<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Puppet and Puppeteer</title></head><body> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">Muslim Scheduled to Teach at Notre Dame Has Visa Revoked</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000"> <br>  <br> >From Associated Press<br> <br> SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Acting at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. government has revoked the work visa of a Muslim scholar who had been scheduled to teach this fall at the University of Notre Dame.</font><br> <font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000"></font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000">Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen who has been criticized for alleged links to Islamic militants and for remarks branded as anti-Semitic, was supposed to begin teaching Tuesday, the first day of the fall semester.</font></div> <div><font face="Charcoal" size="-2" color="#000000"><br> "This is unjustified," Ramadan said in a telephone interview. He charged that the revocation was "coming from political pressure."<br> <br> Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security, said the work visa was revoked because of a section in federal law that applies to aliens who have used a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity."<br> <br> He said the revocation was based on "public safety or national security interests," but would not elaborate.<br> <br> "We absolutely don't agree with that," Notre Dame spokesman Matthew Storin said. "If we did, we would not have hired him." Storin described Ramadan as a distinguished scholar and a voice for moderation in the Muslim world.<br> <br> Ramadan said he went through a rigorous two-month background check before he was granted the work visa, adding that if he had any ties to Islamic militants, the visa would not have been granted.<br> <br> Ramadan has taught at the Universities of Geneva and Fribourg, both in Switzerland, and has gained a following among European Muslims, in his attempts to show how Islamic values are compatible with those of secular European society.<br> <br> But terrorism expert Yehudit Barsky of the American Jewish Committee charged that Ramadan had tried to bring legitimacy to Islamic militants.</font></div> </body> </html>