Free Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan by Caroline Fourest

others? Would not al-Banna himself, in the same circumstances, have written a book similar to Trail Markers?
Al-Banna died before it became clear that his plans for the future would be
brutally cut short by Nasser. If he had been faced with such an insurmountable obstacle, thrown into prison and tortured, he, too, would most probably have called for a holy war. Did he not assert that the resort to armed combat was the highest degree of jihad and that the resort to force was justified if
other means failed?
    Tariq Ramadan prefers not to indulge in such conjectures, obsessed as
he is by the rehabilitation of al-Banna's model-which does not mean that
he rejects Sayyid Qutb. On occasion he refers to him by name in his lectures,
as if he were a thinker of no particular importance, but for the most part references to him remain allusive, as if Ramadan wanted to avoid revealing his
true thoughts. But Ramadan is a fervent admirer of one of Qutb's female disciples, who was imprisoned and tortured during the same period: Zaynab
al-Ghazali, for whose memoirs Ramadan wrote a preface in 1996. Entitled
Des jours de ma vie [Some Days from My Life], the book is a raging firestorm
that recounts in detail the tortures and humiliations suffered at the hands of
Nasser's jailers. One would expect that reading this book would be a moving
experience. But one finds instead a woman who was an ultra-fundamentalist before the first arrests even took place. At a time when Nasser was making numerous conciliatory gestures to this woman, whose association advocated the Islamization ofwomen and who served as one of the Brotherhood's
agents, she refused, for example, to join a public meeting organized by the
Socialist Union in support of Nasser-not in order to maintain her independence, but out of respect for "decency": "I have made it clear: members of the
governing board of the Muslim Women and members ofthe General Assembly live in conformity with the Muslim rites and cannot, consequently, take part in the sort of activities where many people congregate and where members of both sexes commingle freely with no respect for decency."72 That's
the sort of person who, Tariq Ramadan tells us in his preface, should be "a
model for all Muslim women."73 The rest of the book is even more enlightening. After having refused to negotiate in any way, al-Ghazali took part in
the Brotherhood's speculations on how to overthrow Nasser. When the latter
threatened to dissolve her organization for disturbing the public peace, she
declared: "Thanks be to God for having filled Nasser with hatred and fear of
me. I, too, hate him for the love of God. His cruelty and his tyranny will only
reinforce our resolve as combatants to listen solely to the dictates of our conscience and to live for our cause, for our unique way and for monotheism,
and by the grace of God we will triumph."74

    Al-Ghazali was thrown into prison and left without food and water for
six days. On arrival, she was locked in a room with dogs that snapped at her.
At any rate, she was terrified by what she thought was happening to her, but
when they released her, she realized that she had not bled at all. The dogs
must have been toothless, or had perhaps been trained to simulate biting.
She interpreted this as a miracle. Despite torture, she refused to admit that
the Brotherhood was intent on overthrowing Nasser. But she did this in her
own particular way:
    The Muslim Brotherhood has no intention of assassinating Nasser or anyone else.
Neither do they intend to lay waste the country or stir up trouble. If anyone has
ruined the country, it's Nasser himself. Our objective is far more important and far
more noble. Our objective is to reveal the pure truth, the supreme truth, the presence of a sole God on earth, monotheism, the veneration of the unique God, respect
for the commandments of the Koran and the Surma and their application. Our
cause is to govern in the name of God and in