Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (11 page)

For years, he felt himself to be a foreigner living in Switzerland. As a
youngster, he had but one obsession: to return to Egypt-not that he had been born there, but he always considered it as his real homeland: "I always
dreamed of returning to Egypt; it meant returning to my roots. Egypt was
the land I most cherished and that deep down was `my' country. Nothing in
my political or religious concerns made me feel Swiss." In 1978, the opportunity arose. At a time when the relations between the Egyptian authorities
and the Brotherhood were on the mend, Sadat was ready to try out a policy
of appeasement. Hassan al-Banna's grandson took advantage of the chance
to return to his native land. At the age of sixteen, he imagined Egypt to be a
hotbed of radicalism, where all the politico-religious passions that he had
known since childhood were to be found concentrated. The encounter with
this mythical land was a real letdown. Suddenly he realized that the heroes of
Muslim fundamentalism that he had dreamed of meeting in Egypt were not
in Egypt, but in Switzerland. And he had grown up surrounded by them. The
Egypt he discovered was a peaceful country, totally unlike the image of radicalism that he had fashioned for himself: "I must say that what I found there
came as a great surprise. Basically, it was a great disappointment. In Switzerland I lived in a dynamic world intellectually, one that was activist .... For
me, Egypt stood for the myth of the encounter with the concrete realities of a
world that other militants had devoted their lives to. When I got there in 1978,
I found a quite different political reality .... I did, to be sure, find the roots
of a past with which I immediately felt in harmony, but I understood, despite
my young age, how timid and insipid the political convictions were-far less
developed than my family's."28 Ramadan is quite clear. Disappointed not to
have found in Egypt ideologists as fundamentalist as his parents, he decided
to return to Europe and learn to take advantage of his Swiss citizenship, the
better to advance the cause of political Islam, and one day-why not?-take
the revenge so longed for by his father. He even envisaged asking for French
citizenship, which he could have obtained, thanks to his wife. But, for the
time being, he could not keep still. Since nowhere did he feel at home, why
not be at home everywhere? The sense oftotal rootlessness drove him to want
to travel the world-but not any old way. At eighteen, he joined an Islamic
relief organization.

When journalists ask him about his personal evolution, Tariq Ramadan prefers to describe himself as a "Third-World Muslim' who graduated from relief
work to being a militant alongside trade unions and leftist organizations. He
is apt to talk of Coup de Main (A Helping Hand), an association he set up
with fellow teachers when he was assigned to a secondary school in Coudrier
(Switzerland) in the r98os. The laudable objective of the organization was to
encourage young students to act responsibly and develop a sense of solidarity, in particular regarding cultures other than their own. The association,
which was financed by the Geneva school district, offered the studentsand Tariq Ramadan-the opportunity to travel to Mali, Senegal, Tibet, India,
Burkina Faso, and Brazil. As a secondary schoolteacher participating in this
program, the preacher was to encounter Sister Emmanuelle, Mother Teresa,
the Dalai Lama, Edmond Kaiser, Hubert Reeves, Albert Jacquard, Guy Gilbert, Rene Dumont, l'Abbe Pierre, and Dom Helder Camara, one of the leading figures of liberation theology. The meetings were on occasion brief, but
they were to stand him in good stead. Tariq Ramadan never missed an opportunity to speak of these encounters, however fleeting, so adding the right
touch to the image of a perfect third-world globetrotter of the socially minded
Christian kind. He dwells in particular on the encounter with Dom Helder
Camara as a way of suggesting a comparison between the Muslim Brotherhood's Islam and liberation theology.

Liberation theology took root in the late r96os in a very special context,
as a means of resistance against the fascist and communist military dictatorships of Latin America. It drew on Christ's message to defend liberty and
social justice, before being submerged in a broader radical left movement
based no longer on a political system but on ethics. The Muslim Brotherhood movement can, indeed, appear similar-if you leave out the fact that
its aim has been to replace a military dictatorship with a theocratic dictatorship, in the meantime fighting to establish a society in which individual liberties are denied, co-education despised, women dominated and forced to wear the veil, and sexual minorities persecuted-all in the name of the sharia.

Comparing the Muslim Brotherhood with liberation theology is as
absurd as believing that Tariq Ramadan is a Marxist because he is pro-Third
World. In his case, support for the Third World is always linked to his Islamist commitment. He claims to have worked alongside associations such as
ATD Fourth World or Medecins sans Frontieres, but fails to mention that, for
the most part, he was involved with the Islamist solidarity network, Secours
Islamique, otherwise known as Islamic Relief. It is no ordinary relief association, but rather an organization that spreads Islamism via relief aid.29 The
association was presided over by a certain Hany al-Banna. The name sounds
familiar, but Tariq Ramadan insists that it was just a coincidence, that he was
not a relative. Above all, Tariq Ramadan would have us believe that, since
he is no relation of Hany al-Banna, he was never active in Islamic Relief.
He exploits this error in order to discredit any investigation into his connection with the organization. At times, his denial is even more adamant.
When Serge Raffy was preparing an article that appeared in the January 29,
2004 issue of the Nouvel Observateur, he was astonished to receive a letter
from Hany al-Banna's lawyer stating that his client had never known Tariq
Ramadan. A surprising claim, given that the Daily Trust, dated November
27, 2003, reported on a conference organized by the Muslim Council of Britain, during which Hany al-Banna and Tariq Ramadan shared the platform!
They had occasion to meet once again during the annual conference of the
FOSIS (Federation of Student Islamic Societies) held at Nottingham University between June 17 and 20, 2004. Moreover, in the course of a lecture
given to a Muslim audience that was taped in 1999, Tariq Ramadan claimed
that collaboration between the Geneva Islamic Center and Islamic Reliefwas
of his doing! "I was personally involved, since I was on the executive board
of the Islamic solidarity organization with which you are familiar and which
did a terrific job here in Reunion under the name Islamic Relief. We worked
with them in Geneva when I was on the board."3° Furthermore, he urged his
Muslim audience to pay no attention to the rumors spread by "the Western
media" intent on "discrediting the association." In another conference on
the media, returning again to the issue, he asserted that, despite the ques tionable reputation of the humanitarian organization, there are still journalists "honest" enough to speak well of the organization if things are properly
explained to them .... In fact, Islamic Relief has long been remarkably successful in having people forget its Islamist features by referring to itself as
an equivalent to the Red Cross. But the Red Cross does not have similar ulterior political motives. Thanks to its numerous sponsors in the Gulf states,
Islamic Relief has dispatched militants to all the war zones where traumatized people might well turn to political Islam for consolation. They have
turned up in Chechnya, Bosnia, Yemen, Iran, and, of course, Algeria, where
every earthquake serves as a pretext for spreading their influence, as they distribute blankets and hot meals. Their charitable work is real enough, as is
that of the Christian organizations in Iraq, but their true intention is undeniably to demonstrate that solidarity comes from Islam and not from the
West. Similarly, the associations linked to the American religious Right that
distribute food to the Iraqis make no secret of their attempts to convince
them of the advantages of made-in-USA Christianity. Baptist organizations
spent $250,000 sending blankets and powdered baby milk to Iraq in order to
get close to the population, for motives of their own. Mark Kelly, the Baptist
spokesman, explained quite clearly that they hoped to turn unbelievers into
believers: "Conversations quickly get around to our faith."31

That's exactly the approach taken by Islamic Relief. It is also in this
spirit of Islamic evangelization that Tariq Ramadan joined the African
Cooperation Fund. The name suggests a charity organization that collects
funds to help Africa. In fact, funds are collected above all to Islamize Africa.
Ramadan presides over the governing committee and determines the goals
for the bureau, which was created in August 2000 on the occasion of the
first symposium of French-speaking Muslims. The resolutions of this symposium devote considerable space to the role of the dawa and the appropriate strategies for spreading the Islamic message, and then report on the
creation of a fund destined "to provide African countries with books, cassettes, pedagogical material, and any other equipment designed to promote
the transmission of knowledge."32 Needless to say, it is Islamic knowledge
that we are talking of.

There is one African country that Tariq Ramadan knows particularly well:
Sudan. Islamic Relief was one of the very few humanitarian organizations
authorized to open an office there in the 199os, the very time when Hassan
al-Tourabi issued his statement in praise of Tariq Ramadan. "The high priest
of Islamism," the leading figure ofthe Sudanese regime, then in the midst of
reinstating the sharia, was at the height of his power. In 1994, he was forced
by international pressure to allow the French secret service to kidnap the terrorist Carlos. In 1996, he agreed to expel Osama bin Laden. In the meantime, Khartoum was a haven for terrorists. Every year, al-Tourabi staged a
Popular Arab and Islamic Conference (PAIC), a sort of high mass intended
to bring together nationalists and Islamists. A few pro-Palestinian radicals
used to attend, but above all it was a meeting place for Muslim extremists,
numerous delegates from the FIS, and notorious hostage takers. It was not
uncommon for the closing ceremony to feature a splendid parade of kamikazes or youngsters armed with Kalashnikovs shouting "Death to Israel."
Tariq Ramadan took part in the celebration in 1993. As he did when he travelled to Yemen (where another Muslim Brotherhood branch was seeking recognition), he contacted the journalists. One journalist recalled seeing a most
likeable young man, obviously respected by the Islamists thanks to his relationship to al-Banna. Tariq Ramadan had been preaching for two years in the
Muslim Brotherhood network and was earning a reputation inside the closed
world of Islamism. Al-Tourabi took him seriously enough to consider him
"the future of Islam."

In the early 199os, after having travelled the world in search of his true vocation, Tariq Ramadan decided at last to make Europe his home base. He is
quite open about it: "Up to the age of 23 or 24 I felt more Egyptian than Swiss.
I thought again of leaving. Then I decided I was European and Swiss and
should accept the fact."33 This decision was a strategic, thought-out political
choice, rather than a heartfelt impulse. Tariq Ramadan was to remain marked
for life by what was the very backbone of his identity: not Egypt, which was to
remain a source of cultural enrichment, but the Islam of the Muslim Broth erhood that he was now determined to spread to the very heart of Europe. The
Creil Affair of 1989, the first controversy in France concerning the wearing of
the Islamic headscarf at school, seems to have sparked things off. It encouraged him to take a stand as a European Muslim. But to preach he needed a
title, even if it fell short of the minimum course of religious training. In 1991,
he decided to return to Egypt to study Islamic sciences in an accelerated program. He was then thirty years of age. Like his grandfather, he did not choose
the long and complex apprenticeship offered by Al-Azhar University. He was
not out to cultivate his mind, but to learn how to produce coherent arguments
on the basis of a limited number of Islamic references. He settled down with
his family in his mother's apartment near the airport, and in a few months
went through "an intensive training program' in the form of private tutoring
given by a friend of the family's, Sheikh Aqwabi.

On his return, Ramadan could at last give lectures on Islam. He was not
yet quite sure of himself, and he lacked familiarity with certain verses of the
Koran-which he was later to acquire, thanks to a year of study at the Leicester Islamic Foundation-but he had made enough of a start for his natural verve to do the rest. It is one of the advantages of waging political war in
the name of Islam: no need to work one's way up through a rigorous hierarchy to become a preacher. He began taking over the role, in particular in the
Geneva Islamic Center, where he sometimes presided over prayer meetings.
After his second visit to Egypt, Hassan al-Banna's grandson was convinced of
one thing: Europe was to be his land of dawa, his preaching land. The French
intelligence services claim that, between 1992 and 1993, Tariq Ramadan was
chosen by the Brotherhood to continue the Islamization project begun by
Said Ramadan. Indeed, the heir presumptive stepped up the rhythm of his
meetings, not only in Switzerland, but wherever the European branch of the
Brotherhood could provide him with an occasion.

In 1992, shortly after his return from Egypt, he suddenly emerged as the
star speaker at the annual congress of the Union of Islamic Organizations
of France (UOIF), a French organization close to the Muslim Brotherhood. When Fouad Alaoui of the UOIF was asked about his links with the Brotherhood, he replied: "It's one movement among others. We have respect for it,
in that it advocates a renewal and a modern interpretation of Islam. But our
job is elsewhere." And he added: "We have no functional connection with
the Muslim Brotherhood." Obviously, as is the case for Tariq Ramadan, the
French branch of the Brotherhood enjoys sufficient autonomy to be able to
deny having any "functional connection' with the Egyptian head office. But
despite this, the UOIF is indeed an organization modeled on the Brotherhood's philosophy and methods, working hand in hand with other Brotherhood organizations, in particular with the Geneva Islamic Center. The UOI F's
ideology clearly belongs in this tradition, and its fundamental principles are
almost entirely drawn from its Egyptian predecessor. One of the pamphlets
published by the organization-Criteres pour une organisation musulmane en
France [Criteria for Muslim Organizations in France]-pays tribute to Hassan
al-Banna in particular: "What distinguishes Imam Hassan al-Banna, who is
rightly considered-and clearly merits-to belong to the tradition of great
thinkers and reformers ... is that he provided an organizational capacity for
the spiritual and intellectual aspects of the movement." Not only does the
UOI F refuse to repudiate any of the theoreticians that paved the way for Muslim fundamentalism, but it treats those who dare to criticize them as heretics:
"Today you can find people who take pleasure in talking down Ibn Taymiyya,
Ibn Abdul Wahhab, Sayyid Qutb, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, or Faisal Mawlawi. But
what is to be gained by destroying Muslim memory? What is to be gained by
destroying these Muslim founding figures? Unless it be the scorched-earth
policy of people who are inspired by hatred, ignorance, or heresy?"34 The
UOI F, it should be said, belongs to the most radical school within the Brotherhood and has never dissociated itself from Sayyid Qutb, even if it does practice doublespeak: moderate on the outside and radical within.