Who is Tariq Ramadan?

By Yousef Drummond

TheMuslim.Ca, 2 May 2008

It would not be unfair to say that the Muslim Ummah today is undergoing a social transition throughout Europe – one that seeks to participate effectively as citizen and as Muslims. As citizens within European nation-states, Muslims co-exist peacefully within a pluralistic society whose secular values – those not Divinely inspired by the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW) – are diametrically at odds with traditional Islamic religious values and at times conflict with them. Muslims are currently adjusting their religious way of life within a European political framework that dictates a separation of religious and governmental authority, which allows the political state to regulate religious expression whenever it is threatened.

French Muslims, for example, are anxiously adjusting to European political realities. The French government has passed laws that forbid Muslim girls to wear the hijab in French public schools – a “religious form of expression” – that conflicts with French secular republican values that informs effective social integration. In other words, French Muslims are asked to be “French” primarily as citizens and “Muslims” secondarily, in that order. These somewhat contradictory tensions – that of citizen and Muslim – are magnified tremendously in France where Muslims perceive themselves to be marginalized by poverty and discrimination; and for many French Muslims, their response has been to insulate themselves as a form of protest.

Enter Tariq Ramadan, who suspects that the French Muslim community is not at peace with itself. Many Muslims, he insists, perceive Western domination as an alienating force. Consequently, many French Muslims cling to the most rigid interpretation of Islam, thinking that the more anti-Western they become, the better Muslims they will be. “That is proof not of a crisis in Islam, but an identity crisis among Muslims”.

Who is Tariq Ramadan? Secular France can’t seem to determine whether he is friend or foe. He asks Muslims to remain as Muslims within their community, but remain citizens outside of it. He believes that Islam furnishes a political and spiritual worldview, but uncritically embraces Western secularism.

Tariq Ramadan earned a master’s degree in French Literature and two doctorates, one in Islamic studies and the other in philosophy; his master’s thesis centered on the works of the German philosopher Frederich Neitzsche, who single-handedly criticized the entire system of Western metaphysics and rationality and exposed Europe’s moral and spiritual decadence. Neitzsche’s critique of Western reason fired his imagination. Tariq Ramadan is convinced that Europe needs Islam. His solution for Europe: A European Islam.

Ramadan’s Islamic vision is no secret. He is the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, who founded the Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt in 1928. The group’s doctrine is fiercely anti-colonial, religiously and morally conservative and economically redistributionist, and has inspired a plethora of Islamist movements throughout the Arab world. His grandfather was assassinated during Egypt’s anti-colonial revolt in 1949. In the mid-1950s, Gamal Abdal Nasser, Egypt’s nationalist president, cracked down hard on the Muslim Brothers – now referred to as the Muslim Brotherhood – during which members were hanged, exiled, or forced underground. Even though the Muslim Brotherhood continued to exercise considerable spiritual and political influence in the Arab world, it has since become tolerated in Egypt because Mamoun e-Hodeibi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who died recently in Egypt, advocated reconciliation with the government. Unlike his grandfather, however, Tariq Ramadan is a moderate.

There are many Western critics in Europe, especially in France, who counter that Tariq Ramadan is no Muslim moderate; he is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” whose sole aim is to inculcate a softer form of militant Islam. On explosive political and religious issues relating to the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, he is reported to have said that Palestinian violence against Israel is “empirically reprehensible, but contextually understandable”. His critics, notably the American apologist Daniel Pipes, say that he does not take sides on any issue at all, but as this quote demonstrates, Tariq Ramadan’s observations are reasonable.

Tariq Ramadan committed himself to living in Europe and began publishing books and lectures. His publishing house runs a mosque in Siene St. Denis, a Muslim neighborhood outside Paris. He also lives in Geneva, teaches philosophy Fribourg and Switzerland, and flies nearly once a month to the United States. Presently he is visiting professor of religion at Oxford University.

Frederich Neitzsche is by far the only modern European philosopher who refused to recognize a liberal political state, and criticized Christianity for “slithering” its tentacles into the moral fabric of modern society so as to render individuals “politically impotent” and deprived of the highest levels of creativity. His visceral critique of modern democratic institutions provided a justification for political violence within the Muslim world. Nonetheless, Tariq Ramadan seems to exhort future generations of Muslims to re-discover the place of Muslim faith-in-reason within a European framework

http://themuslim.ca/2008/05/02/who-is-tariq-ramadan/

Picture: http://muslimvoices.org/tariq-ramadan-considered-muslim-intellectual/