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

lodgings.

    The Pakistani Islamists who offered him this opportunity have, for a long
time, worked hand in hand with the Muslim Brotherhood network, in particular with Tawhid, the bookshop in Lyon that serves as Tariq Ramadan's
headquarters. Until recently, the Islamic Foundation supplied the bookshop
with books by Qutb or Mawdudi. But now it is a two-way exchange. The most
radical Islamic foundation in Europe so appreciated Tariq Ramadan s works
that they have undertaken to translate them and distribute them in England.
Mohammed Seddiqi, one of the leaders, confirmed that Ramadan's writings
fitted perfectly into the institute's tradition, as represented by Mawdudi and
Qutb: "In the beginning, the foundation was inspired by the Islamic movement to translate Mawdudi s works and also those of Qutb. Today we publish
more contemporary authors, such as Tariq Ramadan." $° The Swiss preacher's books are popular with British Islamists; 20,000 copies have been sold
and they are to be found on the shelves of the foundation's library. One book
will never have a place there, except as an object of abhorrence: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. The Islamic Foundation spearheaded the campaign against him. It is the foundation that served as the intermediary in
the campaign launched by the Mawdudi network in Pakistan with which the
institute is linked. In obedience to orders sent out by the Islamic Foundation
of Madras, the Leicester foundation distributed to all the Muslim organizations a condemnation of the "blasphemous" book. According to Gilles Kepel,
this campaign gave Mawdudi's followers a dominant influence within the
English Islamic circles that have a reputation for extremism (often known as
Londonistan)-a world in which the name of Tariq Ramadan strikes a harmonious note.

     

Chapter 2

The Heir
    Triq Ramadan admits that he is descended from a dynasty that is
both religious and political: "Even before I had been formed intellectually,
my education had given me the idea that we were entrusted with the inheritance of certain values."' He not only teaches about Hassan al-Banna, but he
also imitates him down to the last detail-starting with the firm intention of
employing his pedagogical talents in the service of Islamism. Many newspaper articles refer to him as a theologian, others as an imam. In fact, he has
no degree from Al-Azhar University. His religious learning comes from his
family, an education in an exceptionally political Islam, completed by a rapid-fire apprenticeship in Cairo and, above all, by a year's study at the Leicester Islamic Foundation. His thesis, granted without honors by the Faculty of
Arts of Geneva, is nothing more than an opus in praise of Hassan al-Banna.
He wrote a Master's thesis on "The concept of suffering in Nietzsche's philosophy," but his knowledge of philosophy has served principally to assail
Voltaire's and Dostoevsky's permissiveness in conferences often organized
by the Muslim Brotherhood. In lectures to students, he takes a more prudent stand. Ramadan has often been introduced as a university professor,
but in truth, up to the time when an American Catholic university decided
to appoint him to a chair in the autumn of 2004, he was simply a modest
schoolteacher in Saussure (Switzerland). Before being invited, in 2006, to be
Senior Research Fellow at the European Studies and Middle East Center of
St. Antony's College, Oxford, he did teach once a week at Fribourg University,
but as an outside collaborator and only for courses on the Islamic religion.
    Tariq Ramadan owes his fame and his reputation as an intellectual to his status as a Muslim leader. But what can legitimize this status, since he is in no
way a theological scholar? First and foremost, he is a preacher-whose aura
for Muslims had long been due to his direct descent from the mentor of modern Islamism. That is, up to the day when he made a name for himself not as
a scholar but as a political