A few months ago, Tariq Ramadan was the golden boy of Islamic apologists, offering his suave taqiyya to audiences throughout Western Europe. He held a prestigious post as a professor at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, with a chair funded especially for him by the Emir of Qatar. And at the same time, he held a second important position (and received, no doubt, an even larger salary than he was already getting at Oxford) as the head of the Islamic Law and Ethics Research Center, his own academic fiefdom, in Qatar.
But now he is on “leave” from Oxford, a “leave” that is undoubtedly going to be permanent. And he can’t very well head his Islamic Law and Ethics Research Center sinecure in Qatar when he has been told not to set foot in Qatar ever again. Still, he has his many unswervingly loyal followers — two million Facebook friends and 200,000 followers on Twitter, and 135,778 who have signed a petition demanding that Tariq Ramadan be released from prison.
The Internet is full of “temoignages” (testimonials) to the greatness of Tariq Ramadan. Here’s the first one I came across: “I still remember. I was a child when I first listened to Tariq Ramadan. His words have had an effect on me, like a father who learns to walk to his child, to awaken my curiosity which was, until then, in the early stages. His thought, but also his way of expressing it, with sweetness and nuance, has been a principle for me in any approach to learning and teaching. I had the chance to meet him at various seminars where I was able to discover a simple and accessible man to his entourage, full of kindness and kindness. He is for me a thinker that enriches my thoughts, a brother who feeds my spirituality, a passeur of light that awakens my conscience and especially a man who constantly recalls hope.”
The latest news on Tariq Ramadan does not come from France, where he is in prison awaiting trial, after several women (Muslim) accused him of rape and extreme sexual violence. You surely remember his very first accuser, one Henda Ayari, who had earlier written about Ramadan in her book J’ai choisi d’être libre (“I Chose To Be Free”), giving him the alias “Zoubeyr” because, at that point, she was still terrified of what he might do to her, given how violently he had already treated her in their encounters. Ramadan is both very powerful and, as she knew, very sinister. In fact, her fears were justified, for once she bravely accused him publicly, she received more than 3,000 death threats within just a few days. She now is forced to live under round-the-clock guard.
Here is how she had described Tariq Ramadan, giving him the name “Zoubeyr”:
“This man, Zoubeyr, transformed before my very eyes into a vile, vulgar, aggressive being – physically and verbally,” she wrote. And then she explained that she was now giving him, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, his real name: Tariq Ramadan. “For modesty, I will not give the precise details here of the acts he made me submit to. But it is enough that he took great advantage of my weakness and the admiration I felt for him. ”
“He allowed himself gestures, attitudes and words that I could never have imagined.”
“And when I resisted,” she writes, “when I cried to him to stop, he insulted and humiliated me. He slapped me and attacked me. I saw in his crazy eyes that he was no longer master of himself. I was afraid he would kill me. I was completely lost. I started crying uncontrollably. He mocked me.” And she described his violence: “He choked me so hard that I thought I was going to die.” She also described him as threatening that her children might be harmed if she were to tell anyone.
A second Muslim woman in Paris also accused Ramadan of raping her in a hotel room in 2009. The unnamed 42-year-old, who is reported to have disability in her legs, said that the professor had subjected her to a terrifying and violent sexual assault. The French edition of Vanity Fair magazine, whose staff met the 45-year-old woman, said her lawsuit against Ramadan described “blows to the face and body, forced sodomy, rape with an object and various humiliations, including being dragged by the hair to the bathtub and urinated on.”
But that’s not the latest news about Ramadan.
The latest news does not come from Switzerland, where four women previously accused him of sexually assaulting them when they were his pupils in high school. We are still waiting to see if the Swiss Statute of Limitations will protect Ramadan either from criminal prosecution or from civil suits by the women.
Nor does the latest news about him come from the United States, where a Muslim woman is pressing charges of rape.
No, this time the news comes from Brussels, Belgium.
Prominent Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, detained in France over rape allegations, paid a woman to stay silent about their relationship in 2015, the Belgian judiciary said.
Ramadan, 55, paid the Belgian-Moroccan woman $33,000 to stop posting details about their affair online, Luc Henry, president of the Court of First Instance in Brussels, confirmed to AFP Wednesday.
Hennart said a public judgment was made in Brussels in May 2015 between the professor and the woman, Majda Bernoussi, after she posted online about his “psychological grip” on her. She did not accuse him of rape or sexual assault.
The agreement “provides that Majda Bernoussi deletes her online posts and stops publishing new ones, for a sum of money given by Tariq Ramadan,” Hennart said.
Bernoussi also agreed to no longer send “offensive or threatening messages” to the professor and his family, according to French news website Mediapart.”
Ramadan had some kind of “affair” with this woman but its extent is unclear. The fact that she did not accuse him of rape or sexual assault in her online posts does not mean that such assaults did not take place. It may simply mean that Majda Bermoussi was too scared to make such an explosive charge, knowing Ramadan’s power and what his most loyal followers might do, but still wanted to damage Ramadan, to get her revenge on him for what he had done to her. When she charged him with having a “psychological grip” on her, what did that in practice mean? When she was in his grip, what things did she do “willingly” that could not, therefore, be described as rape or sexual assault in the strict, i.e., juridical, sense?
And if he was innocent of all such charges, from whomever they came, as he has always maintained, why didn’t Ramadan threaten to sue Bernoussi for harassment? If he had done nothing at all with or to her — and he keeps claiming he is in every case “completely innocent” — he could have easily exposed her as a semi-demented camp follower, whose advances he had rebuffed, faithful husband that he has always claimed to be. Instead, in May 2015 he paid her $33,000 to remove all postings about him, and to refrain from any further postings about him. If his behavior was completely aboveboard, shouldn’t he be telling us just why he paid her so much? What was that hush money intended to hush up?
But let’s end on a different, more forgiving note. Perhaps we haven’t done Tariq Ramadan justice. Let’s look at all these accusations from his point of view. For he may have his little faults; he’s never claimed to be a saint. Tariq Ramadan, remember, is no ordinary man. He has been called “Europe’s greatest Muslim scholar,” “Europe’s foremost Muslim intellectual,” “the great Muslim thinker,” “this prominent theologian,” “this eminent Oxford professor,” “one of the world’s leading Islamic thinkers,” this “profound scholar,” this “great reformer of Islam,” this “towering intellect.” Let him be given the respect he deserves, as a Great Man, capable of Deep Thoughts. Consider only these:
We must learn that our encounters like our separations are acts of initiation:we can love what is and, in the end, know only hurt and suffering.
Near to you or without you. Why do we love? Why do we break apart? Why, indeed?
To judge is to love. Suspending one’s judgement is a better way of loving …and to love, in spite of judgement, is truly to love.
Listen without passing judgement, or rather judge there is nothing on which to pass judgement.To judge is human,& to judge is to love.
A character trait, a smile, an expression, a feeling, a wound, a silence or an absence:everything speaks to those who know how to listen.
It is up to every one of us to discover the extraordinary that lies hidden in the heart of the all too ordinary presences in our daily lives.
Absence. Meaning. Life is flying, people are leaving. The heart is crying, the heart is smiling. Oh God, to learn to thank. Simply to thank !
Life is beautiful, life is sad. This life is not Life. To live is to love.
To tell the people we love we love them, and to truly love them. With courage in the heart, tears in the eyes.
It is thoughts like these that have earned Tariq Ramadan respect and admiration throughout the world. A few private peccadillos, of which he is accused by a handful of resentful and malicious women, each of whom clearly wanted hm for herself alone, and all of whom have undoubtedly been manipulated by CIA and Mossad operatives, cannot be allowed to sully the reputation of Tariq Ramadan, a “towering intellect” who is “one of the Islamic world’s leading thinkers.” His message has always been one of peace and tolerance — as he has repeatedly said — and were he to be brought down, that would only let the terrorists on both sides win. And that is something we must not let happen.
Benedict says
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts, …..”
If the part played by Tariq Ramadan could convince a considerable amount of Muslims of Islam’s inability to turn human beings into good and moral people much would be gained by his demise. But the faulty and deficient understanding of human nature in the Koran will continue to deceive millions.
It can be troublesome enough to put up with “miserable offenders”, according to the General Confession of the 1928 BCP, if this confession is made in self-effacing contentment and not in truth and humility, but it is immensely more troublesome to have to put up with Muslims who by virtue of THEIR confession as Muslims in one fell swoop, mirabile dictu, according to the magic Koran are transformed into “the best of peoples, evolved for mankind”. If this poisonous verbal injection is not a recipe for pride, arrogance, self-deception and all that evil is, I don’t know what is. This approach to life is providentially doomed to destruction because “before destruction the heart of man is haughty”.
And this is the profound evil that is imported to the West via Islam because this is the veritable spirit that will be poured out upon all flesh that submits itself to Islam: haughtiness, resentment, hate, envy, fear, deception and demands of replacement, recompense and revenge – and as the strange case of Tariq Ramadan shows: an attitude to women that allows this spirit to hold sway.
mortimer says
Sadomasochism is the emotional subtext of all Islam.
mortimer says
When you want to understand what people think, look at the way they pray. 17 times a day and about 6,000 times a year, Muslims recite the Fatiha, reminding themselves that ALLAH HATES JEWS AND CHRISTIANS and that Muslims must HATE THEM TOO.
Hatred of ‘others’ is normative Islam, rather than an aberration. It’s what they pray for.
mortimer says
Tariq Ramadan is not just anyone, but the grandson of the founder of the FASCIST Muslim Brotherhood, a misogynistic, supremacist, terrorist organization.
So what is Ramadan? A misogynist. A supremacist. A terrorist. He loves terrorizing women.
Ramadan’s sappy musings are worthy of a 15- or even a 14-year-old high school girl in the throes of her first major crush.
I wonder if when he was raping women and torturing them if he had tears in his eyes.
His victims have tears in their eyes. Betrayal is the deepest level of hurt.
maghan says
Interesting to note that Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the MB and grandfather of TR, criticized the West for its decadence. materialism, and immorality. He claimed that Islam offered a better and more moral life for humankind to lead.
Irony of ironies.
gravenimage says
There is *nothing* moral about Islam.
mortimer says
Islam is very misogynistic.
Dry Academy says
“A character trait, a smile, an expression, a feeling, a wound, a silence or an absence:everything speaks to those who know how to listen.”
“Absence. Meaning. Life is flying, people are leaving. The heart is crying, the heart is smiling. Oh God, to learn to thank. Simply to thank !”
It horrifies me how many stupid, gullible, shallow people are taken in by such drivel. These “deep thoughts” are so banal and meaningless they could probably be randomly generated by a computer. My advice, if anyone starts talking like this to you, run the other way.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
But let’s not look this idiotic gift horse in the mouth.. Anytime you need a laugh, all you have to do is read the Deep Thoughts of Tariq Ramadan. in their sheer idiocy, they never let you down. `
mortimer says
Tariq Ramadan is a multimillionaire with a net worth of $19 million.
There is nothing more appalling than a multimillionaire indulging in a non-stop pity party.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
I was laughing, and now you’ve depressed me. 19 million? Say it isn’t so.
Dry Academy says
Unfortunately, being a slimy mountebank pays very well these days.
Benedict says
Tariq Ramadan was probably inspired by “The Exclusive Eloquence of the Qur’an” and its profound insights when he penned down his Solomonic (= solo-moronic) proverbial wisdom. What else could explain it?
Karen says
Tariq says: “Absence. Meaning. Life is flying, people are leaving. The heart is crying, the heart is smiling. Oh God, to learn to thank. Simply to thank !”
Just to build on his brilliance, may I say that leaving is flying and people are living? I’m thankful to be thinking of hearts that are smiling.
Computer-generated greeting cards and brainy-quote-of-the-day calendars. A little cottage-industry he might consider for his, uh, down time.
DHazard says
He must be innocent. Not one of his accusers have produced 4 male witnesses to the crime. Besides, in Shariah there is no such crime as rape. It’s all “zina” which includes fornication, sodomy, homosexuality, adultery and pretty much every other crime that involves sex. Punishments range from lashing to stoning.
However, if all of this happened in a strictly Muslim country the accusers could, very likely, face charges of zina against THEM. This is the Islamic feminism endorsed by Tariq Ramadan and Linda Cockroach.
Instead of #MeToo it’s #GetOverIt.
Barbara says
Famous people often pay hush money just to get enemies to shut up. It doesn’t mean he is guilty. However, the multiple claims against him plus the social norm of Islam that women are never alone with a man other than a relative or a husband are very incriminating. A reputable Muslim leader would not have women come to his hotel room. Certainly the women were dumb to go, but being dumb is not a crime, but assault is always a crime, no matter how dumb the victim is. Any religious leader who has women come alone to his hotel room is suspect for inappropriate behavior, although assault can be hard to prove when the victim goes to the scene voluntarily. And victims could make things up to cover up their involvement. No reputable religious leader is going to put himself in such a situation unless he is either an adulterer or a sexual predator.
b.a. freeman says
an honest person’s reputation is worth far more than money, and i submit that no innocent person in ramadan’s position would pay out 33 000 peanut shells, let alone dollars, to somebody who was making stuff up about him. if U give in to one, U’ll have to give in to all the others, because the accusers will crawl out of the wordwork by the hundreds. and why not? it’s easy money!
besides, he’s a pious muslim. why is any of this surprising?
gravenimage says
Ultimately, it should surprise no one that “Europe’s greatest Muslim scholar” is an accused rapist.
Billy Chickens says
My bunny rabbit thinks deeper thoughts than Tariq. Just tonight he told me a poem he had just thought up:
“Why do I hop? Why do I hop away from you who loves me so? You race after me trying to grab the only thing you love. But you are merely grasping at air because I am faster than you.”
If that doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, I don’t know what will.
My bunny has applied to Oxford.
Karen says
I would deconstruct for posterity the many bittersweet conflicts penned here, but I am too choked up…..
I can only assume that Tariq was a major inspiration. {sob, sniffle, sigh} Ah, the student has exceeded the master.
May your bunny find happiness at Oxford, and hop back to you, soon.
Do you have any chicken poetry?
Billy Chickens says
Yes, and I will recite it from the depths of my little chicken heart. The title is “Bitter Newness”.
“It’s spring. New life blooms now. New born chicks in the feed store going peep, peep, peep. My heart is wounded. Suffering is so deep because soon the chicks will be bought. Oh God! Why must they be separated to live endless miles apart! But this is the way of life. Together, then apart, Always this sadness. My heart breaks with sorrow.”
Karen says
Awesome…sniffle….I feel your pain…..
Jacqueline says
If your bunny is a Muslim, he will probably be accepted.
gravenimage says
Bunnies are far too nice to be Muslim…
Buraq says
Tariq the clown’s greeting card ‘poetry’ shows how Islam would spoil real poetry. Just imagine a Muslim MacBeth!
Macbeth:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, inshallah
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death, inshallah. Out, out, brief candle, inshallah!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more, inshallah It is a tale
Told by an idiot – (like Tariq the rapist) -, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing, inshallah
infidel says
One of India’s biggest BOLLYWOOD Muslim superstar, Salman Khan, now behind bars for illegal poaching of endangered wildlife. This fellow, earlier cheated his way out of legit jail time when he had mowed down four people in a drunk driven stupor. But this Muslim, who has become a superstar, thanks to his millions of naive Hindu fans, esp foolish and besotted Hindu women, somehow bribed and cheated his way out of trouble at that time and he is doing the same thing now to get out of this one too.. On top of this, this thug has a soft corner for the terrorist nation of Pakistan and its people and always releases his movies there and releases his movies only on the Islamic festival of EID. A violent man, who has bashed many women and other weak people, now trying his best to evade jail once again….
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/bishnois-celebrate-as-dejected-fans-ask-why-only-salman/articleshow/63634341.cms
infidel says
Muslims are great at the rhetoric and sweet talk and ZERO BACKING UP WITH REAL ACTION!!! See Obama and other Islamic leaders all over the world.. Just great talks and Pakis are famous for their Urdu Shaayaris (couplets) of love , the same love they do not show their Christians and Hindus.. I NEVER GET CARRIED AWAY BY MUSLIM SWEET TALK. And at the same time, there is ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT to Khafir society, if an individual Muslim shines in a particular endeavor on platforms provided by the Khafir.
Dreadnaught says
T.Ramadan was the cloroform on the the rag that is the Koran
Mike says
” Suavity is my motto. I am as a fox at the hen’s house door .Suavity is my saviour .With such an asset , hen’s open me the door .” Tariq Ramadan ( No, It’s a joke !)
Dr. Doom says
Ramadan = the clown prince of Islam in a fantasy land called OZford.
gary fouse says
I heard Ramadan speak in Southern California twice in two days in 2012. Make no mistake, he is impressive and a formidable adversary. On the second occasion, I was able to catch him outside during a coffee break and ask him about his call for a moratorium on stoning. The answer was interesting.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2012/04/tariq-ramadan-speaks-in-orange-county.html
Thaddeus Lovelock says
The Islamic world is a seething cauldron of sexual repression and sexual dysfunction, the Islamic view of human sexuality is perverse. So I’m not at all surprised that the Islamic golden boy is a sexual deviate .