Tariq Ramadan, the “towering intellect” and “leading Islamic scholar” whom Time magazine in 2004 called one of the world’s “100 most influential thinkers,” but who has also been charged with multiple rapes involving “extreme sexual violence,” had a brief but characteristically mendacious comment on Mikael Harpon, the Muslim who killed four people – three policemen and one administrator – in Paris on October 3.
Here is what he wrote, in his comment to the world:
The man who killed four police officers had converted to Islam. His wife claimed that he had hallucinations and was not psychologically in his normal state. We were first told that he acted under “the blow of a crisis of a psychotic nature.”Now, we are told that during this crisis, he “heard Allah speak to him” … So we come back to the first conclusions: the man was a potential terrorist, radicalized during a sudden psychological crisis. After he “radicalized” in one hour, one night or “without knowing it,” here comes the time of psychotic “radicalization.” Even having lost control of themselves, even unstable or under the influence of a blow [sic] madness, they are first, always and above all Muslim, radicalized and terrorists …
It was understood, we understood.
The essential remains here, to show our sympathy to the families of all the victims. All victims, without exception or selection. Even the family of this man who has lost his reason and whose memory has begun to be sullied today.
Ramadan wants us to believe that it was not Islam, but Harpon’s “psychotic” state, as described by his wife, that explains his behavior. He mocks those who claim that in this state of crisis, Harpon suddenly was “radicalized” in “one hour, one night, or even “without knowing it.” Ramadan makes fun of those who claim that Harpon was both subject to a “sudden psychotic radicalization” that turned him into a potential terrorist, and at the same time, remained “always and above all Muslim.”
But we know now that this sudden “psychotic state” was made up by his wife. Harpon had not had a sudden crisis. He had long ago – not 18 months ago, as first reported – converted to Islam. He had been very observant, attending his mosque twice a day, for the first and last prayers. The imam at the mosque he chose to attend was known to be extreme. He was also in frequent touch with a preacher who, for the violence of his views, was under police surveillance. Four years ago, after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Harpon defended the murderous perpetrators, the Kouachi brothers, alarming some of his coworkers, who reported his worrisome views, but they all refused to file an official complaint, no doubt out of fear of being branded as “islamophobic”and possibly discharged. He had been defending Muslim terrorists ever since. It is known that he frequented the company of known Salafists, and Salafist videos were found in his apartment. Clearly his own attack was consonant with his longstanding beliefs, and not a sudden breakdown, explicable only as “psychosis.”
The only suggestion that Harpon’s behavior was the result of a sudden mental lapsus comes from his Muslim wife’s description of his “acting strange” and “hearing voices” during the night of October 2. Since she was deaf, he could not have told her he was “hearing voices.” Did he text-message her a note to that effect, in the middle of this supposed “psychotic episode”? And if he did, why didn’t his wife promptly call the police, or at least do so on the morning of October 3? She was, we now know, lying. She wanted to make it appear that Harpon had suddenly gone mad, rather than been led by his faith – by commands in the Qur’an – to “kill” and to “strike at the necks” of Infidels (as he did by slitting the throat of one of his four victims).
His behavior on the morning of October 3 bespeaks premeditation, not the madness that Ramadan wishes us to believe. Harpon went, as he always did, to the mosque for morning prayers. He wore a djellaba, as he had in recent months taken to wearing, an outward sign of his ever-deepening faith. He may have been accompanied by two fellow Muslims, whose role is still unclear. Did they know that he was planning to attack his Infidel coworkers? If so, did they try either to discourage, or to encourage him?
He then went to his place of work but, still in the morning, left to buy two knives. We know that after buying the knives, he was furiously text-messaging his wife, some 33 messages between 11:21 and 11:50 — about one a minute. They were talking about his planned attack; her last words were “Only Allah can judge you.” She did not call the police to warn them of his intentions. He was in his office shortly after noon, where he began his attack. It took only seven minutes for him to murder four people, three police and one civil servant.
Tariq Ramadan mocks those who would blame Islam for Harpon’s actions. They can’t have it both ways, he insists: the “psychotic episode” undercuts the attempt to blame inoffensive Islam for his acts. But we know that the “psychotic episode” that his wife described never occurred; he had for years been a devout Muslim, a Salafist, and a defender of Muslim terrorists; he had been in frequent touch with a radical preacher who was under police surveillance; he was not “deranged” but ready to behave as the Qur’an commanded.
Ramadan ends characteristically with calling for sympathy for the families of “all the victims.” He puts it, intolerably, thus: “The essential remains here, to show our sympathy to the families of all the victims. All victims, without exception or selection. Even the family of this man who has lost his reason and whose memory has begun to be sullied today.”
So he wants us to think of Harpon, the Muslim murderer, as a “victim” and not a killer. A “victim” of his own madness. He insists that Harpon had “lost his reason.” Ramadan wishes us to ignore all the signs of premeditation – the years of defending Muslim terrorists, Harpon’s Salafist sympathies, including the videos found in his apartment, the information – also in his apartment — about dozens of policemen, that suggest he might have been plotting other attacks. Harpon was not a madman any more than Major Nidal Hassan, or Mohamed Atta, or the Kouachi brothers were madmen. He was following the dictates of the Qur’an.
And Tariq Ramadan was also following, in his comment that attempts to present Harpon as a madman and “victim” who suffered a “psychotic episode,” not the Qur’an, but Muhammad in the Hadith: “War is deceit.” Judging by the more than one hundred furious comments (in French) following Ramadan’s own posting at Dreuz.com, for Tariq Ramadan, still up to his old tricks, that war has been lost.
AA says
A stone was thrown to break a window glass. Let us look for the cause of the broken window glass. It is the stone? Or the person who threw the stone? Can both be culpable?
Michael Copeland says
“All victims, without exception or selection”…….of course includes Tariq Ramadan, victimised by Western man-made law for matters which are not a crime in divine Sharia.
mortimer says
PSYCHOPATHY OF HARPON ??? Who is Tariq Ramadan to say? … perhaps it takes one to know one.
mortimer says
Mohammed commanded or participated in a violent, political act of jihad every six weeks of his life. Mohammed had many tortured and assassinated for merely speaking words of criticism against him.
Such an addiction to violent behavior would qualify Mohammed as a psychopath too, would it not?
mortimer says
By Tariq Ramadan’s own definition of PSYCHOPATH, many leading Muslims of history are PSYCHOPATHIC:
Osama Bin Laden was a PSYCHOPATH when he cast terror into the hearts of Americans on 9-11.
Sayeed Maududi was a PSYCHOPATH when he wrote: “Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam.” Sayeed Abdul A’la Maududi, Jihad in Islam, p.9
Sultan Mehmet V was also a PSYCHOPATH when he signed the Universal Fatwa of 1915 sanctioning the genocide of three million of his Christian subjects.
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), was a PSYCHOPATH when he wrote, “the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” (emphasis added)
Tamurlane was a PSYCHOPATH when he wrote glowingly of his mass murders: ‘I had crossed the rivers Ganges and Jumna and I had sent many of the abominable infidels to hell, and had purified the land from their foul existence….Thanks to almighty Allah.”
Hajjaj, the governor of Iraq was a PSYCHOPATH when he ordered his general Qasim to “behave in such a way that no enemy of the true faith is left in that country”.
Mohammed’s successful general Khalid ibn Walid was a PSYCHOPATH when Mohammed sent him to destroy all the pagan temples of the neighboring tribes of Mecca. Khalid reached the Jazima tribe and asked them to say, “We are Muslims”. But they said, “We are Sabians” – whereupon Khalid slaughtered the whole tribe.
By Tariq Ramadan’s definition, Mohammed could be a PSYCHOPATH too. The Sira (his official biography) is filled with violent acts initiated by Mohammed. In the Sira, Mohammed orders or leads a violent act every six weeks resulting in assassination, plundering, enslavement, rape, genocide, ethnic cleansing and territorial conquest.
A psychopath wants you to feel sorry for him so that you don’t blame him for his cruel and brutal deeds.
Carol the 1st says
Psychopaths are quite sane and although they lack empathy they don’t necessarily have the added feature of sadism. Psychopathy is a personality disorder. Psychosis, on the other hand, is a mental disorder characterized by delusions or hallucinations and the psychotic has somewhat lost their sense of reality (we might consider Muhammad in his cave talking to the big vulture).
One is reminded of the persistent question of Moe’s sanity in his own time. David Wood delightfully portrays the Joker in his video Muhammad and the Joker. In this Boom Boom Room meeting the Joker suggests to Muhammad that he “must be crazier than I am if you are actually serious about Islam”. Muhammad proclaims that many times Allah insisted he was not crazy, possessed, or bewitched (as the skeptics would have it). Muhammad then lists the Koranic verses where Allah’s unending support for his sanity is revealed for all to see:
Surah 7 verse 184
Surah 15 verse 6
Surah 17 verse 47
Surah 23 verse 70
Surah 25 verse 8
Surah 34 verse 8
Surah 34 verse 46
Surah 37 verses 36 to 37
Surah 44 verse 14
Surah 52 verse 29
Surah 68 verse 2
Surah 68 verse 51
Surah 81 verse 22
The question seemed curiously foremost in the minds of skeptics and they never stopped asking to this very day.
Angemon says
Good.
Phil Copson says
How does one begin to “sully” the memory of Mikael Harpon ? Point-out that he not only did he murder four people but he was making personal ‘phone-calls in the firm’s time ? Do tell, Tariq….
Carol the 1st says
But, but aren’t you forgetting that he “was a MUSLIM first”??
Carol the 1st says
Tariq just wants to make sure that we don’t get the cart before the horse and accidentally flagellate that most excellent and untarnished control grid called Islam and muslimhood.
Carol the 1st says
Flagellating muslimas may be another matter for Tariq however.
Phil Copson says
Correction: “Point-out that not only did he…”