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 . . .