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- Muslim professor of philosophy
- Grandson of Hasan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood
- His U.S. visa was revoked due to his numerous connections to Islamic terrorism
- Favors the legal extinction of Israel
Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss-born philosophy professor currently based in France. In February 2002 Salon.com called him "one of the most important intellectuals in the world," characterizing him as “the Muslim Martin Luther.” In 2004 Time magazine named him one of the world’s top 100 scientists and thinkers.
When speaking to Western audiences, Ramadan preaches an amicable message of unity and mutual respect. But to Arabic-speaking audiences, he vents his deep-seated hatred of the West and his endorsement of Wahhabism, the most extreme form of Islam. Moreover, Ramadan has numerous connections to fundamentalist Islamic militants and is suspected by U.S. intelligence agencies of maintaining ties with the terrorist group al Qaeda.
Ramadan’s maternal grandfather was Hasan al-Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood. Ramadan’s father, Said Ramadan, led the Brotherhood throughout the 1950s and then was exiled from Egypt to Switzerland, where Tariq was born in September 1962.
Tariq Ramadan grew up in Geneva, Switzerland. He was schooled in philosophy and French literature at the University of Geneva, and in Arabic and Islam at Al Azhar Islamic University in Cairo. He eventually found work as a professor in the fields of philosophy and religion. By the end of the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood was courting Ramadan to be its European representative.
Upon his return to Switzerland in the early 1990s, Ramadan established the Movement of Swiss Muslims -- an outreach organization that exhorted Muslim youth to Islamize modernity rather than modernize Islam. He taught at the University of Fribourg and the College de Saussure, and became the Islam-and-secularism correspondent at the French daily newspaper, Le Monde.
In addition to his professorial duties, Ramadan made numerous lecture tours throughout North America. He was twice invited to speak at events organized by President Bill Clinton.
In February 2004 Ramadan was offered a tenured position as Luce Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Building at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Five months later, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revoked Ramadan’s work visa, thereby preventing him from remaining in the United States. DHS spokesman Russ Knocke explained that the visa revocation was in accordance with a law which denies entry to foreigners who have used a “position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.” Among the items that led to this DHS decision were the following:
- In the midst of a series of mid-1990s attacks in Paris perpetrated by the Algerian Islamist terrorist movement, French Interior Minister Jean Louis Debre forbade Ramadan to enter France because of his connections to that movement.
- According to Spanish judge Balatasar Garzón, Ramadan had “routine contacts” with Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian believed to be the financial chief of al Qaeda and the financier of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.
- In his 2001 trial, Djamel Beghal, an al Qaeda recruiter who confessed to conspiring to blow up the U.S embassy in Paris, testified that he had studied with Ramadan.
- Ramadan’s address was found in a register of the Al Taqwa Bank, which is part of a network of financial institutions that the U.S. State Department believes is helping to fund terrorism.
- Ramadan characterized the 9/11 attacks, the October 2002 Bali nightclub attack, and the March 2004 Madrid train bombings as “interventions” rather than acts of terrorism.
- When asked by an Italian magazine whether car bombings against U.S. troops in Iraq were justifiable, Ramadan replied: “Iraq was colonized by the Americans. Resistance against the army is just.”
According to terrorism expert Jean Charles Brisard, Ramadan took part in a 2004 London conference with Yusuf al Qaradawi, who has justified suicide bombings, the killing of American soldiers in Iraq, and the 9/11 attacks.
Caroline Fourest, a French specialist on Islamic fundamentalism who has meticulously studied all of Ramadan’s writings and speeches, states, in the 2008 book Brother Tariq: the Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, that Ramadan, like his grandfather (Hasan al-Banna), promotes rigid fundamentalism and can accurately be classified as “a war leader.”
According to Oliver Guitta of The American Thinker:
“Even though Ramadan cannot be charged with terrorism, it is clear that his speeches and tapes broadcasted in a lot of European mosques constitute an incitement to terrorism against the West. He supplies moral support for terrorism, and therefore should be viewed as a very dangerous man, because of the numerous terrorists his views foster.... There is a danger in bringing Ramadan into our Muslim communities, because, with his smooth double language, he might succeed in radicalizing the Muslim community, while charming our naïve Left, as he did so successfully in France.”
In 2006 Ramadan appealed the DHS decision to ban him from the United States. The State Department denied his appeal, this time on the grounds that he had given money to a French pseudo-charity with ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Following his initial expulsion from the U.S., Ramadan quickly found work as a professor and lecturer at a number of schools throughout Europe. In October 2005 he began teaching at St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford on a Visiting Fellowship, and he was a senior research fellow at the Lokahi Foundation in London. In November 2007, he was appointed to the Sultan of Oman chair of Islamology at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, and he is also a guest professor of Identity and Citizenship at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
Vis a vis Israel, Ramadan candidly favors the complete eradication of the Jewish state. According to one French investigative agent, Ramadan’s ambition is “to bring about the legal extinction of the state of Israel through a major Muslim lobbying campaign, first in Europe, then in the United States.”
In February 2008 Ramadan led a boycott of the annual Turin [Italy] Book Fair -- to punish its organizers for having designated Israel (which was celebrating the 60th anniversary of its creation) as the event's “guest of honor.” According to Ramadan, it is “neither normal nor decent to commemorate Israel when Israeli state and government policies in the devastated occupied territories are clear for all to see.” In protest of the book fair, Ramadan helped organize a counter-event of Muslim writers, intellectuals, and activists at the University of Turin, titled “Western Democracies and Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine.”
In Ramadan's view, women should be forbidden to play in sports where their uncovered limbs would be seen by men. When asked whether he would condemn his own brother's statement that stoning a woman for adultery was an acceptable punishment as prescribed by Islamic law, Ramadan said only that he would ask for a moratorium on stoning.
Ramadan has written more than 700 articles and some twenty books, including: To Be a European Muslim (2003); Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (2005); In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad (2007); and Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation (2008). In addition, he has recorded at least 170 lectures, many of which have become popular among Muslim youths in Europe and elsewhere. His speeches attract many young Muslims from France’s poorer neighborhoods, and audiotapes of those talks sell by the thousands.
Ramadan serves as an adviser on religious issues for the European Union.
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