Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan
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4. Subsequently we want a Muslim government whose members will lead the people under Islamic guidance, as, in the past, did Abou Bakr and Omar, disciples of the Prophet, may he rest in peace. That is also why we will not accept any form of government not based on Islamic foundations and not true to Islamic principles. That is also our reason for refusing to recognize political parties and the traditional authorities with whom the deniers and the enemies of Islam have forced us to govern, thus contributing to their growth. We will strive for the renaissance of a totally Islamic government, a government based on Islamic foundations ....
5. We want next to reassemble all those who are part of Islam and that Western policies have made a point ofkeeping separate and which European cupidity has misled and sealed off within national borders. Thus we reject all international agreements that have transformed the nation of Islam into a collection of powerless entities, weak and riven by internal conflicts, that can easily be taken over by those who would rob them of their rights. And we will not remain silent when their liberties are denied and unjustly confiscated by outsiders. Thus Egypt, Syria, Hidjaz, Yemen, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, Marrakech, and wherever there lives a Muslim who recites the words "There is no God but God himself"-all of these territories belong to our great nation; we will liberate them, free them from domination, deliver them from tyranny, and bring them together as one whole. Ifthe German Reich makes it a principle to protect all those with German blood in their veins, well then Muslim faith makes it a principle for every Muslim who has the opportunity to act as the protector of all those who have taken to heart the teachings of the Koran. It is thus forbidden, in accordance with Islamic tradition, to treat the ethnic factor as more important than the ties that bind by faith. And belief is the heart and soul of Islam. Moreover, is not faith basically a question of love and hate?
6. We want the Islamic flag to be hoisted once again on high, fluttering in the wind, in all those lands that have had the good fortune to harbor Islam for a certain period of time and where the muezzin's call has sounded in the takbirs and the tahlis. Then fate decreed that the light of Islam be extinguished in these lands that returned to unbelief. Thus Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, the Italian coast, as well as the islands of the Mediterranean, are all of them Muslim Mediterranean colonies and they must return to the Islamic fold. The Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea must once again become Muslim seas, as they once were, even if Mussolini has usurped the right to rebuild the Roman Empire. This so-called empire of ancient times was founded on cupidity and lust. It is thus our duty to rebuild the Islamic Empire, that was founded on justice and equality and that spread the light of the true way among the people.
7. We want, after that and with that, to disseminate our Islamic message to the entire world, to reach people wherever they may be, to spread our message to the four corners of the globe, and overcome the tyrants until the day when agitation ceases and religion is entirely devoted to God. When that day comes, the believers will rejoice in God's help. He saves those whom he wishes to save; He is the source of all Power and all Mercy.
It is notable that this Epitre auxjeunes [Letter to the Young], in which Hassan al-Banna proposes Nazism as a model, advocates extending Islamic imperialism to include all those nations in which a single Muslim is to be found.
All means are justified
In this same set of lectures on Hassan al-Banna, Tariq Ramadan adopted as his own the maxim by which his grandfather urged the Brotherhood to use all means at their disposal in order to impose their vision on society. "To that end we shall spare no effort; we shall not stop at any means."3$ That Ramadan should adopt this maxim is in itself frightening, even if he is a past master in the art of presenting the Muslim Brotherhood's tactics in a favorable light.
With this same idea of respect for the rhythms imposed by the West, and so as not to give the impression that the Brotherhood is a movement hungry for power, the preacher emphasized his grandfather's "phenomenal contribution in social and political matters." He pointed to the creation of "two thousand schools" and the "social measures for the promotion of women."39 He is quite right to remind us that al-Banna was obsessed by the creation of schools, including schools for young girls. But this obsession was in no way a disinterested commitment to reducing illiteracy! Al-Banna wanted to "reform instruction ... so as to establish a model society in terms of Islamic law."4° As is the case with leaders who want to create a faithful following, he was convinced that the only way to change people was to change the children. The schools that he founded throughout Egypt were not intended to foster independence of thought and intellectual freedom. They were Islamic schools, designed to indoctrinate as many young Egyptian boys and girls as possible, from the earliest age. The Muslim sisters, the women's section of the Brotherhood, were encouraged primarily to combat women's emancipation. And the movement campaigned against co-education in the state schools. From 1937 on, the Brotherhood frequently addressed letters to the university administration demanding that there be separate instruction for men and women. To claim that Hassan al-Banna was a great figure on the basis of his contribution to public instruction-while omitting to say that it consisted of a means of indoctrination in the service of a totalitarian ideology-is pure propaganda. Like all authoritarian movements, the Brotherhood was also obsessively concerned with training the young boys in sports. Are we to conclude that their primary mission was to combat obesity? All of the Islamic movements active in the field function in this same way: they systematically fill the smallest gaps left by the state by proposing courses in Arabic, remedial instruction or humanitarian aid-not out of the goodness of their hearts, but in order to recruit.
The Brotherhood's totalitarianism does not appear to have come as much of a shock to Tariq Ramadan. In the same lectures on "contemporary Muslim thought," he explains that his grandfather was right to advocate a single-party system, for the Egyptian people ofhis time did not possess a sufficiently solid political culture to make the right choice-i.e. to choose an Islamic regime. As al-Banna put it: "Given the situation, elections were pointless; they served no purpose, since, if the majority of the population was ignorant, how could they know what they really wanted?"41 Ramadan quotes his grandfather to prove how right he was to encourage Islamic education, while at the same time refusing pluralism and democracy for as long as it took for this education to take effect. That is what Ramadan refers to as his grandfather's "critical attitude in regard to pluralism."
However hard al-Banna's heirs attempt to portray themselves as a political alternative to the authoritarian and paternalistic governments of the Maghreb and the Middle East, they are themselves hardly any better. A regime issuing from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood would be the first to flout democratic principles once in power. For proof, one has only to observe the way in which their own movement has functioned over the years. As Supreme Guide, al-Banna had a very singular notion of what consultation consisted of. He accepted the principle of consultation as stipulated in the Koran, but without ever taking the risk of making it democratic in practice. Within the official structure of the Brotherhood, the power to take decisions rested, during his lifetime, with the Bureau of Orientation, composed of twenty members chosen by the Guide. As a pure formality, his choice was ratified by an Assembly of 150 members, who had the right to comment on the decisions before voting by a two-thirds majority. But their countervailing power was strictly limited, since it was the Bureau of Orientation that had the last word .... But then the Guide could dismiss any one of its members if he so chose! This does not mean that there were no differing ideological tendencies within the movement, or relatively diverse subgroups. Yet, as Olivier Carre has explained: All serious rifts ended in blind submission, in secession or exclusion." 42 These procedures made it possible for the Guide to exclude systematically those who reproached him for having made deals with the regime in power or who accused him of nepotism. What a splendid organizational model for a "liberation movement!"
Built-in doublespeak
From the very start, the Muslim Brotherhood has been based on an ambiguity: that of being at one and the same time an organized movement and a way of thinking. The movement's founding law, which dates from 1945, defines an "active member" as someone who has pledged allegiance to the Guide, but the great majority of those committed to serve the Brotherhood's ideology do so on an informal basis. These agents spread al-Banna's message and his methods, without being an integral part of the organization.
The movement had, to be sure, an official structure that represented it in political dealings with institutions. The Brotherhood even had a flag: two crossed swords with the Koran as a background. The organization's officers introduced themselves as members of the Muslim Brotherhood if, in so doing, negotiations with the Egyptian government or other administrations were facilitated. But the Brotherhood consisted of much more than this official facade. Some sections were engaged in infiltration operations that were of necessity undercover. Other sections organized terrorist attacks that had to be publicly condemned so as not to discredit the official line taken by the head office. Steps were taken to separate, as far as possible, the sections that were in the public eye from the undercover cells, either because the latter were more radical or because their mission had to remain confidential. This led to the creation of an unofficial branch, known as the Secret Organization, in charge of the most sensitive operations. As well as this division into official and secret branches, the informal nature of the movement's organization meant that it was always possible to prevent its active supporters from being identified. If a member of the Brotherhood was caught engaged in a mission prejudicial to the movement's public image, the official branch could deny having any connection with him. And conversely, if the fact of being exposed as a Muslim Brother threatened the success of a mission, the latter could always deny belonging to the organization. You could say it was the movement's golden rule. Many fraternities resort to lies and dissimulation in their dealings with the outside world if that serves to protect them and help them achieve their objectives-the Muslim Brotherhood more so than any other. Trained in the Sufi fraternity, al-Banna admitted that he had been marked for life by the advice given him by his sheikh, who taught him the advantages of speaking with two voices: "I remember that, among his wise teachings, one was to prevent the Brothers who were his disciples from expressing themselves too freely in debates on judicial issues or on obscure questions, or to repeat in front of ordinary people what atheists, strangers, or missionaries might have said. He advised them: `Discuss these questions among yourselves and study them in the company of those who are well informed; but as for ordinary people, speak to them in such a way as to have an immediate influence and render them more obedient to God."'46 This sentence, quoted by Tariq Ramadan in On the Origins of the Muslim Renaissance, shows us-better than any analysis could-where his habit comes from of speaking with one voice to people outside his community and with another to people within it.
Islamists in general have learned how to lie in order to avoid exposure. This principle even bears a name: taqiyya. The Shiites applied this prerogative when lying or even when swearing that they were not Shiite in order to survive when they were persecuted by the Sunnis for their religious beliefs. The reflex has remained with them. It spread to the Sunni Islamists intent on furthering their cause despite the strict surveillance they were under in Arab countries. Today, it is used by Islamists living in the Western democracies, not in order to avoid arrest, but simply as a means of pursuing their ends while remaining disguised.
Students of Islamism, who have heard militants say one thing in public and another when with their brothers, have become accustomed to this kind of doublespeak. Many have been disconcerted by the doublespeak until they have come to understand that this behavior forms an integral part of Islamist rhetoric. For Jean-Yves Chaperon, a reporter for Luxembourg's radio and television (RTL) who has been covering the subject for many years, it no longer comes as a surprise: "With the Islamists you'll always find this kind of duality: sweetness on the outside, and fire within."47 Nonetheless, it is always a bit disconcerting when somebody lies to you, often with a broad smile. Another Islamist speciality is to make totally unacceptable remarks in the most angelic manner. Hassan al-Tourabi is a prime example of what the Muslim Brotherhood is capable of producing (although he has since denied any connection with the Brotherhood). He often astounds his listeners by his habit of stirring up hatred in a good-natured, almost likeable, manner. This friendly host studied in Paris, where he founded the Association of Islamic Students of France. He enjoys receiving French journalists in order to explain to them, in the most cheerful of tones, how his social model will, in the end, destabilize the entire planet.4$ This trait is even more crude in the case of Omar Bakri, for many years the London leader of the now banned Al-Muhajiroun, a man who makes no secret of the fact that he has organized trips to Afghanistan and served as an agent of AlQaeda propaganda. He delights in summoning journalists and proclaiming, a broad smile on his face, that he is a fervent supporter of bin Laden, and that non-Muslims will soon be defeated or will burn in hell. To utter such anathemas in the very heart of the West, without taking the slightest risk thanks to the right of free speech, is, for him, an additional source of pleasure. It should be mentioned that such statements would, in his native country of Syria, result in his immediate imprisonment, and probably in his torture. The situation is a bit more complex for activists whose objective is strategic. They are obliged to tone down their rhetoric, even to learn how to lie-with a smile that expresses their disdain for the naivete of non-Muslims. And who can blame them? It is typical Western naivete to think that one can form an opinion of determined, a
nti-democratic militants by relying on good impressions and to believe that fanatics dorit lie. The result is that Western journalists, when confronted by Islamists who are even a little cunning, are constantly thrown off the track.
A Brother or not a Brother?
"I have no functional connection with the Muslim Brotherhood," Tariq Ramadan made a point of declaring for the benefit of the press. As if the Brotherhood was a party that issued membership cards. As if the lack of a formal tie vindicated the rehabilitation of his grandfather and the teaching of the latter's thought to European Muslims-without any attempt to adopt a critical perspective. "It's time to put a stop to these fantasies," he declared to the Nouvel Observateur. "I am independent; there are differences of opinion between me and the Brotherhood in regard to matters of doctrine, even if one of my uncles, Al-Islam al-Banna, is a member of the movement's governing body. But you know, the Brotherhood is not a homogeneous organization. There are differing groups and subgroups ... "49 There are, in effect, different tendencies within the Brotherhood. But it is important to understand that these differences concern questions of method-never the objectives to be attained. It is quite likely that certain Muslim Brothers do find the heir's methods a bit too modern for their taste. But that does not make of Tariq Ramadan a modern Muslim! You can be communist without having the party card and you can disagree with other communists; but that doesn't turn you into an anarchist. Wherever he goes, Ramadan spreads the form of Islamism that he inherited. An ambassador for Islamism who is all the more dangerous and difficult to pin down since he claims to be autonomous. Antoine Sfeir, founder of the Cahiers de l'Orient [The Orient Review], who has written several books on Islamism and who was one of the first to have exposed Tariq Ramadan's doublespeak, is certainly not mistaken in saying: As far as I'm concerned, he is no doubt one of the key figures of the Brotherhood. "50 Richard Labeviere, a Radio France International (RFI) reporter and author of several books on Islamist terrorism, backs him up. In April 1998, in the course of a trip to Cairo, he had occasion to interview the head of the Brotherhood, Guide Machour. The latter confirmed the fact that belonging to the Brotherhood was not a question of "being a member" or "not being a member," but a question of adhering to a certain way of thinking; he added: "The work carried out by Hani and Tariq is totally in keeping with the purest traditions of the Muslim Brotherhood."51