From 1945 on, Tariq Ramadans father was in charge of establishing a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. Al-Banna's special envoy kept his promise. He carried out his mission as both war leader and diplomat, and became the indispensable ally of King Abdullah of Jordan, who, at that time, would stop at nothing to prevent Jerusalem from becoming a majority Jewish town. It was he who proposed that the king send tanks into the old quarters of Jerusalem to evict the Jews, a feat of military prowess that is recounted on the website of the Geneva Islamic Center: "One night he [Said Ramadan] woke King Abdullah of Jordan to announce that Jerusalem was about to be taken over by the Haganah and Irgun gangs, and to ask him to send the Jordanian army to help defend the holy city. Which Abdullah did, and Jerusalem remained free until June of 1967, the year in which it fell with almost no resistance. This time, there was no one on hand to wake King Hussein."
King Abdullah named Said Ramadan head ofthe military court of Jerusalem, but he resigned after two months. He was not there to pursue a career. The movement needed him to set up cells in Muslim countries that would pledge allegiance to the Guide. He would be al-Banna's ambassador, as well as his secretary. Everywhere he went, he served as the Brotherhood's envoy in key posts. In 1948, shortly after the creation of Israel, he left for Paki stan on a particularly important mission: to represent the Muslim Brotherhood at the World Islamic Congress in Karachi. His name was put forward for the post of general secretary of the Congress, but his extremism alarmed Congress members, who themselves were far from being moderate Muslims, and a less controversial candidate was chosen. With his characteristic gift for euphemism, Tariq Ramadan came retrospectively to the defense of his father: "his determination frightened the `diplomats."'s When he was not busy denying the fanaticism of his grandfather, he was occupied defending the reputation of his father. All forms of criticism are but calumny. But no matter. Polemics have never prevented the Ramadans from pursuing their program.
Even though he was not elected secretary of the Muslim Congress, Said Ramadan was to have a decisive influence on the debate in Pakistan during the 1950s. This new nation, bringing together Muslims ofthe Indian subcontinent, had just been born and was in search of an identity based on pride in being Muslim. Said Ramadan had no trouble convincing the elite to choose an Islamic republic. No one knew better how to monopolize a national debate (a technique that he passed on to his son). He soon became very popular with young Pakistani intellectuals, thanks to his weekly radio program on Muslim world affairs. He also published booklets that were easy to read and therefore reached a wide public. The prime minister of the time, Ali Khan, even wrote a preface for one of them. In his jinah, the traditional Pakistani headdress, this chameleon-like person made people forget he was Egyptian. At the heart of the debate on what direction the constitution was to take, he was omnipresent in the media-arguing, on every occasion, for legislation based on the sharia. In 1956, a few years after his stay in Pakistan, the country ended up becoming an Islamic republic. It was at this point that he met Mawdudi, the true theoretician of the Pakistani Islamic state. In an article written as a funeral eulogy in memory of his father, Tariq Ramadan wrote in somewhat mysterious terms: "Mawdudi had thanked him for having saved him from his recklessness."6 Which would imply that Said had a moderating influence on Mawdudi, but this remains to be proved. At any rate, the two men were acquainted.
In 1949, al-Banna's emissary was on tour for the Muslim Brotherhood, with, as pretext, a cultural mission for Pakistan, when he learned that his master had died. Tariq Ramadan tries to have us relive his suffering when faced by the death of the man who had taught him to "bow his head to the ground" when praying, as a sign of humility. He fails to remind us that his master had taught him above all to lift his head up and fight in the name of the jihad. In his usual euphemistic style, Tariq Ramadan recounts: `After the assassination of his master in 1949, he had learned his lesson and sacrificed everything to spread the liberating message of Islam." Said Ramadan, who had by then become one of the masterminds of the organization, returned to Egypt in 1950, the year in which the decree banning the movement was lifted. The regime in power had made a gesture of conciliation, in the hope that the organization would become less aggressive once deprived of its leader. But that was leaving "Banna junior" out of account. On his return, Said Ramadan took up the fight where al-Banna had left off. "Once back in Egypt, he became involved in the mobilization for social and political reform. He travelled round the country giving lectures and organizing meetings," 7 his son tells us. For two years, 1950 to 1952, the Brotherhood movement became more fanatical and better mobilized than ever. It was the eve of the generals' putsch. But Said Ramadan continued to be obsessed by the idea of spreading Islamist ideology beyond Egypt's frontiers. He edited a monthly review, Al-Muslimoon, published in Arabic and English, that served as the principal vehicle for the influence of the Brotherhood's ideology and spread its message everywhere it could establish a foothold: from Morocco to Indonesia via Palestine, Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria ...
It was his international perspective that was to provide him with a way out before and after independence. When Nasser's repression struck, he was imprisoned-as were all the other officers of the movement who had demanded that the sharia be applied. But he was not held for long. He was released after four months, thanks to General Neguib, who apparently remained convinced that the Brotherhood could serve as an ally. Once freed, in 1954, he left for Jerusalem accompanied by Sayyid Qutb, who had also been released. They attended the first meeting of the World Islamic Con gress of Jerusalem as representatives of the Brotherhood. This time he was elected general secretary of the Congress. But not for long. To borrow his son's words, Said Ramadan's "determination" once again frightened the "diplomats," this time Glubb Pasha, whose real name was Sir John Bagot Glubb. This local "Lawrence of Arabia" was a general who had joined up with the Arabs. It was he who commanded the legendary Arab Legion of King Abdullah of Jordan, the legion that had reduced the Jewish section of the old city of Jerusalem to ashes during the 1948 war. And yet, Said Ramadan frightened him to the extent that he banished him from Jerusalem.
"Banna junior" could have returned to Egypt and suffered martyrdom, like Qutb, but he escaped adversity by journeying from one sponsor to the next, always obsessed by the idea of spreading the Brotherhood's philosophy on an international scale. He landed up in Damascus in Syria for a brief spell, from where he launched a new version of Al-Muslimoon with the help of a Syrian publisher. He also spent time in Jordan. But it was in Saudi Arabia that he found his true place of refuge.
A Saudi/American agent versus Nasser
Said Ramadan was warmly welcomed by the Wahhabite monarchy, which lacked both administrators and intellectuals. Saudi society had rapidly evolved from a primitive Bedouin state to all-out modernism thanks to the intake of petrodollars. The only bond that welded the country together was Wahhabism, an Islamic fundamentalism close to the Muslim Brotherhood's Salafism, although markedly more traditional in outlook.
Wahhabism was the result of a politico-religious pact negotiated in 1774 between Ibn Saud, a tribal chief, and Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab, a Salafist preacher faithful to the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya, the father of Islamic fundamentalism. During the period when some Muslim Brothers in Egypt were planning to go into exile, Saudi Arabia was undergoing a radical transformation; it was attempting to maintain the teaching of Salafist Islamism that served as an ideological straitjacket, but it was hampered by the lack of an educated elite. Thus, the Brothers, who were familiar with Ibn Taymiyya and had studied Ibn Abdul Wahhab, were enthusiastically wel- corned. During the time he spent in Saudi Arabia, Said Ramadan served as tutor to the royal family, teaching them Wahhabism and becoming one of their most trusted advisors. In 1962, he even oversaw the creation of the Muslim World League (Al Rabita al Islamiya Al Alamiya), a conduit for financing the spread of the Islamic faith (the Saudi version of the Islamic faith) worldwide, even if this meant serving as a t
rust fund for Islamist terrorism on account of the obligation to give alms (zakat). The Rabita (another name for the League) was supported by the Americans, who counted on Saudi Arabia in the struggle against Arab nationalism and communism. Pakistan, in which Said Ramadan had placed his hopes, seemed reluctant to assume this role. It was thus necessary to find another country ready to promulgate Islamism as an antidote to communism and Arab nationalism. The Saudis were more than ready to play the game. Fulfilling the obligation to give alms would atone for their incredible financial windfall; moreover, the funds would be used in the struggle against Arab socialism, which was highly offensive to these ultra-religious representatives, firm believers in private property. Said Ramadan was to be one of the architects of this alliance between the Saudis and the Americans against Nasser. He himself drew up sections of the constitutive charter of the Muslim World League-of which section 2 criticizes by implication the Bandung Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement. It called for combating "dangerous conferences in which the enemies of Islam intend to encourage Muslims to rebel against religion and destroy their unity and fraternity."s
This historical background is particularly significant. Tariq Ramadan claims today that there is a fundamental difference between the Brothers' ideology and that of the Wahhabis. Ever since Saudi Arabia gave the Americans permission to establish military bases on the ground on which Mecca stands-ever since, in particular, the world has become aware of the havoc produced by Wahhabism-the Swiss preacher has never missed an occasion to castigate "the traditionalist reactionary Islamism' of the Saudis, not only out of anti-Americanism, but also in order to appear more modern in the eyes of the anti-globalist and communist militants that he is intent on attracting. He forgets to mention that his model father helped the Saudis to become the sponsors of this Wahhabism, second to none in the virulence of its reactionary policies and anti-communism.
The creation of the Geneva Islamic Center
In the late 195os, even before the founding ofthe Muslim World League, Said Ramadan persuaded Prince Faisal to help him found a network of Islamic centers in the main European capitals. The objective: to re-Islamize the Old World, that is to say, to facilitate the export of an ultra-reactionary, ultra-rigid Islam, spilling over into the sole region in the world that had succeeded in establishing a balance between politics and religion in a secular context.
After some two years of commuting between Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, Said Ramadan took up the question of what city would provide the best home base. He arrived in Geneva in 1958, but then travelled to Germany, where he earned a doctorate in law from the University of Cologne with a thesis, a very concise thesis, on the "sharia."9 In terms of scientific contribution, it consisted mostly of advocating a return to the founding precepts and Salafist reformist doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood. Tariq Ramadan speaks of "a synthesis of the basic views of Hassan al-Banna regarding the sharia, legal power, political organization and religious pluralism."" He was well advised to specify that his father insisted on "religious plural- isrrf' and not political pluralism. In fact, Said Ramadan-as Hassan al-Banna had before him-dreamed of a political system that would be not democratic but theocratic, while allowing for pluralism, which meant that a diversity of opinions and interpretations was, of course, possible ... But diversity only between Islamic scholars regarding interpretations of the sharia! In his thesis, Said Ramadan defended a clearly "totalitarian' concept of religion: 'All religious ideas that shape the imaginative outlook and content of human mind and that determine the action of the human will are potentially or in principle totalitarian." Which would not be that bad, had Said not to add in the next sentence: "They must seek to impose their own standards and rules on all social activities and institutions from elementary schools to law and government.""
Published under the title Islamic Law: Its Scope and Equity, Said Rama dan's thesis comes with a preface written by Gerhard Kegel, a professor of international law at Cologne University. He hailed Dr. Said Ramadan as a "well-known active supporter of the Islamic Movement" who knows Islam from the inside and is thus likely to avoid the hidden pitfalls that await the "foreign student." He congratulated him on his "remarkable contribution to our knowledge of the Islamic people and, perhaps, to peace between all peoples." The "perhaps" takes on full significance when one reads a second preface that appeared in the French edition of the book-by M. A. K. Brohi, the former Pakistani Minister of Justice. He enlightens us regarding the pertinence of a thesis that redeems the sharia from the colonial version spread by "foreign researchers": "The problem is that it is impossible for Europeans, even the most enlightened, who have been brought up in a secular culture ... to truly understand that a Muslim gives himself over entirely to the divine will as expressed in divine law, and that he is called upon to situate every one of his acts in a divine framework that is allencompassing."" This double perspective points up the naivete of some Western scholars, all too ready, as an anti-colonial reflex, to let Muslims who know Islam "from the inside" have their way. Said Ramadan already knew, well before his son, how to exploit this reflex when, in 1961, he chose to establish an Islamic Center in the heart of Geneva.
"Here the family will live in peace," reads the introduction to the Center. And it was indeed in an atmosphere of calm that Said Ramadan, accompanied by his wife and children, inaugurated the Islamic Center of Geneva, just a stone's throw from the seat of the United Nations, with the aim of persuading all believers to join in "the struggle against all forms of materialistic atheism,"13 a creed that the Center has never ceased to invoke. "Dedicated to the service of God," the Center serves as headquarters for Muslim Brothers in exile. There you could run into famous Islamists, such as Malcolm X or Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), or less illustrious figures, such as members of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) of Algeria or Afghan veterans on their way through Geneva. In the beginning, the governing board consisted of wellknown figures of radical Islam from Asia, India and Malaysia.14
It might come as a surprise to see an association founded by Islamists who made no secret of their sponsors, their contacts, and their objectives so respectably and publicly established. It is just that the Center chose the right country for exile. Switzerland is a haven of peace, a paradise for freedom of expression. Furthermore, during the period they were settling in, the Muslim Brotherhood was on excellent terms with the European and American secret services, in that they, too, were fighting "atheist materialism," that is to say communism, the top priority at the time. In a brochure published by the Center, Said Ramadan urged Muslims to fight Communism, which he considered a new form of idolatry: "Without an ideology that can counter theirs, that can face up to communist agents that are to be found everywhere ... disaster is imminent." And he added: "Muslims are increasingly aware that it is for them a choice between communism and Islam."15 Thus in Geneva, as elsewhere, the Muslim Brotherhood was considered a valuable American asset in the Cold War. Jacques Pitteloud, a former coordinator of the Swiss secret service, admitted as much: "At the time Said Ramadan was pretty much on the side of the allies."16 Even when the Center was no longer clearly on the side of the allies, its Saudi sponsorship-in a country of banks-was enough to protect it. So it was from its Geneva base that the Muslim Brotherhood was to sow the seeds from which the enemies of the West were to grow. The Swiss authorities, whose initial welcome had cooled, were powerless to stop them.
In August of 1995, the fraternity's Supreme Guide, Mustapha Machour, officially acknowledged the existence of a coordinated international network: "We have branches abroad, in London, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Every Muslim Brotherhood activist who left Egypt has set up a branch in the host country and remains in touch with the central organization." 17 Among them, Said Ramadan was the most militant. After Geneva, he opened an Islamic Center in Munich and then one in London in 1964.'8 His view of things was simple: the West was to be the place of refuge for them to have a free hand in planning revenge. He insisted on the need for l
ecturing and producing newspapers and journals that would transmit the Brotherhood's ideology, in particular via the Al-Muslimoon publishing house that he transferred from Egypt to Geneva. Located on Rue des Eaux-Vives, the Center is laid out along the same lines as the headquarters that Hassan al-Banna had built in Cairo. Gamal al-Banna, who was eight years old when his brother Hassan founded the Brotherhood, recalls the way the family home, which was also a political center, was organized: "We had acquired a spacious threefloor house; the first floor was reserved for the Brothers' meetings, the second for the family, and the third for Imam Hassan and his family." The Geneva Islamic Center is more or less a replica. The ground floor serves as a reception room and conference hall, whereas the space upstairs is reserved for more confidential meetings. Once a militant is sufficiently advanced in his religious apprenticeship, he can go upstairs, where the rhetoric is far more radical. Several former fellow travelers, interrogated in the course of investigations into terrorism in Europe, have confirmed the change oftone that they observed. Unlike the language of the public lectures, which has to be read between the lines, the preaching upstairs was apparently far more outspoken. No need to rush things. Whatever happens, demography is on the side of the Muslims; a thousand years from now and Europe will be Muslim.
Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan Page 7
