Court Reverses Ruling Dealing With Visa of Muslim Scholar

NY Times ^ | 7/17/09 | BENJAMIN WEISER

[dervish]

A federal appeals court in Manhattan on Friday reversed a lower-court ruling that had allowed the government to bar a prominent Muslim scholar from entering the United States on the ground that he had contributed to a charity that had connections to terrorism.

The scholar, Tariq Ramadan, 46, a Swiss academic, was to become a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame, but the Bush administration revoked his visa in 2004 and again denied him a visa in 2006. The government cited evidence that from 1998 to 2002, he donated about $1,300 to a Swiss-based charity that the Treasury Department later categorized as a terrorist organization because it provided money to Hamas, the militant Palestinian group.

'snip'

In its ruling on Friday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [Sotomayer's court] held unanimously that the government was required to “confront Ramadan with the allegation against him and afford him the subsequent opportunity to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that he did not know, and reasonably should not have known, that the recipient of his contributions was a terrorist organization.”

'snip'

"The government, in barring Professor Ramadan, had first offered no explanation, and then cited a provision of the Patriot Act that allows for the exclusion of foreigners who use “a position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.”

[dervish]

h/t Atlas Shrugs.

Terror Finance Blog

http://www.terrorfinance.org/the_terror_finance_blog/2006/09/us_visa_denied_.html

Why Revoke Tariq Ramadan's U.S. Visa?

Daniel Pipes

http://www.danielpipes.org/2043/why-revoke-tariq-ramadans-us-visa

[SuperLuminal]

The black-robed clerics who rule us strike again!

Iran is a wonderful place.