By David Shariatmadari
Tariq Ramadan knows all about travel bans. After all, he was never meant to end up here, in a pebbledash semi in north-west London. In 2004, he was on his way to the US, having been offered the role of professor of Islamic studies at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana. Suddenly, nine days before his flight, a house already rented, kids enrolled in school, his visa was revoked.
The reasons given were vague at first, but eventually came down to the fact he supported a charity the Bush administration labelled a fundraiser for Hamas. They argued Ramadan should have known about the links. How could he, he said, when the donations were made before the blacklisting – in other words, before the US government itself knew? He believes, instead, that he was singled out for his opposition to the war in Iraq.
In 2010, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, revoked the revocation, but by that time, Ramadan had been embraced by St Antony’s College, Oxford. Ramadan has no regrets. “I’m very happy that they prevented me from going. I’m much better off here,” he says, in gently accented English (he grew up in Geneva, speaking French and Arabic). Commuting to Oxford, he has made Metroland his home. In the States, he says, “I don’t think it’s a political atmosphere where you are free to speak. People are scared.”
It’s probably just as well he feels that way: the Trump administration won’t be rolling out the welcome mat. As well as its plans for a new executive order designed to prevent millions of Muslims from entering the country, it’s considering designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. That poses a problem for Ramadan, as it was his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, who founded the movement.
This family connection has given rise to a lot of innuendo over the years. Some of his detractors believe that Ramadan himself is a walking Brotherhood front: smooth-talking, but with a forked tongue. His calls for peace and dialogue apparently mask a secret agenda to Islamise Europe. I can’t find any reason to disbelieve Ramadan when he says he’s not a member of the organisation. He has been open in books and talks about his approach – to remain faithful to the tenets of Islam, but resolutely to participate in western society – and it seems unnecessary to invoke a shadowy puppet-master.
“I’m the grandson of Hassan al-Banna and this is fact,” he says. “I have been quite critical of the organisation. With the last book that I wrote about the Arab awakening, and even after 2011, I was very critical. Now to be critical … is [one thing]. To reduce them to something which is violent extremism, and to acknowledge and to accept the rhetoric of [Egyptian president] Sisi and before him Mubarak: that’s not going to help any country. Because these people, you challenge them with democracy and with arguments, not with repression and torture.”
Ramadan believes that terrorist designation would set a terrible precedent. “Listening now … to dictators list who are the terrorists … that’s going to be very, very bad for the future of the Middle East.”
Is this the most troubling moment for the Muslim world since 9/11? Not only do we have Donald Trump, but in France, where Ramadan has an office and spends much of his time, more than one in four voters back Marine Le Pen. How worried is he?
“You know, the last election … when Hollande won, I said he physically won the election, but politically, the far-right party, Front National, won. Because its rhetoric was everywhere. They are winning the game.” If it’s Le Pen, he explains, “it’s going to be worse, but it’s already very bad. Of course we have to resist her party, but the most important thing is the normalisation of her rhetoric in the Socialist party and [among] the Republicans.”
Read more at theguardian.com
