[lbo-talk] Tariq Ramadan and Islamic Socialism

Sean Andrews cultstud76 at gmail.com
Fri Feb 16 08:41:36 PST 2007


On 2/16/07, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ian Buruma is hardly an ideal writer to introduce Tariq Ramadan's
> ideas to the American audience, but this ultimately (if very much
> grudgingly) sympathetic portrayal of Ramadan's work, published in the
> New York Times Magazine as well as the International Herald Tribune,
> may serve to pique some open-minded people's interest. -- Yoshie
>
> <http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/04/europe/web.0204tariq.php>
> Tariq Ramadan has an identity issue
> By IAN BURUMA
> Sunday, February 4, 2007
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This section of the article may also spur some people's memories.

<blockquote> Speaking about his grandfather, Ramadan observed: "People say that his ideas formed the basis of Al Qaeda. This is not true." The spiritual father of revolutionary Islam, according to Ramadan and others, was another Egyptian Muslim Brother, Sayyid Qutb, who advocated a holy war against the idolatrous West. Ramadan pointed out that "Qutb actually joined the Muslim Brotherhood after my grandfather was killed. They didn't even know each other. My position on Hassan al-Banna is that he was much closer to Muhammad Abduh. He was in favor of a British-style parliamentary system, which was not against Islam."

This may or may not be an accurate representation of Hassan al-Banna, but it tells us a lot about the way Ramadan presents himself. Reconciling what seems hard to reconcile is what makes him an interesting and sometimes baffling figure. It is why the University of Notre Dame appointed him as Henry R. Luce professor of religion, conflict and peace building. Prof. R. Scott Appleby, the man who did everything he could to bring Ramadan to South Bend, Ind., was hardly naïve about Ramadan's European reputation. Over breakfast in New York recently, he told me: "He's doing something extraordinarily difficult if not impossible, but it needs to be done. He is accused of being Janus-faced. Well, of course he presents different faces to different audiences. He is trying to bridge a divide and bring together people of diverse backgrounds and worldviews. He considers the opening he finds in his audience. Ramadan is in that sense a politician. He cultivates various publics in the Muslim world on a variety of issues; he wants to provide leadership and inspiration. The reason we wanted him is precisely because he's got his ear to the ground of the Muslim world."

And this may also have been the reason that the U.S. State Department revoked his work visa in July 2004. Ramadan had already sent all his family possessions to South Bend. His children had been enrolled in local schools. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Ramadan was denied entry under a provision of the Patriot Act that bars foreigners from the U.S. who "endorse or espouse terrorist activity." After the A.C.L.U and various academic groups contested the government's refusal to process Ramadan's application for another visa, a federal judge ruled that the State Department had to make a decision. The State Department refused to issue another visa on the grounds that Ramadan had donated roughly $900 to two European organizations that give aid to Palestinians. The organizations were, and still are, legitimate charities in Europe but since Ramadan made his donations have been blacklisted in the U.S. for supposedly giving money to Hamas. The A.C.L.U. lawyer, Jameel Jaffer, told me that Ramadan had fallen foul of the same principle that used to bar Communists from coming to the U.S.: his politics are not welcome. <close blockquote>

Ramadan was invited to speak at a conference here at GMU in the spring of 2005 but was unable to attend due to these travel restrictions.

As for Buruma, I think the last two paragraphs say it all about what the "choices" are which are (or which Buruma says are) available to young muslims looking for role models:

<blockquote> I thought of the Somali-born Dutch activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, as charismatic in her way as Ramadan. Having had her fill of controversies in the Netherlands (she wrote the film "Submission," which led to the murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist), she now works at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Her mission, too, is to spread universal values. She, too, speaks of reform. But she has renounced her belief in Islam. She says that Islam is backward and perverse. As a result, she has had more success with secular non-Muslims than with the kind of people who shop in Brick Lane.

Ramadan offers a different way, which insists that a reasoned but traditionalist approach to Islam offers values that are as universal as those of the European Enlightenment. From what I understand of Ramadan's enterprise, these values are neither secular, nor always liberal, but they are not part of a holy war against Western democracy either. His politics offer an alternative to violence, which, in the end, is reason enough to engage with him, critically, but without fear. <end blockquote>

The AEI, as we all know, is the pinnacle of "universal values." I wonder which side Jahanbegloo--as Yoshi points out, a former National Endowment for Democracy fellow--would say more accurately represents the "soft universalism" he sees as necessary for dialogue with the West? My suspicion would be that Ali would win hands down, despite what seems to be a greater commitment to pluralism as Berlin describes it on the part of Ramadan. Then again, my sense of Jahanbegloo is that he's a bit more open minded than those that think we have to choose sides.

s



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