Controversial Muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan has been labelled a terrorist by the West and a turncoat by many Muslims. He talks to Lara Marlowe in London, ahead of his talk in Galway today
Tariq Ramadan is probably the most influential Muslim intellectual in Europe, yet he lives in a sort of limbo from which he cannot escape. Ramadan has been labelled "controversial", and no matter how much time and energy he devotes to condemning suicide bombers, denying links with al-Qaeda and rebutting misquotations, the allegations always resurface.
Ramadan believes what he calls the "witch hunt" against him started because he denounced double standards in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In France, where he has a huge following among Muslim immigrant youths, he has been pilloried in two books and a television documentary in the past year.
The most common accusation against Ramadan is that of "double-talk" - that he is a moderate with Westerners and an extremist with Muslims. He recognises the difficulty of belonging to both worlds. "When you are trying to create bridges, you are too Western for the Muslims and too Muslim for the Westerners," he says.
A case in point is Ramadan's campaign to establish a moratorium on the death penalty, the stoning of adulteresses (still practised in five Muslim countries) and corporal punishment such as amputations. In France, he is condemned for failing to demand their complete abolition. But many Muslims view what they see as an attempt to change sharia (Islamic canonical law) with suspicion.
"This is the only way for me to be heard by Muslims," Ramadan says of his proposed moratorium on the death penalty. "I am not speaking against the text; I'm speaking in the name of our faithfulness to the objective of justice. I am opening the door. If you from the West criticise the Koran, nothing will move."
Whatever the truth behind his sulphurous reputation, Ramadan's intelligence is obvious. He expresses himself with equal ease in French, English and Arabic, but says apologetically that his German and Italian are a little rusty. When we talk in the London suburb of Ealing, where Ramadan has set up house with his Franco-Swiss wife and four children, he laughs at the roller coaster of praise and vilification. How many philosophers are deemed a security threat by the US government, only to be hired by Tony Blair as an adviser one year later? The London Independent described Ramadan as "one of the greatest hopes of reconciliation between Muslims and the rest of society". The Sun was outraged that Ramadan was invited to lecture the Metropolitan police after the July 7th attacks, calling him "the likeable face of terror". "Banned from the US, banned from France, welcome in Great Britain!" read the Sun's headline.
Ramadan was banned in France for a few months in 1995. Though his visa to teach at University of Notre Dame in Indiana was revoked by the Department of Homeland Security in August 2004, he has received 27 invitations to lecture in the US and is now trying to obtain a visitor's visa.
Ramadan's notoriety is such that universities who engage him are invariably asked to justify themselves. When it granted him a visiting fellowship for the coming academic year, St Antony's College, Oxford, issued a statement that read, "Professor Ramadan is recognised as an intellectual throughout the world".
DR KATHLEEN CAVANAUGH organised Ramadan's lecture at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway this morning. "The reason we invited Ramadan is the reason we are doing the conference," she says. "And that is that we need to recapture, reframe, re-narrate the debate on Islam . . . Ramadan has both a discourse with Western societies and an intimate discourse with the Islamic world."
The New York Times quoted "a senior European counter-terrorism official who has investigated Mr Ramadan" as saying there is no proof that Ramadan is in any way connected to terrorism, but adding that the US was wise to keep him out because of Ramadan's "dangerous ideas".
The list of allegations, all denied by Ramadan, is long. A civil suit filed by the families of the victims of September 11th claims that Ramadan organised a meeting between al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri and the blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman - who the plaintiffs mistakenly said was Ramadan's uncle - in Geneva in 1991, before either man was wanted. The same lawsuit claims Ramadan was in contact with Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian financier of extremist attacks who was arrested by Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain in 2002. Brahim's daughter said he had telephone contacts with Ramadan's brother Hani, not Tariq.
Ramadan's detractors often try to incriminate him through association. His older brother Hani, who runs the Islamic Centre their father founded in Geneva, scandalised much of Europe by justifying the stoning of women who commit adultery. French feminist Caroline Fourest devoted 64 pages of her 425-page diatribe against Ramadan to discrediting his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, who died before Ramadan was born. Al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood is the foundation of modern political Islam.
After Ramadan's visa for the US was revoked last year, pro-Israeli Prof Daniel Pipes, who founded "Campus Watch" to denounce students and academics who criticise Israel, said the US was right to exclude Ramadan because of his "links to al-Qaeda".
Ramadan takes the controversy in his stride. "A year ago I was a hero because I was banned from the US," he says. "Now I'm considered as someone who is working for America because I propose modernising Islam."
He believes most of his troubles originate in France. "France does not have a problem only with Tariq Ramadan," he says. "They have a problem with religion, and then a problem with Islam and finally with Arabs, because we represent the formerly colonised people and that is still very vivid in their memory. I am a European Muslim who is confident, speaks their language, wants to build bridges and be part of their system, and it's scary. I symbolise something deeply disturbing in the French psyche."
Between 1997 and 2000, Ramadan participated in the "Islam and Secularism" commission established by the French teachers' league. "They were not secular; they were against religion," he says. "I told them: 'You have one secularism for Christians and another for Muslims'." He is criticised in France for refusing to tell Muslim girls to remove their headscarves. "It is against Islam to impose the veil on a woman, and it is against human rights to force her to take it off," he shrugs.
NOW RAMADAN IS part of Tony Blair's 13-person working group on tackling extremism. When young Muslims turn to extremism, Ramadan says, both the Muslim community and British society are to blame.
"The Muslims must realise that we have a problem - radicals among us," he says. "It comes from the way we promote Islamic education based on a very literal reading [of religious texts] and not integrating British culture. We are building a Muslim psyche based on us versus them."
For its part, Ramadan says, "The British school system needs to integrate something into the curriculum that gives value to the history, culture, origin and contribution of the Muslim community." Multiculturalism must mean more than a patchwork of communities who don't interact. And Blair needs to recognise the effect of his foreign policy on Muslim citizens, he adds.
Ramadan is often asked what he would tell a would-be suicide bomber who - like Mohamed Sidique Khan, one of the four London bombers on July 7th - says he cannot watch helplessly while Muslims are killed in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya.
"I can understand your emotion," Ramadan tells the hypothetical bomber. "The first step is to master your emotion, because if you are driven by emotion you will destroy yourself and what you are trying to accomplish. Learn the causes and history of what is going on. The best way to help oppressed people is to learn, inform others, vote, become influential. Don't kill. Build."
Islam, Ramadan continues, allows violence only in self-defence, and only after peaceful means have been exhausted. "If you are oppressed, you cannot kill innocent people. The Palestinian resistance is legitimate, and the Iraqi resistance is legitimate. The problem is that legitimate resistance is using illegitimate means." The solution Ramadan suggests - a vestige of his past ties to Third World and anti-globalisation groups - is "to build an international movement of non-violent support" for the Palestinians and Iraqis. It brought down apartheid in South Africa, he says. And it could work in the Middle East.
Tariq Ramadan will deliver the opening address at the two-day conference of the Irish Centre for Human Rights on Reframing Islam: Politics Into Law at 10.30am today in the Arts Millennium Building at NUI Galway.
Tariq Ramadan : who is he?
August 26th, 1962 Tariq Ramadan is born in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. A gifted student and teacher, Tariq Ramadan earns an MA in philosophy and French literature and a PhD in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Geneva.
1994 Publishes his first book, Muslims in a Secular Society.
1995 The French interior minister briefly bans Ramadan from France.
December 2000 Time Magazine lists Ramadan as one of the 100 most important religious innovators for the new century.
Autumn 2003 Ramadan is accused of anti-Semitism after suggesting that French-Jewish intellectuals are biased regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
August 2004 Ramadan's visa for the US, where he was to have taught at the University of Notre Dame, is revoked by the Department of Homeland Security.
June 2005 Ramadan is invited to be a visiting fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford for the 2005-2006 academic year.
August 2005 Following the London bombings, Ramadan is asked to join prime minister Tony Blair's working group on tackling extremism