Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Said Ramadan (Geneva, August 26, 1962) is a Swiss Romand Muslim intellectual. His mother, Wafa al-Banna, is the eldest daughter of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. His father, Said Ramadan, a disciple of al-Banna, escaped from Egypt due to the prohibition of this organization and settled in Switzerland.

Biography

At the age of sixteen, Ramadan returns to Egypt, where he is marked by the reality of the time at the end of the seventies. Already then, he had begun to serve in organizations such as ATD Quart-Monde, Doctors Without Borders or Tierra de Hombres, and he cooperated with grassroots communities in Latin America, Africa and India, which allowed him to meet leading figures like Hélder Câmara, Abbe Pierre, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Jean Ziegler and René Dumont.

She studied philosophy and French literature, directing her professional career towards teaching in a high school. The death by overdose of one of his students affected him deeply and led him to reflect on his life: «[...] during those years, I lived a religious conviction that I did not show for reasons professionals. At the end of the eighties I realized that while I was proposing to young people to recognize other cultures and respect them, at the same time I was denying my own[...] I had that uncomfortable impression that to be recognized by my colleagues, I had to justify myself and, ultimately, amputate everything that was part of my conviction" Despite maintaining his teaching career and his militancy in solidarity movements, this fact led him to rediscover his tradition islamic The controversy over the Salman Rushdie affair and around the veil in French schools was the trigger for him to start studying Arabic and Islam at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.

He teaches philosophy at the Collège de Saussure institute in Geneva. He obtained his Ph.D. in French philosophy and literature with the thesis titled Nietzsche, historien de la philosophie at the University of Geneva. In 1997 he obtained his doctorate with a thesis on the Muslim reformist current. That same year, To be a European Muslim (& # 34; Minority Islam: how to be a Muslim in secular Europe & # 34; Bellaterra. 2002), his most outstanding work, was published. He is, since October 2005, a visiting professor at St Antony's College at the University of Oxford.

Since July 2005 he has been appointed by the British Government as an adviser on matters relating to Islamic extremism.

Tariq Ramadan is married with 4 children. His wife, Isabelle, is a Franco-Swiss woman of Catholic origin, who converted to Islam after her marriage.

Controversy and criticism

Tariq Ramadan's detractors, including Nicolas Sarkozy, Gustavo de Arístegui and Pilar Rahola, accuse him of being a master of double language with a speech for the non-Muslim public and another opposite speech for the Muslim audience. Such were the accusations expressed in a televised debate by Nicolas Sarkozy, then French minister of the interior. Political analyst Daniel Pipes accuses him of denying that there is "any conclusive evidence" that bin Laden was behind 9/11, and publicly referring to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to a point where he borders on approval.

He was banned from the UK by British authorities in 2005, his visa has been revoked by the US, and he was banned from France in 1996 on suspicion of having links to an Algerian Islamist he had initiated earlier little a terrorist campaign in Paris. In Spain it is allowed to enter, although the largest opposition parliamentary group, the PP, has asked that it be prohibited. For its part, the Spanish socialist government invited Tariq Ramadan to participate in debates on the alliance of civilizations. Regarding this invitation, Pilar Rahola wrote an article in La Vanguardia entitled "Contra Tariq Ramadan", where she criticized the invitation and double talk of Ramadan regarding human rights and terrorism.

US visa revocation

In February 2004, he accepted a position teaching religion at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University in Indiana, United States. However, at the end of July 2004 his visa was revoked by the authorities of that country and he was forced to return to Switzerland. The reason for this decision was the establishment of stricter internal security measures than those previously in force.

In September 2006, a State Department statement that: "A consular office official has denied Mr. Ramadan a visa. The consular officer has concluded that Mr. Ramadan could not be admitted based on his actions, which consist of providing material support to terrorist organizations." Between December 1998 and July 2002, Ramadan donated $940 to two organizations, the Committee on Charities and Relief for Palestinians (CBSP) and the Association for Palestinian Relief (ASP). The US Treasury placed both on a list of terrorist financing organizations for their links to Hamas in August 2003. The US Embassy stated that Ramadan "should have known" that they provided money to Hamas. In a Washington Post article, Ramadan asked, "How should I have known about his activities before the United States government itself knew about it?"

Rape accusations

Two women accused Ramadan of raping them in 2009 and 2012, respectively. As a result of these accusations, he was arrested by the French police on January 31, 2018. In February he was formally accused of two rapes and entered provisional prison. In March 2018 a third woman filed another complaint for rape and abuse between February 2013 and June 2014. In July 2019, a French journalist filed a fourth complaint, in this case for collective rape and threat and intimidation in 2014.

Euroislam

Tariq Ramadan has published a multitude of articles, interviews, books and diverse material in which he exposes his theses in favor of considering Islam as one more European religion. He invites all Europeans (Muslims or not) to break down the barriers that currently exist and to seek the path of mutual respect based on mutual knowledge.

Calls on European Muslims to feel, from a civil point of view, as members of democratic societies, participating and respecting their values.

He has also made a global call for a moratorium on the application of corporal punishment that is practiced in a small number of Muslim countries as a prior step for its suppression, based on the fact that it is impossible to meet all the conditions required by the Islam texts for such application.