Fire Tariq Ramadan!

Pipes on "Islamophobia"

Daniel Pipes discusses "Islamophobia" in FrontPageMag today.

Olivier Guitta on TCS

Olivier Guitta has a new article on TechCentralStation re: Brother Tariq: "Inviting Trouble."

More on OU Jihadi

Jawa report has more on the OU bombing here.

Splodeydopes at U. of Oklahoma

Zombie has an excellent page set up covering the apparent suicide bombing that happened at the U. of Oklahoma on Oct. 1, 2005.

Good thing DOS kept Brother Tariq out of the country as Fr. Jenkins would have a lot of explaining to do if somebody put a big hole into the west side of ND Stadium.

Don't miss this event

UK picks Tariq Ramadan for anti-terror panel

Pathetic.

Wonder how many times he'll say "I condemn terror, but -"

He's going to Oxford

Steven Plaut comments on the hiring of Brother Tariq by St. Anthony's College of Oxford at Moonbat Central. More on the hiring here at Dhimmi Watch.

Guess somebody is going to have to change the words to Rule Britannia. Isn't dhimmitude equivalent to slavery?

Article on the Muslim Brotherhood

From Chiesa: From Cologne to the Conquest of Europe: How the Muslim Brotherhood is Challenging the Pope. The article includes a synopsis of Said Ramadan's influence in Munich.

OT: Good article from an alum

Good article today at the American Thinker by Paul Shlichta, class of 1952.

Referral from Google

TypePad, which hosts this blog, has a tool in which you can check the links from which visitors to this blog were referred. Today I noticed that somebody visited this site after it was listed in a list of Google results for the search phrase "ARE STRIPCLUBS haram". I'm at a loss regarding what to say in response, considering Mohammed Atta and his buddies were at a strip club in the period prior to the 9/11 attack.

Islamists Infest Nazi Mosque

Yes, it sounds like a bad B-movie, but read about it at Moonbat Central.

article - Abuse of Britain

In an article titled The Abuse of Britain, The Sun Newspaper had some choice words regarding a conference in the UK which is to feature Brother Tariq and which the London police force is helping to fund (thanks to Little Green Footballs):

Ramadan is no ranting Abu Hamza or Omar Bakri. He’s more dangerous than that.

He is a soft-spoken professor whose moderate tones present an acceptable, “reasonable” face of terror to impressionable young Muslims.

In one breath he condemns the horrors in London and Madrid. But through seemingly reasoned argu- ments he justifies similar attacks where Muslims are oppressed.

Ramadan has muddied the waters enough for the Met and ACPO to believe him a reasonable man. They should not be fooled.

And rank-and-file bobbies, who reacted with such extraordinary courage last Thursday, will rightly be outraged if the Force has any involvement with him.

Sponsoring community projects is entirely laudable. Giving the oxygen of publicity to an apologist for terrorism is not. Especially with the Tube and bus bombings so fresh in our minds.

The police must pull the plug without delay. And Home Secretary Charles Clarke must move swiftly to ban Professor Ramadan from our shores.

We don’t need scholars justifying suicide bombers and analysing for us the grievances that drive them.

We don’t need lectures on understanding the monsters who slaughtered innocent Londoners.

To hell with them. And to hell with this professor too.

(emphasis in original article)

Rule Britannia

May the Lord help the people of the British Isles and may they never forget 7/7/2005.

They've resisted the Romans, the Norsemen, the Spanish, the French, the Little Corsican who would be Emperor, the Kaiser, the Fuhrer, and the Soviets. The Britons won't be slaves, as "Rule Britannia" tells us, and they won't be dhimmis under some 7th century Islamofascist dystopia.

And if you are coming here from Islamophobia-Watch, Qaradawi is a radical Islamist Jooo-hater

7th Century Jewish Comedians

James Arlandson's article Muhammad and the Jews appeared today in The American Thinker. It is a very well written and detailed (all sources are listed) article concerning Muhammad's dealings with the Jewish residents in Yathrib (now Medina) in the 7th century.

After reading Mr. Arlandson's article, I couldn't help but remember a quote from the Ayatollah Assahola Ruhollah Khomeini - namely, that humor isn't allowed in Islam.

And from the article, it looks like it wasn't allowed in 7th century Arabia, either:

In April 624 (or a month or two later) after his victory at the Battle of Badr in March, a battle which made his position in Medina more secure, Muhammad expelled the one clan that dominated the trades in Medina: Qaynuqa. One day a Muslim woman was conducting business in this Jewish section, and some Jews (or one Jew) fastened her skirt to a nail. When she stood up, she was exposed. A Muslim happened to be present and witnessed the practical joke and the ridicule, and killed one of the pranksters, who avenged their friend’s death in turn.

How many times have the Three Stooges - Moses "Moe Howard" Horwitz, Lawrence "Larry Fine" Feinberg, and Jerome "Curly Howard" Horwitz - pulled this prank? Geez, can't anybody take a joke?

Looks like the slapstick comedian of the 7th century also had some a co-humorist:

For example, shortly before Muhammad’s surprise victory at Badr, Abu Bakr, one of [Mohammed's] chief companions, barged into a Jewish school, led by two rabbis. Abu Bakr called one of the rabbis “to fear God and become a Muslim because he knew that Muhammad was the apostle of God who had brought the truth from Him and that they would find it written in the Torah and the Gospel.” One of the rabbis sassed him, saying that Allah must be poor, if Muhammad has to borrow money from the Jews. Enraged, Abu Bakr struck him hard on the face, telling him: “Were it not for the treaty between us I would cut off your head, you enemy of Allah!”

Personally, I can easily see Jacob "Rodney Dangerfield" Cohen making this joke. He could've added his signature "I don't get no respect!" line after the slap and the threatened beheading. Jacob "Jackie Mason" Maza and Melvin "Mel Brooks" Kaminsky would've been strong seconds. Maybe if Jerry Seinfeld had been the rabbi, none of this would've happened, because I'm sure Jerry would've had a subtle rebuke that Abu Bakr would've missed.

Knowing that women always claim "sense of humor" is so important, it's easy to see why Mohammed Atta and his buddies had to go to strip clubs to get girls to talk to them. It probably also explains why the Iranian nutjobs want to keep pretty Persian girls like Dineh Mohajer and Catherine Bell covered up all the time.

Oh, and by the way, I can take a joke, and will glad tell/hear any about my ethnicity.

Tariq Ramadan Unveiled by Lionel Favrot

Isabelle Tahar Miller reviewed Lionel Favrot's new book, Tariq Ramadan Unveiled (Lyon Mag Hors Serie, 2004, 297 pp.) in the Summer, 2005 issue of the Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum.

Ms. Miller's review includes the following:

Favrot presents many examples of Ramadan’s contradictory pronouncements to disparate audiences, describing how he adroitly expands his influence among the intellectual Left and the Islamist Right. In public literature, Ramadan writes “A Muslim resident or citizen of a country must observe the laws of the country where he is established.” However, in audio tapes he distributes within the Muslim community, he declares that a Muslim can only observe the laws of the country if they are not in principal in opposition to Islam. And when asked whether the stoning of women shall be banned, Tamadan uses a subterfuge, calling for a moratorium.

Tracing Ramadan’s ascension to prominence, Favrot observes how he manipulated his European cultural milieu to achieve Islamist goals – for example, his appropriation of the French ban on the wearing of the hijabs (headscarves) by female students in public schools. He also notes how, to non-Muslims who criticize his Islamist goals, Ramadan responds with accusations of “Islamophobia,” often successfully thwarting critics. And to moderate Muslims who criticize his agenda, Ramadan replies that they have sold their souls to the West.

Favrot’s investigation confirms many of the suspicions of Ramadan’s troubling personality and ulterior motives. By exploiting the rights of free expression that prevail in the West, he urges legions of young Muslims to reject the very model presented by European society.

(note the appearance of the ubiquitous "Islamophobia" allegation)

Add Favrot to the list of European journalists who are finally exposing Brother Tariq for who he really is.

One last note

And one last note - Tariq Ramadan is not coming to the USA, so this site should probably be retitled at some point.

What a brilliant (ahem) retort

Looks like "Bob Pitt" from Islamophobia watch just earned an "A" in his formal logic class . "Bob Pitt" posted a reply to the response to his "Islamophobia" allegation below.

Instead of replying to the main point of the reply - that exposing one person as an extremist is not tantamount to "fear" or "hatred" of an entire group of people, we have this:

And this from a blogger whose response to Tariq Ramadan's observation that Muslims have an increasing presence in Europe was: "I'm sure Theo van Gogh is happy about that. So are the victims of the gang-rapes in Sweden."

The killer of van Gogh and the rapists in Sweden are exactly the type of extremists that buy Ramadan's taped lectures. If the "increasing presence" of Muslims in Europe consisted solely of moderates (like those moderate European Muslims described below who fear Ramadan's influence) I doubt van Gogh would have been assassinated. The problem is not Muslim immigration to Europe but is instead the influence of radicals and their sympathizers such as Ramadan. A moderate such as Bassam Tibi (living in Germany) saying "moderate Muslims have an increasing presence in Europe" is a far different statement.

Pitt continues:

Bizarrely we are told that the Islamophobia Watch collective "must be Islamophobes themselves, considering they probably have a low opinion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali".

Well, speaking personally, I have an extremely low opinion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. However, given that she has publicly renounced Islam and spends her time attacking her former co-religionists, it's difficult to see how contempt for this appalling right-winger, who plays a major role in stoking up anti-Muslim racism in the Netherlands, amounts to Islamophobia.

Wow, a black woman "stoking up" anti-Muslim racism. Last I checked, "racism" was directed at those of a different race, not religion. Furthermore, using "Pitt's" logic, "he" must be a racist because he has an "extremely low opinion" of one black woman.

Ali attacks extremists and radicals, which is why she has earned their ire. She was chosen as an example because she is well-known. This example does not change the statement that those who cry "Islamophobia" are generally the first to attack moderate Muslims or Muslims calling for a reinterpretation of their religion.

Take out "Ayann Hirsi Ali" and put in "Fouad Ajami" or "Stephen Schwartz" and the statement still rings true.

As pointed out in the first reply, this site has numerous links to moderate Muslims and moderate organizations. One cannot be an "Islamophobe" while at the same time supporting these people and organizations. Using Pitt's logic, one must conclude that Martin Luther King was a racist because he opposed the more radical elements of the civil rights movement such as the Black Panthers or Nation of Islam (I suppose that would make King an "Islamophobe" as well).

Of course, this brilliance should be expected from a website that thinks Qaradawi is some sort of victim of the Neocons and the Jooooos instead of a radical.

New music video - hurry!

The new Jessica Simpson video may be viewed here. Brother Tariq and his Islamist ilk would ban this for multiple reasons under a sharia state (no burkhas on the women, music is haram, alcohol is haram, red-staters not good dhimmis, etc.) so be sure to watch it now.

Steve Emerson on Brother Tariq

Investigative reporter Steve Emerson, the author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, has investigated radical Islamists in the U.S. for over 10 years. In 1994 he produced a documentary report detailing the seditious calls for the downfall of the U.S. made by such jihadists. Emerson has been threated with death numerous times by these creeps because of his efforts. He is an unsung hero in the war on Islamist radicalism "terror."

Mr. Emerson has a great article on the Brother Tariq Affair: Tariq Ramadan: The Case of the Grand Deception (How easily an Islamic militant fooled the U.S. media). Here are some excerpts:

First, Mr. Ramadan is not any more a moderate than David Duke would be considered a moderate on race relations. The only difference is that David Duke is not smart enough to speak in two languages, cloak his racism under the mantle of pluralism or enjoy the witting collaboration of the media. In several interviews given to various European publications over the last few years, Mr. Ramadan has repeatedly provided a justification for terrorist acts against U.S. allies such as Israel and Russia and, more recently, against the U.S. itself. Asked by the Italian magazine Panorama if the killing of civilians is right, Mr. Ramadan unambiguously responded that "In Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, there is a situation of oppression, repression and dictatorship. It is legitimate for Muslims to resist fascism that kills the innocent." When asked if car bombings against U.S. forces in Iraq were legitimate, Professor Ramadan responded that "Iraq was colonized by the Americans. The resistance against the army is just."

Somebody should mention this to The Fighting Irish Battalion. I'm sure those students would be happy to hear that a hire for the Kroc Center felt that Islamonazis shooting at them was "just."

Emerson continues:

Still, the Ramadan fan club in the U.S. continued to portray the exclusion of Mr. Ramadan as part of an anti-Muslim campaign; the charge of anti-Muslim racism, part of the larger orchestration by radical Muslims to portray themselves as the victims of hate, has been mastered perfectly, requiring only the collaboration of the American media. At the height of the controversy last year, The New York Times opined that "American Muslim groups questioned the government's ability or willingness to distinguish between what they see as Muslim moderates like Mr. Ramadan and extremists." But who were these American Muslim groups, portrayed by the Times as intellectually honest arbiters of who really is a moderate? None other than off-shoots and branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic radical movement that gave birth to al Qaeda and Hamas, and whose founder was none other than Hassan Al-Banna, the grandfather of Mr. Ramadan.

Oh that charge of Islamophobia again!!! Let's continue:

Title 8 U.S. Code Section 1182 requires the exclusion from the U.S. of any alien who has "used his position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity, or to persuade others to support terrorist activity or a terrorist organization." The provision seems written to fit Ramadan's case. The entry into the United States of any foreign national is, by law, a privilege and not a right. It is preposterous to ask the U.S. government to disregard its own laws and to grant this privilege to a person who openly condones attacks against U.S. forces and interests.

Aside from the legal justification for barring Mr. Ramadan, the moral reason for keeping Mr. Ramadan out is the same reason why the U.S. has for years denied visas to neo-Nazi proponents from Western Europe. It is not only the access to the United States that both neo-Nazis and Mr. Ramadan have sought. Rather it is the official imprimatur of the U.S. government, an effective declaration of political legitimacy attending to the granting of the visa. And that is precisely same legitimacy that allowed militant Islamic groups to operate for so long in the United States.

Linked from Islamophobia Watch

Well well well. An article painting Brother Tariq as a victim of Islamophobia linked to this blog. The article appeared at Islamophobia Watch and was written by [a likely dhimmi named] "Bob Pitt." This website states that its mission is "to document material in the public domain which advoces a fear and hatred of the Muslim peoples of the world and Islam as a religion."

Anyone with more than two brain cells and who can read can see the links on this blog to the websites of a number of moderate Muslims and Islamic organizations. This blog contains statements by American and European Muslims who view Tariq Ramadan as an apologist for radical Islamists, making him a threat to moderate Muslims, Western Europe, and the USA. If this blog is allegedly promoting "Islamophobia," it must be doing a very poor job by including these links and this information.

Extrapolating a "hatred" of an entire group of people from the dislike of one individual is an insidious logical step. Using this standard, I suppose we all engage in Russophobia for disapproving of Stalin and Sinophobia for disapproving of Mao Zedong. Oh, and using this extrapolation, I assume that "Bob Pitt" and his ilk at Islamophobia Watch must be Islamophobes themselves, considering they probably have a low opinion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Islamophobia Watch lists eight elements of "Islamophobia." Let's address them, shall we?

1. Unresponsive to change? Ever hear of Ataturk?
2. Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Khaldun all had a notable and important contribution to Western Civilization.
3. The Islamonazi barbarians killing innocents are the ones "barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist," not the millions of moderates who disapprove of them.
4. See #3.
5. Islamism is a radical political ideology bent on destroying the liberal order and imposing a utopian vision of the 7th century. This differs from the religion of Islam.
6. Then why do so many Americans sympathisize with the Palestinian issue and want to see a two-state solution?
7. Muslims in the USA are hardly excluded from mainstream society and discriminated against. They have far more freedoms, including the freedom to practice religion, in the USA than in any country in the Middle East.
8. Hostility towards Muslims is not "normal," but hostility towards Islamists bent on destroying the USA and imposing a shari'a state is completely rational.

Now, will Brother Tariq take a "are you an anti-Semite?" quiz?

Allegations of "Islamophobia" made by goose-stepping Islamist sympathizers to equate any critique of radical Islamists with hatred of an entire group of people. This borders on calumny.

"HASAN, CHOP!!!"

A long time ago, Warner Brothers made a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which Bugs made a wrong turn at Albuquerque and ended up in Arabia. He successfully eluded Hasan, a sword-wielding jihadi whose misunderstood cries of "HASAN, CHOP!" obviously referred to Hasan's quest for moral self-improvement and not his desire to turn Bugs into hasenpfeffer. The episode ended with Daffy Duck clutching a pearl ("I'm a happy miser!") after a djinn shrank him down to a miniscule size.

I was shocked to find these pictures from this episode online. I was sure that CAIR and their ilk would've tried to ban them as "insensitive" to the types of people who think lopping off the heads of innocents was decreed from on high. Note to CAIR, MSA, Brother Tariq, et al.: it's a cartoon. What happened to this man wasn't. If you are the type of creep who is offended by a silly toon from fifty years ago, but run to Gitmo to defend real war criminals, you might be a Moonbat.

GWOYKW Blog

Found a new blog today - "The Global War On You Know Who" - at Blogspot, my old haunts from long ago.

BTW read Huffington's Toast, very funny.

More from Olivier Guitta

Olivier Guitta in The Weekly Standard - The Islamization of French Schools. Scary stuff . . . unless you are Brother Tariq.

His comments on Pope Benedict XVI

The BBC had some comments of Brother Tariq regarding the election of Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. Here we go (hope you have a strong stomach):

It is really important to the Muslim community how the Pope deals with the intra community dialogue, how he deals with different views and trends within the Catholic Church, because this will give us an idea of how he will deal with other faiths. The perception is that he is not so interested in diversity, he wants a return to the fundamentals, to what he perceives as the essentials of Catholic teaching.

Another concern is that Pope Benedict XVI has a more narrow approach to the religious content of Western societies, that he wants to return to the centrality of Christianity in Europe.

We Muslims are building our presence in Europe and we are worried that the Pope will reduce what he sees as a struggle against secularism there to a struggle between Christianity and secularism. He may forget that there is a great legacy of spirituality coming from other religions and this could be a very dangerous reduction of our common roots and our common hopes.

I have news for this jihadiot. First, he is a complete hypocrite for asserting that Ben 16th desires a "return to the fundamentals," considering that Brother Tariq is all in favor of muslims returning to the "fundamentals" of the texts in interpreting how they should live in Western societies.

Second, Judeo-Christian humanism was the driving force in Europe from the Middle Ages until the Enlightenment. Aside from tranmitting Aristotle and other Greek texts to Europe (and letting al-Ghazali, one of the biggest jerks of all time, prevent them from exercising appropriate influence in muslim lands), Islam's effect on the culture of Europe (aside from, say, destroying the Balkans, forcing slavs into soldier-slavery, slaughtering Armenians, etc.) was nowhere near as great as the effect of Judeo-Christianity. So what is so wrong with asking Europe to recognize its cultural heritage in, say, acknowledging it in the EU Constitution?

Third, "we muslims are building our presence in Europe." I'm sure Theo van Gogh is happy about that. So are the victims of the gang-rapes in Sweden.

Instead of all this whining, Tariq - were he indeed a moderate - would tell European muslims "perhaps we should follow the lead of Pope Ben. 16th, realize that religion is an important influence in public life but cannot be used as a basis for a theocracy."

ND should thank its lucky stars that this fool was kept out of the country.

Tariq's cousin gets his 72 "virgins"

On February 28, 2005, the Jordanian Raid (Ra'ed) Mansour al-Banna blew himself up in the city of Hilla, killing 130 people. After the attack, Iraq pulled its ambassador from Jordan. This is yet another example of the foriegn jihadis making their way to Iraq to prevent the Iraqis from trying to determine how they - not some foreign Islamist nutjobs - will govern their country.

Raid/Ra'ed was a grandson of Hasan al-Banna, which means he was a cousin of Tariq Ramadan. Thanks a lot, Hasan, for giving the world such a great set of grandkids.

JihadWatch posted two articles concerning the story here and here, and dippy Time magazine also had an article trying to "understand" Ra'ed al-Banna here.

Looks like Raid/Ra'ed will get his 72 virgins, or his 72 raisins if you read Christoph Luxenberg.

Good articles today

Some good articles appeared today:

A Vatican Apology for the Crusades? by Robert Spencer of JihadWatch

Eurabian Nights by Olivier Guitta

"La Civiltà Cattolica" Breaks the Ceasefire by Sandro Magister (not exactly new, but just found it today)

The Fighting Islamists of Notre Dame

Thomas Ryan, at David Horowitz's Front Page Magazine, has published The Fighting Islamists of Notre Dame. It is a very damning article concerning the fools at the Kroc Institute. Of special note is Mr. Ryan's description of Scott Appleby going ga-ga over Brother Tariq:

In truth, Ramadan, like the late Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, is a “master of double talk,” relaying to Western ears an amicable message of unity between Western and Muslim peoples, but expressing his true feelings of Western hatred to his Muslim brethren. Upon offering Ramadan the position at the Institute, Director Appleby stated, “We find him invaluable because he takes the risk of talking to both worlds. If we are going to avoid a violent conflict with radical Muslims, we will do so by taking the risk of understanding their point of view, their criticisms of the West, and also having the authority to talk with them.”

One wonders how utterly stupid an "intellectual" can be. It brings to mind George Orwell's quote stating that no idea is so foolish as that at least one intellectual won't believe it.

Every time a scholar such as Samuel Huntington, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, or Bernard Lewis attempts to "understand" Islamists they are summarily dismissed by the likes of Appleby. Meanwhile, has-been discredited "intellectuals" such as John Esposito are lauded, despite the fact, as Martin Kramer has pointed out, that Esposito has been completely wrong in the past regarding his interpretations and analyses of Islamic fundamentalism. Esposito and his ilk are as bad as Michel Foucault, who continuted to support the Ayatollah Khomeini even when it was apparent that the man was a brutal totalist. And I'd like to see how Appleby proposes to "dialogue" with psychopaths who have an absolute worldview and who allow no dissenting opinions whatsoever.

Mr. Ryan's article is great. He also discusses the "academic convocation" in the fall of 2003 when all incoming freshmen were required to read Seyyed Hossein Nasr's The Heart of Islam. The article mentions a letter published in The Observer questioning the assignment of Nasr's book. The convocation ignored thinkers like Lewis; instead, according to Mr. Ryan:

Appleby justified this on the grounds that “The idea behind the summer reading requirement and academic convocation was not to provide even one percent of the knowledge of the Middle East that professors...provide in their courses – that would be impossible in so short an assignment. Rather, the goal was to demonstrate how scholars think about such issues.” Actual scholars, rather than activists like Appleby, would normally think about such controversial issues by presenting more than one side of the argument. But that is too much to expect from an ideological institute like Kroc.

Monk should be ashamed of the Kroc Institute - of course, he's on his way out, so perhaps Fr. Jenkins will do something.

Brother Tariq is NOT a victim

The American Thinker published Tariq Ramadan Is Not a Victim by Olivier Guitta in late December. It was a response to Brother Tariq's "Woe is me!" rant in the L.A. Times in which he blamed the PATRIOT Act and the erosion of "academic freedom" for his denial of entry into the USA (of course, let's see Brother Tariq's hearty endorsement of "academic freedom" when a scholar dares to question the authenticity of some passages of the Quran).

As Mr. Guitta points out - and this point has been made earlier in this blog:

Mr. Ramadan pretends he is being attacked because of his lineage. . . . . Most European Secret Service agencies and others, including Antoine Sfeir, the very knowledgeable editor of the French magazine specializing in the Middle East, Les Cahiers de L’Orient, are also convinced that, at the end of the 1980’s, the Muslim Brotherhood picked Tariq Ramadan to be their European representative. But most importantly, Ramadan’s view of the world is identical to that of the Muslim Brotherhood. He is a fervent supporter of his grandfather’s and father’s views, and constantly teaches their precepts to young Muslims. And that is why he is being pointed out and not simply because he is Al Banna’s grandson.

Cry me a river, Brother Tariq. The problem isn't that he is being condemned for the sins of his fathers. The problem is that he is actively promoting the jihadist ideology of the organization his ancestors created. Brother Tariq attempts to have it both ways - disavowing his lineage when trying to appear as a teddy bear to Western elites, but using his grandfather as "street cred" in front of radical Muslims.

Speaking of the double-talk, as Mr. Guitta continues:

Lots of prominent moderate Muslims are also accusing Ramadan of double talk and hijacking Islam for a dangerous project. Most of his detractors are coincidentally Muslim. For instance, the head of the French Muslim Council and head of the Paris Mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, declared recently, “when one invites Tariq Ramadan, it is not to listen to what Allah and the angels said; Ramadan is the vehicle of fundamentalist Islam.”

Hmmm. I doubt that the head of the French Muslim Council is a Neocon or a Joooo intend on discrediting poor Brother Tariq.

Mr. Guitta also mentions Caroline Fourest:

Ramadan pretends in his Los Angeles Times piece that none of his detractors have read his books or articles. But unfortunately for him, in the just released book Brother Tariq, Caroline Fourest, a French specialist on fundamentalism, methodically studied every single book he wrote, but even more importantly, his tapes, which are sold in the tens of thousands each year. She exposes Ramadan for what he is: a dangerous Islamist. Her conclusion is crystal clear: “Ramadan is a war leader.”

Read it all. Thankfully somebody in the government had the courage to keep this dangerous man out of the USA.

HASTA LA VISTA!

He's not coming to South Bend (I don't mean Jon Gruden). From the U. of Notre Dame website:

Tariq Ramadan, whose failure to obtain a U.S. visa prevented his teaching at the University of Notre Dame this fall, has resigned his faculty appointment, citing the stress on him and his family from the uncertainty of their situation, R. Scott Appleby, director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, announced today.

Nothing on The Observer yet. The students are probably too busy reading about the new coach, Charlie Weis.

And from the Associated Press:

"I'm abandoning the idea of moving to the United States," Tariq Ramadan told The Associated Press from Geneva. "I want to maintain my dignity." . . . "This is an obstacle to academic freedom of expression," [Ramadan] said.

Oh, Professor Ramadan, academic censorship is so terrible - unless it is censoring Voltaire's Mahomet, non? (see below)

Daniel Pipes has voiced his opinion on the resignation:

I was surprised to learn today that Tariq Ramadan has abandoned his attempt to teach at Notre Dame University [sic]. Given that the State Department was openly rooting for him to try again, given that the Department of Homeland Security questions were excluded from his immigration interview in Basel, given that the higher education and related lobbies were pulling for him to be allowed in, it seemed only a matter of time until he would be permitted entry to the United States to take up the university position. 

That he has formally resigned from Notre Dame suggests just how solid the DHS evidence against him is. And this, by the way, does not surprise me. A senior DHS official looked me hard in the eyes a few weeks ago and assured me, "The evidence we have is damning."

I'll put a link to this article, featuring Olivier Clement, but a summary will have to wait.

This blog doesn't really have a purpose anymore - now that its sine qua non is [temporarily] realized - but I'm going to keep it up and, possibly, will eventually post all of the other material that never made it up.

David Hale or Tariq Ramadan?

David Hale, chairman of Prince Street Capital Management, had an article in the Nov 29 issue of Barron's titled An Economic Opening: Promoting free markets would help spread democracy in the Muslim world. I will quote it at length because the article isn't on the public area of the Barron's website:

The Bush administration launched an initiative a year ago to promote both democracy and free trade in the [Middle East] through bilateral trade agreements. . . . If the Bush administration can follow up with several more countries, it could set the stage for the most far-reaching economic reforms in the Middle East since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

The administration's proposals are ambitious, but based on the experience of East Asia and Latin America, they make sense. . . . The Arab countries became isolated during the modern era because they had authoritarian political regimes that restricted trade and investment. If the Bush administration can move them to liberalize their economic policies, it wouldn't be hard to imagine pressure developing for political reform as well.

The Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa are reminiscent of the state-dominated economies of Eastern Europe before the end of the Cold War. They have large public sectors and weak private sectors. . . . The entire Arab world translates only 330 books annually, compared with 1,500 for Greece alone. Despite great oil wealth, the 300 million people in the Middle East and North Africa have a gross domestic product less than Spain's 39 million people. Economic isolation has been one of the primary factors inhibiting the region's economic development.
. . .
A few Muslim countries, such as Malaysia, are highly integrated into the global economy, but the great majority has long pursued policies restricting foreign trade and investment. . . . The result is a very large imbalance between Muslims' share of world population and of global trade and investment.
. . .
Governments have restrained trade. Half of the 22 members of the Arab league [] do not yet belong to the World Trade Organization. As a result of a decline in oil prices and lack of other export industries, the Middle East's share of world trade fell from 13.5% in 1980 to less than 3.4% in 2000. . . That countries representing about 18% of the world's people account for such a modest share of global trade and foreign direct investment isn't an accident. Many Muslim countries have been suspicious of global economic integration and have pursued policies to isolate themselves. Except for Turkey, Malaysia, Senegal, Mali and Indonesia, there are no democracies in the Muslim world. Anti-globalization economic policies have been associated with regimes hostile to political competition and open elections.
. . .
If the trend toward economic opening continues, it should encourage more tolerance of political freedom and democracy in the Muslim world. Anti-globalization activists refuse to accept the link between trade and democracy. But the history of Latin America and East Asia since the 1970s demonstrates the strong link between political and economic liberalization. The Bush administration should broaden the war against terrorism by pushing ahead with its proposals to end the Muslim world's economic isolation.

(Granted, Hale is not the first person to promote the idea that economic liberalization leads to political liberalization, and of course a person can point to the PRC as a seeming exception to this theory.)

Contrast to Hale's opinion to Tariq Ramadan, a staunch ally of the anti-globalization crowd and a critic of what this group calls neo-liberalism. Of course neo-liberalism has its own flaws (Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises would probably flip out at the idea that a market economy can be imposed "top-down" instead of "bottom-up"), but one can likely infer that free market capitalism is still a target of the anti-globalization crowd.

Tariq's rants re: globalization take up a big chunk of a 24 page chapter in the 226 pages of Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. His analysis is essentially a hysteric version of Immanuel Wallerstein. Tariq's analysis looks even less original considering that Wallerstein included the Muslims of North Africa in The Capitalist World Economy.

If one accepts Hale's argument as true - that integrating Muslim nations into the world economy will promote freedom and reduce extremism - one may conclude that failing to integrate Muslim nations into the world economy may continue to foster the growth of radicalism and Islamism. Tariq Ramadan's anti-globalisation efforts are the path opposite that of Hale. If Hale is correct, then this "moderate" isn't doing much to promote the economic - and hence political - freedom of Muslim nations, which may lead to a further rise in Islamist radicalism.

Frere Tariq to appear at MPAC Convention

JihadWatch.org's Hugh Fitzgerald reports here that the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has invited Tariq Ramadan to speak at their convention, billed as Countering Religious and Political Extremism, in mid-December. According to Mr. Fitzgerald (whose source is Daniel Pipes), Tariq will speak via a videoconference system, so he will not be allowed to enter the USA. Scott Appleby and A. Peter Walshe must be excited by this development - there are facilities at the University which would allow videoconferences, so it is possible that Frere Tariq could still teach there.

Stephen Schwartz had a recent article detailing how this MPAC convention will attack Steve Emerson, author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us. Mr. Emerson also produced a PBS documentary called Jihad in America - back in 1994. Kalid Duran, a moderate Muslim and founder of the Ibn Khaldun Society, states that his participation with Emerson on the production of this documentary helped him earn the ire of organizations like CAIR.

Mr. Fitzgerald also had an earlier article detailing some of Tariq Ramadan's comments at a "dialogue of civilisation" meeting in Prague. Mr. Fitzgerald was kind enough to post the source he used for his article in the comments section of the webpage. Mr. Fitzgerald writes:

Tariq Ramadan has just been at one of those phoney "dialogue of civilisation" meetings in Prague, where he self-assuredly declared that there is no "clash of civilizations" because -- well, because Islam is part of Europe, Muslims are already in Europe, Europe owes so much, historically, to Islam. In other words, we are here, and here to stay, and there is nothing you can do about it.

I doubt that Samuel Huntington would be convinced by Tariq's response to his Clash of Civilizations thesis. On that note, I really have to get up the review of Tariq's Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (in one word: overrated). After reading it, and comparing his writing to that of moderates like Tarek Heggy, I am convinced that Tariq Ramadan is beloved by the leftist academy not for his supposed intellect but because he rails about many of the same issues: capitalism, globalism, entitlements masquerading as rights, etc.

Coach Ty Willingham is fired

Coach Ty Willingham was fired this week. It appears that Jon "Chucky" Gruden, formerly of the Oakland Raiders, will not take the ND job.

No matter what one thinks of Ty's record as a head coach, one cannot deny that he is a decent man, ran a clean college program, and cared about his players. Ty's remarks after he was fired show that he is a class act and a man of integrity. I hope that he lands another head coaching job soon!

Personally, I would rather have a University with a .500 football team and NO Islamonazi sympathizers at the Kroc Institute than a University with the second coming of Knute Rockne and a faculty tainted by the likes of Tariq Ramadan.

David Pryce-Jones in Commentary

David Pryce-Jones, author of The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, mentioned Tariq Ramadan in an article in Commentary called The Islamization of Europe? Here is the relevant excerpt:

The lengths to which apologists for Islamism are prepared to go is nicely illustrated by the case of Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and a popular writer and speaker. As is well known, the American university Notre Dame recently offered Ramadan a professorship, but U.S. immigration authorities have so far rejected his application for a visa. This has elicited some classic examples of fellow-traveling obfuscation from both Americans and Europeans outraged on his behalf. A letter to the Washington Post protesting Ramadan’s treatment undertook to explicate his supposed message to Western Muslims: they “must find common values and build with fellow citizens a society based on diversity and equality.”

Not quite. What Tariq Ramadan has really proposed in his writings and teachings is that Muslims in the West should conduct themselves not as hyphenated citizens seeking to live by “common values” but as though they were already in a Muslim-majority society and exempt on that account from having to make concessions to the faith of others. What Ramadan advocates is a kind of reverse imperialism. In his conception, Muslims in non-Muslim countries should feel themselves entitled to live on their own terms—while, under the terms of Western liberal tolerance, society as a whole should feel obliged to respect that choice. (emphasis added)

So much for the claims that Ramadan is a moderate, for assimilation, or finding a way for Muslims to accomodate themselves to Western societies. The success of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is the furthest thing from his mind.

Of course, considering that Commentary was founded by Norman Podheretz (gasp!) , I suppose A. Peter Walshe will dismiss Mr. Pryce-Jones as a "Likudnik." Never mind that The Closed Circle is brilliant - obviously, since Mr. Pryce-Jones has written in Commentary, anything he says must be suspect to those willing to ignore the fact that Notre Dhimmi has been duped by Mr. Ramadan.

The Alliance for Workers' Liberty on Tariq Ramadan

The Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL) - a socialist organization in Great Britain - had two articles against Tariq Ramadan's scheduled appearances at the European Social Forum (ESF) in October, 2004. The themes of the ESF were "war and peace; democracy and fundamental rights; social justice and solidarity – against privatisation and deregulation, for workers, social and women’s rights; corporate globalisation and global justice; against racism, discrimination and the far right – for equality and diversity; environmental crisis, against neo-liberalism and for sustainable society" - in other words, the ESF is a project of the political left.

In Tariq Ramadan is not our ally, the AWL publishes a translation of a pamphlet distributed by the "Feminist Collective for a Secular Alternative Globalisation" at the 2003 ESF. I couldn't locate an official website for this "Collective," so I will include excerpts from the AWL's translation:

Tariq Ramadan is dangerous not because he is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna . . . but because he has never distanced himself from the ideological heritage of his grandfather, whom he continues to present as the "most influential of the Muslim reformists of the century" [1] when that reformism consisted of wanting to go back to the baseline of Sharia law.
. . .
Equally he does not dispute the right of a man to use conjugal violence, even if he emphasises that the Koran envisages it only as a “last resort” [3].
. . .
Tariq Ramadan is a fundamentalist leader who wants to go back to the baseline of the Koran. His positions are certainly preferable to the obviously fanatical recommendations of some other Islamists. But he locates himself in a reactionary perspective, incompatible with a progressive alternative globalisation, because it is about making men and women live in the terms of a book which is sanctified and decreed timeless although it was written more than 14 centuries ago.
. . .
Tariq Ramadan does not conceal his distaste for rationalism and modernity, even though he is careful to disguise it as an anti-capitalist discourse. "Because they give priority to rationality, efficiency and productivity for progress, our societies are on the brink of the abyss" [5], he explains in his book on The Meeting Point of Civilisations: Which Progress for Which Modernity? It must be understood that his hate of modernity is not only to do with commercialisation but also changing attitudes on the family, on which he explains: "If modernity comes at this price, it will be understood that both the Koran and the Sunna say no to the realisation of this modernisation." (notes on sources are listed at the end of the article)

In ESF rogues' gallery - Tariq Ramadan: not our ally, the AWL cites to an article from the French Marxist quarterly Critique Communiste, which published the following:

A subtle, sophisticated, not to say slippery, speaker and writer, [Ramadan] has constructed a version of Islamic fundamentalism smooth enough to reach out to young, educated, and socially integrated Muslims in Europe. He constructs an ideology which stays loyal to the mainstream Islamic fundamentalism of his grandfather — Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood — never disavowing or contradicting it, while at the same time never sharply disavowing basic secular and democratic values.

In the mainly-Muslim world, [Ramadan] claims, “‘secular’ means ‘dictatorship’, when you look at the historical balance-sheet of political regimes like Turkey, Syria, Tunisia, and others” (Alain Gresh and Tariq Ramadan, L’Islam en question, p181). His alternative? Iran. “The country which has advanced most towards democratic institutionalisation is Iran, out of the orbit of the big powers… In twenty years, Iran has transformed itself more — not only on the political level but also on that of ideas and modes of relating to scriptural references — than any other apparently progressive Muslim country” (p119, 129).

So the AWL, a socialist organization, concludes that Tariq Ramadan is an Islamist. Add the AWL, EuroFeminists, and French Marxists to the list of A. Peter Walshe's "Likudniks" who oppose Tariq Ramadan. Grow up, Professor Walshe. This is a fight between 7th century fundamentalists and the modern world, not some Jewish cabal trying to "oppress" some poor fellow.

Paul Berman on T.R. in Terror and Liberalism

The following excerpts are from Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism:

[Gilles] Kepel has pointed to Tariq Ramadan, the philosopher, as yet another example of the turn toward democratic moderation - though, in this instance, with Ramadan's Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity open before me, I can judge for myself. Ramadan condemns the violence of the Islamist radicals, but, then again, seems to celebrate violence against Israel as a religious duty, "incumbent," in his word, on devout Muslims. The move toward pluralism and tolerance seems a little halting, here. (emphasis added) (softcover p. 158)
. . .
Islamism promised modernization in a version that was going to be distinctly Muslim and not Western, a Koranic modernization; but Islamism's Koran was not, on its face, especially modern. Anyone who reads [Sayyid] Qutb or, from our own day, Tariq Ramadan will notice that these writers, the grand Islamist theoreticians, the super-radical and the not-so-radical, get very prickly on women's rights - an obvious sore point, with them. (softcover, p. 194)

(I haven't read Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity - yet - but will comment on Western Muslims and the Future of Islam soon)

So who is Paul Berman? Is he one of the pro-Sharon "neo-con Likudniks" that Notre Dhimmi prof Peter Walshe blamed for Tariq's denial of entry into the USA in his Observer article last August? No, actually, Paul Berman is a liberal who writes for The New Republic. He has written for the Village Voice, Mother Jones, and Dissent. He belongs to the World Policy Institute. He isn't part of a pro-Israel cabal that professor Walshe seems to blame for the denial of the visa (cue X-Files music for Prof. Walshe). Mr. Berman is a liberal who sees a problem with "reformers" who make apologies for killers and men unwilling to let women have the right to vote.

New Statesman on Tariq Ramadan

The New Statesman, a magazine founded by socialists and is now associated with the British left, profiled Tariq Ramadan in its June 21, 2004 issue (Vol. 17, Iss. 812, p. 32). The article may be purchased in their online archives (just search using "Tariq Ramadan" in the "search for" box). The substance of the article indicates that Ramadan is not a moderate Muslim, is an apologist for Islamists, and hardly a supporter of a secular, pluralistic society.

[Ramadan] has put political Islam at the very top of the political agenda in France, challenging ministers over the banning of the hijab in French schools and defending the application of sharia law in Muslim areas. (emphasis added)
. . .
Although he studied French literature and philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Geneva, Tariq Ramadan chose 19th-century reformist Islam as the subject of his doctoral thesis. Much to the chagrin of his supervisor-who later described him as a "pseudo-intellectual" and "vain opportunist" - the thesis ended up as a hagiography of his grandfather [Hassan al-Bana]. (emphasis added)
. . .
What is clear from Ramadan's writings is that, for young Muslims, integration into western society as it exists is not an option. He refers to the concept of tawhid, faith in the unity of God, which he sees as a universal value. It is the west that has to be integrated into this totality. In other words, he does not see Islam adapting to local conditions - as is the case with many more progressive Islamic thinkers such as Mohammed Taleb or Malek Chebel - but as an extension of the "house of Islam" into the land of the unbelievers. Muslims in Europe should not consider themselves a minority in alien territory but as leaders in the spiritual redemption of the west. (emphasis added)
. . .
At the [cafe in the Grande Mosquee de Pans], the jury is still out on Tariq Ramadan. "He pretends to be a moderate but anyone who has heard his speeches knows that he is a sympathiser with hardliners," says a well-dressed young woman in a disgusted tone of voice. . . . The consensus at the Grande Mosquee, which has always been at considerable remove from hardliners, is that Ramadan is no Martin Luther, but a propagandist for radical Islam. (emphasis added)

Boston Globe profile

The Boston Globe profiled Tariq Ramadan in late 2003. The article is archived at Dhimmi Watch, so you can read it here. According to the Boston Globe article,

Secular France can't seem to decide if Ramadan is friend or foe. He is, after all, an Islamist, meaning that he believes Islam furnishes a political as well as a spiritual worldview. For majority Muslim societies like those of the Middle East, Ramadan envisions a reformed, moderate, but nonetheless Islam-based political and legal system. In the end, such a system would look a lot like Western secular democracy, he says, though its legitimacy would derive from Islamic sources. (emphasis added)

The article continues:

Take, for instance, the harshest Islamic corporal punishments, such as stoning adulterous wives or cutting off the hands of thieves. Ramadan personally finds such penalties unacceptable and un-Islamic. He believes a moratorium should be called on them while Islamic scholars ask themselves three questions: What is in the texts? How does the contemporary context affect how we read the texts? Is the policy implementable?

Robert Spencer, the webmaster of Dhimmi Watch, asks the following in response to this passage:

I don't know how [Ramadan] can maintain this. Amputation is in the Qur'an: "As to the thief, male or female, cut off his or her hands: a punishment by way of example, from Allah, for their crime: and Allah is Exalted in power" (Sura 5:38). How can Ramadan convince anyone that this punishment is un-Islamic in the face of this verse? Meanwhile, stoning is based on well-attested statements of Muhammad: "Abu Huraira reported that a person from amongst the Muslims came to Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) while he was in the mosque. He called him saying: Allah's Messenger. I have committed adultery. . . . Thereupon Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: Take him and stone him" (Sahih Muslim, book 17, no. 4196). Will Ramadan dare say that the Prophet was wrong?

The article also points out that Islamism relies on the text of the Koran as a source for how society must be organized:

But what if the best efforts of Muslim scholars still reveal a God who insists on cruel and discriminatory punishments? There can be no recourse to extrinsic principles, such as human rights or equality. The final word lies in the Koran and with those who interpret it.
. . .

Right now in Europe, however, there is a generation of Muslims hanging on Ramadan's every word. Is he making moderates into Islamists, or Islamists into moderates? From a secular point of view, only the second option may be desirable. To Ramadan, however, the two processes are inseparable: They are two halves of a whole.

So are reformists like Ramadan mitigating the worst excesses of a cruel political system, or are they simply sugarcoating it? If the former, moderate Islamism is perhaps the greatest hope for human rights in countries ruled by sharia (Islamic law). If the latter, moderate Islamism, whatever its advocates' intentions, looks more like a potentially deceptive sales pitch. (emphasis added)

Is Islamicizing moderate Muslims is part of the Kroc Institute's agenda?

"Brother" Tariq

The French magazine L'Express has reported that French journalist Caroline Fourest has written a book titled Frere Tariq: Discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan. Translated to English, the title is Brother Tariq: Discourse, Strategy and Method of Tariq Ramadan. Using the Google translation tool, the L'Express article states that Ms. Fourest has concluded that "Tariq Ramadan is well (sic) the islamist that some feared." Ms. Fourest relied not only on published interviews with Ramadan, but also on audiotaped speeches and lectures of Ramadan.

In another L'Express article, titled Ramadan est un chef de guerre, Ms. Fourest states (again, Google translation):

Tariq Ramadan is not a bomb planter, but a layer of particularly harmful ideas for public freedoms. [A]fter having listened to his cassettes . . . [o]ne discovers there [that] Ramadan . . . delivers its political objectives: to modify secularity and to make evolve things to "more Islam". Unfortunately, it is a question of diffusing an enlightened and modern Islam not, but, quite to the contrary, a fundamentalist Islam and reactionary, integrist, that Tariq Ramadan wishes to see growing with the detriment of liberal Islam . . . .

From Ms. Fourest's analysis, it appearst that, much like Yasir Arafat, Ramadan uses "double-speak" - telling one thing to his Western audience, and telling another to his Muslim audience. Ms. Fourest also alleges that Ramadan uses the legacy of his grandfather to introduce European Muslims to modern day Islamists:

[Ramadan] radicalizes the Moslems under his influence by initiating them with the thought of Hassan Al-Banna . . . then [] puts them in liaison with the current ideologists of the Moslem Brothers: Youssef Al-Qaradhawi, one of the rare Moslem theologists to openly approve the attacks of the kamikazes, or Fayçal Mawlawi, which is not only one Moslem Brother, but also the principal head of a Lebanese terrorist organization.

Ms. Fourest also asserts this regarding the notion that Ramadan is a "moderate":

Why aren't liberal Moslem truths heard, which really wish to modernize Islam? Because Tariq Ramadan speaks in their place . . . [In] the eyes of Ramadan, the Moslems who []themselves [] want to reform their religion in the direction of the progress and the modernity, or which quite simply wish to evolve to an individual faith, more cultural than political, are false Moslems, shown to have sold their heart in the Occident. . . . For Ramadan, to re-examine a principle of Koran in the name of the humans right, for example to give up the port of the veil, amounts betraying Islam.

Let's hope somebody translates her book for Fr. Monk Malloy.

L'Express also irked the writers at IslamOnline.net in another expose of Ramadan. From the IslamOnline.net article:

L’Express further published excerpts from Ramadan’s lectures and seminars recorded on audio tapes, branding them as an outspoken call for Islamizing French society. It also quoted Ramadan as encouraging Muslims to respect European constitutions so long as they were in line with Islam. “It means that Ramadan has no respect for European constitutions,” the magazine said.

article: The Gentle Jihadist

Lee Smith authored The Gentle Jihadist which appeared in The American Prospect. This magazine is hardly a bastion of right-wing reactionaries: it counts Robert Reich and Robert Kuttner among its founders, and its editors likewise represent the American left. Smith identifies Ramadan as a "gentle jihadist" who, although not violent, still sees an Islamicized West, rather than an assimilated Muslim community living in a religiously pluralistic society:

Ramadan believes that the problem with the West is its spiritual malaise. "The Jewish or Christian origins have faded or simply disappeared," he writes. Unlike traditional Christian and Jewish thinkers who merely lament the loss of religious life in a culture of abundance, Ramadan has an answer. The solution, as the Muslim Brothers like to say, is Islam.

To understand fully the scope of Ramadan's conception, it's important to understand that for the Islamists, Islam is not just one of the three monotheistic faiths, nor is it merely the completion of the Abrahamic tradition. As Ramadan writes, it "corrects the messages that came before it." Islam doesn't complement the Torah and New Testament; it supersedes them. Today in the West, the Jews and the Christians have again lost their way . . . That's why he calls the West dar al-dawa, or the place for "inviting people to God." Ramadan quotes a source as saying that in the eyes of the first Muslims, "The Arabian peninsula was dar al-dawa." The West is awaiting the call to Islam, just as the 7th-century Arabs were.
. . .
That Ramadan believes Islam will replace Judaism and Christianity may come as a surprise to those who thought he was just saying Islam is compatible with liberal values (it will certainly surprise the fathers at Notre Dame). Rather, Ramadan is a cold-blooded Islamist who believes that Islam is the cure for the malaise wrought by liberal values. His revision of the jihadist paradigm -- peaceful but total -- is brilliant in its way, and he may well turn out to be a major Islamist intellectual, far surpassing even his grandfather's influence. His cry of death to the West is a quieter and gentler jihad, but it's still jihad. There's no reason for Western liberals to try to understand that point of view.

Whether or not Islam is after all compatible with liberal values is . . .  overshadowed by the fact that a lot of Arab and Muslim individuals do subscribe to liberal values, regardless of how the compatibility question is finally to be answered. Many are pressing for them in their home countries, while others have fled to the West to find them here. To the extent that Western liberals see Ramadan as an "authentic" spokesman of Arab and Muslim culture, while dismissing Arab and Muslim liberals as too Westernized, they've forgotten their own universal values.

This is hardly compatible with the traditional e pluribus unum vision of the USA, let alone an affirmation of a multicultural, tolerant society along the lines of the EU.

Why the Tariq Controversy Matters

From Why the Tariq Ramadan Controversy Matters by Sufi convert Stephen Schwartz:

Ramadan should not be admitted to the U.S. He has written extensively on the challenge of assimilating Islam in Europe, but has shown by his public statements there that he is not an Islamic moderate at all, but a man committed to quite radical postures. Even Hicham Chehab, news editor of the Beirut Daily Star, a newspaper obviously dedicated to Arab interests, was forced to admit early this month that "During the controversial visit to Britain last July by Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, himself accused of sanctioning suicide bombers, Ramadan defended Qardawi on the BBC television program Hard Talk."
. . .
Tariq Ramadan carefully employs a vocabulary advocating "reform" of Islam, which is music to the ears of ill-educated Westerners, and leads to such misfortunes as his invitation to Notre Dame. Sadly, however, his concept of "reform" in Islam does not encompass a repudiation of Qaradawi, who also defines himself as a "reformer" of the religion.

Schwartz concludes with a stern warning to find true Muslim moderates:

Lassitude about finding moderate Muslims . . . and the willingness to accede to the lazy approach of accepting "the least radical" as moderates, also contributes to absurd incidents like the Tariq Ramadan fiasco. But the failure of Western politicians and intellectuals to learn enough about Islam to locate and assist the true moderates will come back to haunt America. . . . [A]ccommodation to Islamic radicals who now disguise themselves as moderates will simply reinforce the sense that the populations of the Christian West are stupid, and may be fooled . . . .

As mentioned earlier, Schwartz is a moderate Muslim, the author of The Two Faces of Islam and has also written about the issue of an "Islamic reformation". His warning regarding Tariq Ramadan should not be taken lightly. Schwartz, however, did not mention this item from Hicham Chehab's article from The Daily Star of Lebanon:

After closely examining Ramadan's works and positions, [Professor] Marc Gopin, the director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, said that he was "disappointed in Ramadan's approach" to the crises in the Arab and Muslim world. This was not because Ramadan criticized Israel or made Muslim youths feel proud, but because he did not seem to offer the kind of message that would help Arabs and Muslims take a good look at themselves and their religion, and at the same time see the wisdom of other ideas like human rights, democracy, pluralism and the possibility of a society not dominated by any single religion. Furthermore, Gopin added, Ramadan's message did not provide a real approach to fundamental Islam that would make it "more peaceful, nonviolent and pluralistic."

Perhaps Prof. Gopin should be running the Kroc Institute. He hasn't been fooled by this "moderate," unlike the current director, Scott Appleby.

Fouad Ajami on Tariq Ramadan

In September Fouad Ajami, professor at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, discussed the Tariq Ramadan issue in the Wall St. Journal. The article is archived here. Ajami, a Shia Muslim who was born in Lebanon, is a regular contributor to the WSJ and is the author of The Dream Palace of the Arabs.

In the WSJ article Ajami discusses Ramadan's "spin" on his lineage:

The genealogy of Tariq Ramadan was fundamental to his ascendancy to power and prominence: Nasab (acquired merit through one's ancestors) is one of the pillars of Arab-Islamic society. . . . Mr. Ramadan could embrace his grandfather while maintaining, when needed, that the sins of ancestors cannot be visited on descendents. But he would never walk away from his legacy, and pride in his grandfather suffuses his work. In a piece of writing in November 2000, the reverence for Banna was astounding. No, he would not, [Ramadan] said, disown his descent from a man who "resisted British and Zionist colonialisms, who founded 2,000 schools, 500 social centers, and as many developmental cooperatives," and who never ordered or sanctioned terrorist attacks. No serious historian of Egypt in the '40s would let stand this version of history. (emphasis added)

Again, Mr. Ramadan appears to have quite a different perspective on the historical legacy of his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna.

Ajami then addresses the notion that Ramadan is an "assimilationist" moderate:

[Ramadan's] big theme was the fate of Islam in the new lands of the West; not for him the theme of assimilation. His was a different prescription, artfully stated: The Muslims would live the life of the faith within Europe, for Islam, he maintained, had always been a fact of European life. France was zealously republican and lacit, secularism, was its civil religion. Mr. Ramadan preached a different doctrine: The Muslims of France had not been parties to that secularism, and they ought to be free to challenge its basic canons.

Ajami also states that - shades of the Dreyfus affair - Ramadan charged several French intellectuals as being "for Israel" instead of for France, leading Bernard Kouchner, the French founder of Doctors Without Borders, to chasten Ramadan as a "most dangerous man."

Prof. Ajami's conclusion to the article is as follows:

The liberty of an open society can never be a suicide pact, and the freedom of the academy is never absolute. . . . [Ramadan] can and will no doubt continue his work while the Muslims in North America cast about for a measure of peace in this new world. For them, there is the path of assimilation. It was, after all, the legacy of Hassan al-Banna that pushed them to these shores.

One would hope that this would put an end to the fools screaming "censorship" by keeping Ramadan out. It certainly will not.

The Islamic States of America

Since we are on the topic of Hassan al-Banna, the jolly fellow who started the Muslim Brotherhood, let's take a look at Daniel Pipes's article The Islamic States of America. He cites the following from the Chicago Tribune:

But [the Muslim Brotherhood members] also addressed their ultimate goal, one so controversial that it is a key reason they have operated in secrecy: to create Muslim states overseas and, they hope, someday in America as well. . . . Brotherhood members emphasize that they follow the laws of the nations in which they operate. They stress that they do not believe in overthrowing the U.S. government, but rather that they want as many people as possible to convert to Islam so that one day—perhaps generations from now—a majority of Americans will support a society governed by Islamic law. (emphasis added)

So, I suppose the establishment clause of the First Amendment, women's suffrage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the Twenty-first Amendment, and the guarantee of republican government in Article IV mean nothing to these otherwise-surely-fine fellows.

"[T]his doesn't make me reject my grandfather."

In an interview published in Egypt Today, (which is archived here) we have the following from Tariq Ramadan:

But no, this doesn’t make me reject my grandfather. When I think of him, I put things into context and I think he did some very important things. His beliefs and thoughts were the products of a specific environment and he was trying to cope with that. I deal with him the way I deal with any actor in our history. He was not a prophet, he was not infallible.

Again, his grandfather was Hassan al Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that gave us Sayyid Qutb, perhaps the foremost "intellectual" of the Islamist movement. The Muslim Brotherhood was a precursor to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group which assassinated Anwar Sadat for making peace with Israel (the assassins were members of both the Brotherhood and EIJ). EIJ was eventually led and merged into al Qaeda by Ayman al Zawahiri.

We know that, in the West, a person cannot be guilty for the actions of their ancestors. The fact that Tariq Ramadan's grandfather was an Islamist should not be used to condemn the man. However, Mr. Ramadan, when given the chance to clarify his position re: his grandather's political legacy, gives us an equivocating statement in which he states that Hassan al-Banna did "important things" should be enough to cast doubt on any claims that the man is a "moderate."

O.J. is not the worst thing about USC

Robert Spencer at JihadWatch.org reported today that the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at the University of Southern California still has the "conversion" narrative of Adam Yahiye Gadahn, a/k/a Adam Pearlman a/k/a Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki. You read read the ravings of this moron here.

The website of the MSA at USC indicates that Gadahn/Pearlman/Al-Amriki's narrative was taken from "taken from email and newsgroup submissions." Gadahn was not a student at USC. You can read about the MSA here. Just a nice sample:

During an October 2000 anti-Israeli protest, former MSA president Ahmed Shama at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) stood before the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, shouting "Victory to Islam! Death to the Jews!" MSA West president Sohail Shakr declared at the same rally, "the biggest impediment to peace [in the Middle East] has been the existence of the Zionist entity in the middle of the Muslim world."

For those of you unaware of who Adam Gadahn is, he may be "Azzam the American", the alleged al Qaeda useful idiot who threatened more attacks against the USA. Robert Spencer also has an article on Gadahn here.

Hire this man

Perhaps the Holy Cross fathers at UND should consider hiring Fr. John Pawlikowski:

Father John Pawlikowski, director of Catholic-Jewish studies at Chicago's Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park, was lecturing in France when Ramadan's appointment was announced. "A group of Catholic moderates raised the issue quite strongly with me," he tells me. "They wanted to know why Notre Dame was so naive as to hire Tariq Ramadan, who they claimed gives quite inflammatory talks to poor Muslims in the poverty-stricken suburbs of Paris."

At least Fr. Pawlikowski listened to the critics of Ramadan, unlike the UND administration.

The article continues with a discussion of the Chicago Tribune's treatment of Daniel Pipes this past summer re: the Ramadan affair.

More from American Thinker article

Even more from the American Thinker article mentioned below:

Elisabeth Schemla from the newsmagazine website proche-orient.info reported that during her recent visit to Notre Dame, she tried, to no avail, to warn the University administrators about the dangers of having Ramadan teach. . . . Schemla also remarked that Indiana is the headquarters location of one of the biggest Islamist organizations in the US: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Steven Emerson, renowned terrorism expert, has been very vocal in establishing the links between ISNA, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and (surprise!) the Muslim Brotherhood.

Here is the article written by Elisabeth Schemla. Using Google's Language Tools, one can get a rough translation of portions of Schemla's article:

Last week, I was invited to the University Our-Lady, in Indiana in the United States, to give a conference whose title was as follows: "Confronted with Islam, France and the combat for secularity". . . . Of course it is in the name of the tolerance . . . that this fundamentalist will make its entry in this university . . . When I have asked . . . if it were known that he is anti-semite, it answered me that there was no convincing proof; that it is in favour of the disappearance of the State of Israel, I was entitled to an astonishment without continuation; which position Ramadan has on the women, I understood well that the hidjab, here, is regarded as a sizeable cultural practice; when I spoke about his tactic to Islamize the Western companies, one believed nothing of it. And when I told that it is, as by chance, in Indiana which is based the principal organization American islamist, my interlocutors were unaware of all of it.

Obviously Google's Language Tools aren't perfect - but the substance of this verifies the American Thinker allegation.

The American Thinker article also states:

[I]n his book, The Islam in Question, Ramadan clearly writes that he strongly favors the death of Israel, or rather of the “Zionist entity” -- the term used by Islamists who do not want utter the word Israel.

I could not determine whether an English translation of this book is available.

Perhaps Monk was too busy helping Bill Diedrick design the bubble-screen play to hire a translator to look into this allegation. Perhaps he was too busy listening to Athletic Director Kevin White to give Ms. Schemla a chance to present these allegations. If her claims are true, it is the biggest mistake UND has ever made regarding a hire - even worse than the George O'Leary fiasco. Perhaps UND is hoping that Beano Cook will defend this mistake too.

The American Thinker article does list the allegations of Ramadan's links to terrorist organizations (which Daniel Pipes also reiterated). The article, however, does not allege that Ramadan is a terrorist, instead stating:

Even though Ramadan cannot be charged with terrorism, it is clear that his speeches and tapes broadcasted in a lot of European mosques constitute an incitement to terrorism against the West. He supplies moral support for terrorism, and therefore should be viewed as a very dangerous man, because of the numerous terrorists his views foster.

"Free speech for me, none for thee"

The pro-Ramadan chorus focuses on "academic freedom" when arguing in favor of allowing him into the USA.

It would be nice, however, if these supporters would request that Ramadan return the favor regarding dissenting views. According to this May, 2004 article in the American Thinker:

The first visible sign of [Ramadan's] fundamentalist view appeared when, in 1993, he lobbied actively to outlaw a play called Mahomet, which represented the Muslim Prophet in a light that did not fit with Ramadan’s views.

Something about this really bothered me - did the author mean Voltaire's Mahomet?

It appears that the author did indeed mean Voltaire's play. This 1994 archived article from Banned-Books.com indicates that the city of Geneva did indeed ban Voltaire's play that year!

The city of Geneva has once again proven Voltaire's subversiveness-by preventing performance of his play, "Mahomet, ou le Fanatisme." . . . When a plan to restage "Mahomet" in Switzerland was proposed, Muslim "cultural centers" overtly denounced "blasphemy" and covertly hinted at violence. Geneva's authorities yielded to the pressure, and religious fanatics were appeased once again.

So a prime defender of free speech is silenced yet again. As the Banned-Books.com article relates:

Voltaire wasn't actually attacking Mohammed. His main targets, thinly disguised, were religious fanaticism in general, and Christian fanatics in particular. . . . Rejecting the cruel, terrorizing, vindictive Jehovah portrayed by most Christian clergy in his time, he turned to the remote mild God of the British deists. And, in "Mahomet," he attacked fraudulent and persecuting priests.

I suppose Tariq relied on literary deconstruction to get at the subtext of Mahomet in order to complain that it was "bigoted." Edward Said's Orientalism thesis matched with covert [hints] at violence." Sums up Islamism nicely.

He sounds like Oswald Spengler

Mole or Savior?, written by Arnaud de Borchgrave, was published in the Washington Times in September. According to de Borchgrave,

In a televised debate with France's then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy late last year, Mr. Ramadan declined to condemn "lapidation" -- the stoning of adulterous wives as mandated by a strict interpretation of the Koran. Instead, Mr. Ramadan said he favored a "moratorium" in the practice.

Another interesting piece of the article:

The 21st century, [Ramadan] says, will see a second role reversal between Islam and the West: "The West will begin its new decline, and the Arab-Islamic world its renewal" and ascent to seven centuries of world domination after seven centuries of decline.

The fully European Islam, he predicts, presupposes a violent upheaval against the Western values Mr. Ramadan rejects. But he quickly cushions the supposition with hosannas to democracy and free expression. He is a past master of dissimulation and disinformation.

Shades of Oswald Spengler! Ramadan's assertions sure remind one of Spengler's "Decline of the West" thesis. Of course, one main difference is that Spengler didn't exactly support the Nazis, whereas Islamist nuts think old Adolph was just swell. Mein Kampf in Arabic, anyone?

This disturbing view is nearly equivalent to the historicism that Karl Popper refuted in the Poverty of Historicism. Obviously the two are not equivalent; Ramadan/Islamist historicism doesn't really need human beings to discern the rhythms and "laws" of history or civilizational development. No need to discuss this further as the Cornell Review has already done it for me.

Even more claptrap as per M. de Borchgrave:

Mr. Ramadan speaks the language of Europe's intellectual left. A frequent lecturer in U.S. universities, his brilliantly articulate perorations mesmerize his liberal fans. "Only Islam can achieve the synthesis between Christianity and humanism, and fill the spiritual void that afflicts the West." All good people are implicitly Muslims, he maintains, "because true humanism is founded in Koranic revelations."

Not exactly a strong argument in favor of religious pluralism. I suppose his dissertation didn't include any required readings on Christian humanists like Erasmus or Thomas Aquinas.

Wow! Even more:

"Today the Muslims who live in the West must unite themselves to the revolution of the anti-establishment groups from the moment when the neoliberal capitalist system becomes, for Islam, a theater of war," is another thunderclap [by Ramadan] that says "jihad" to his detractors and sweet reasonableness to his fans.

Workers, er, Islamists of the world unite! Wonder how well they'll get along with the women proletariat who would rather keep the chador at home?

And finally this gem:

Muslim identity is the only true source of universality, proclaims Tariq Ramadan. "It will fill the spiritual void that afflicts the West."

Hmm - not much room for religious plurality there. Wonder if Monk Malloy knows about that one. Doesn't seem to jibe with the University of Notre Dhimmi's Mission Statement. And wait - it is the only true source of universality? Where is George Soros with his love of Karl Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies on that? Isn't Ramadan essentially positing a statement as the "truth" and forbidding any dissent? Why isn't it in a falsifiable framework? I'll let the Cornell Review handle this point too as the Bloviator Soros hasn't got a clue about Popper.

Tariq's PoMo jargon

Look's like Tariq knows his PoMo (postmodernist) jargon well.  What the heck does "contextually explicable" mean anyway???

As Pipes pointed out in an article in September, Ramadan was interviewed by the Italian magazine Panorama and later claimed that the magazine "misquoted" him in the published interview.  The magazine, which recorded the interview, replied to this allegation as follows:

After the publication of the last issue with his interview, Ramadan sent this letter: "Panorama attributes me unacceptable sentences that I never pronounced and that would lead people to believe that ‘it is comprehensible to kill children.' Nothing can justify the killing of children and the innocent and these acts are in contradiction with the principles of Islam. My condemnation is clear."

The interview with Ramadan was recorded. Here is the full transcript of his answer to the question of whether it is right to kill children and Israeli civilians because they are considered soldiers.

I don't believe that an eight year old child is a soldier. These acts are condemnable; therefore one has to condemn them in themselves. But I say to the international community that they are contextually explicable, and not justifiable. What does this mean? It means that the international community today has placed the Palestinians in a situation where they are delivered political oppression, which explains (not justifying it) that at a certain point people say: we don't have arms, we don't have anything, and so we cannot do anything other than this. It is contextually explicable but morally condemnable.

Saying that killing Israeli children is "contextually explicable" is tantamount to a "clear condemnation"? Justifying that there is no choice but to kill is a "clear condemnation" of the culture of death? Is it a "clear" position to say that an Israeli eight year old child is not a soldier, but his parents who ride the bus and get blown-up are soldiers? Who then are the "innocent" in Ramadan's eyes? Why did he not reply to this question, as did Magdi Allam [a prominent Italian journalist of Egyptian Muslim origins], that "human life is sacred"?

Well, there's that darn "contextually explicable"!  Wow, maybe Tariq does have a lot to teach the U of Notre Dhimmi:

Angry Alumnus: Kevin White, why does Bill Deidrick's coaching stink???
AD Kevin White: Well, his coaching is contextually explicable . . .

Angry Residence Hall Rector: Hey! Why are you students breaking parietals!?!
Students: Well, the University's student codebook, du Lac, is constextually explicable . . .

What a load of hermeneutical nonsense.  How postmodern.  So Yasir Arafat has "no choice" but to send other people's children on suicide missions. What, nonviolent resistance won't work in the West Bank?!?  It's all contextually explicable!  And THIS is the kind of guy that the Kroc Institute wants teaching UND's students?

I'll leave the final word on this matter to Daniel Pipes:

It's case closed on the matter of both Ramadan's being moderate or truthful. He is neither one nor the other.

Back to the issue

Well, I had better get back to the issue on which this blog was created: that the University of Notre Dame is making a serious error in hiring Tariq Ramadan, professor at the College de Saussure, Geneva, Switzerland, grandson of Hasan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), and a "moderate" Muslim anointed by media outlets such as Time magazine as one of the most important thinkers in the world.  UND hired him - to a tenured position - as the Henry Luce professor of religion at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.  Rather ironic that Henry Luce was a co-founder of Time magazine.

This "moderate" was denied entry into the USA this past summer, although DhimmiWatch reported earlier this month that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will likely cave and allow him to enter the country and begin teaching (at what I will now refer to as the University of Notre Dhimmi). 

And why, pray tell, was this "moderate" denied entry into the US?  Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum,  one of the few who actually tried to raise red-flags on the topic of Islamism prior to 9/11/2001, lists the following in an article published last August:

• [Ramadan] has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam."
• Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris.
• Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999.
• Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan.
• Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11.
• He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement.

The article includes links to the sources, primarily French media outlets.

Predictably, Ramadan's exclusion led to a series of articles by the media, such as this article by Paul Donnelly,  which continued to portray Ramadan as a "moderate" Muslim whose academic career focused on the issue of modernity and Islam.  Ramadan even alleged Pipes was involved in the revoking of the visa, an allegation which Pipes refuted days later in a response to a series of Chicago Tribune articles in Ramadan's favor.

In this response, Pipes stated that:

Once again we see that the leftward leaning academy and in particular the Kroc Institute [at Notre Dame] has a soft spot for militant Islamic figures. Given what we are now learning about him, it would appear like others, he is playing a double game of hiding an Islamist agenda.

The deceived of this "double game" also included Pipes, who had given an extremely positive review of Ramadan's book To Be a European Muslim in the year 2000.  As Pipes had pointed out in his weblog cataloging his responses to the Tribune, he had been pro-Ramadan until the "revelations about Ramadan came out in late 2003." It is extremely doubtful that Pipes - who has been calling for the support of moderate Muslim voices for years - would be so against approval of Ramadan's entry into the USA unless there truly were valid concerns regarding Ramadan's alleged links to, or implicit support of, radical Islamist groups.

The Observer, the student newspaper of the U. of Notre Dhimmi, described the reaction of Fr. Edward "Monk" Malloy, President of the U., as follows:

And while Malloy made clear that "the last thing we want to do is favor somebody who would be a threat to the well-being of the country," he said proof of such accusations had yet to emerge.

Figures.  Monk's staff fails to do the research on George O'Leary and they don't do the research on Tariq Ramadan.

And what would they have found had they done the proper due diligence?  Let's see . . .

Jacques Derrida - kaput

Scott Ott's site, ScrappleFace, had an obit for Jacques Derrida here. Monsieur Derrida was an Algerian-born Frenchman and the "father" of deconstruction. No need to even try to top Ott's obit.

No Doubt Monsieur Derrida is having a nice chat with Edward Said and Michel Foucault in the afterlife.