concerned, it is because a woman, Henda Ayari, had the courage to file a complaint for rape, sexual assault, harassment and bullying. Of course, Tariq Ramadan denies it all and will attack her. On social networks, one of his loyal lieutenants already sees an “international Zionist” plot. His fans accuse the victim, a repentant Salafist, of lying and wanting to advertise (enviable as everyone knows). I did not meet her. But what I can testify to is that her story, precise and terrifying, is very similar to that of four other women I met.
It was in 2009, on the eve of my famous debate with Tariq Ramadan at Frédéric Taddeï. The press had announced it. A first woman contacted me to tell me what she had experienced. I was suspicious. A false testimony to push me to making an error? With Tariq Ramadan, you always have to expect everything. At first, I did not answer. His writings became precise. To be clear, I ended up seeing her. She showed me text messages and edifying pictures. She also put me in touch with other girls. All had lived about the same story. A request for religious advice turned into a compulsive sexual relationship, sometimes consented to, often violent and very humiliating, before ending in threats. One of them had undergone treatment that could be the subject of a complaint. I presented it to a judge. But Tariq Ramadan scared him too much. She felt as if she was being stalked. She was clearly too fragile to persevere. My conscience refused to push her onto a path which I feared would not come out well for her. I am well-placed to know the violence of the networks of the Muslim Brotherhood when one stands up to “brother Tariq.” I hear some of the lesson-givers joking about “everyone knew and did not say anything.” They are far from imagining the tornado that would have fallen on this young woman if she had dared to break the omerta at the time. Now that Henda Ayari has had this courage, it’s different. My duty is to invite all those who can to testify. In the press or at his trial. To avoid abandoning her, alone, facing the pack.