Tariq Ramadan’s grandfather Hassan al-Banna was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. His father Said founded the World Islamic League and later established the Islamic Center of Geneva, whose function was to bring Islam to the West. His brother Hani chairs the board. - He was banned from entering the USA under Bush - Hillary Clinton and Obama lifted the ban.August 13, 2009
Christopher Caldwell: On Tariq Ramadan’s “Resistance”
I’ve previously tried to figure out what the Swiss Islamic thinker Tariq Ramadan truly stands for since one hears all sorts of things about him, and Christopher Caldwell offers an intriguing suggestion in Reflections of the Revolution in Europe:
The word RESISTANCE is the master key to Ramadan’s thinking. It is the foundation of everything else about Ramadan that can be understood doubly. The word appears almost constantly in all of Ramadan’s most important writings and speeches.
He notes that “in my family, RESISTANCE was a key concept, RESISTANCE against dictatorship or colonialism.” RESIST is not a democratic verb, in the way that reform or dissent or oppose is. It is a REVOLUTIONARY VERB. RESISTANCE is what one offers against a system that has no legitimacy whatsoever behind it.
The French reformed their constitutional order in 1958; they RESISTED the Nazis after 1942 . . . . Contemporary Europeans, unable to conceive of themselves as thoroughly without legitimacy in anyone’s eyes, have chosen to believe that when Ramadan speaks of “RESISTANCE,” and calls on Muslims everywhere to wage it, he really means “reform.” He does not. HE MEANS JIHAD... (pages 294-295)
http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/08/christopher-caldwell-on-tariq-ramadans.html