Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan

by Caroline Fourest

  Tariq the conqueror

  It is in this Center, on Rue des Eaux-Vives, that Tariq Ramadan was born and grew up, surrounded by the choicest samplings of Islamic activism. In his book written with Alain Gresh, he fully accepts the fact: "He [Said Ramadan] had been put in charge of the Muslim Brothers in exile. So, from my birth in 1962, I was surrounded by the sayings and thoughts of Muslims who, while living in Europe, were totally immersed in the realities of the Muslim world, Arab but also Indo-Pakistani."19 Tariq Ramadan was born barely one year after the creation of the Geneva Islamic Center. The family consisted already of four boys (Aymen, Bilal, Yasser, and Hani) and one girl (Arwa). Tariq was, then, the last-born in the heart of Europe. It was to seal his fate. His parents did not pick a name for him at random: "Tariq" echoes the name Tariq Ibn Zyad, the first Muslim conqueror to have set foot on the Christian soil of Spain. The name Gibraltar, which means "rock of Tariq" in Arabic, is a reminder. Tariq Ramadan is quick to explain to the press that this is a mere coincidence. According to him, "Tariq" had no belligerent connota tion for his parents. Are we really supposed to believe that Said Ramadan and Wafa al-Banna, who had just created a center in the heart of Europe in order to Islamize the Old World, chose their son's first name at random? It appears unlikely, especially when we know the extent to which the career of each of the children was planned in advance. When he grew to manhood, Tariq, the aptly named, was to marry Isabelle, the Catholic. It is not a play on words: his wife is, in fact, called Isabelle, and she was Catholic up to the day she converted, donned the headscarf, and took the name of Iman in order to marry Tariq Ramadan.2O

  The sense ofbeing responsible, from birth on, for continuing his heritage was not limited to Said Ramadan's youngest son alone. Despite their quite different careers and professions, his brothers all serve as administrators of the Geneva Islamic Center. His oldest brother, Aymen, is a brilliant neurosurgeon, but he is no less of an Islamist and presides over the governing board of the center. In a preface written for a re-edition of his father's book on the sharia, Aymen paid homage to the man whose aura still surrounds each of his children and grandchildren: "May God see to it that he remains the example of the true path we are to follow."" Said Ramadan, in charge of the Muslim Brothers in exile, is an example for everyone to follow-and in particular for Tariq, in whose eyes the greatest sin is to fail to honor one's father and one's mother: "Tell me how you behave with your parents, and I will tell you who you are," he insisted in a lecture devoted to the major sins.22 In a eulogy after the death of his father, published as a preamble to his book on the confrontation of civilizations, he wrote: "Thanks be to God for having given me such a father."13 Has Tariq really attempted to break free from the custody of such an imposing father? No doubt he did try, as do all adolescents, but with a fear of this patriarch and a respect for him that emerge even today when he speaks as an adult:

  I have an intense remembrance of his presence, his words, his silences. Long silences sometimes lost in memories, in thought, in bitterness .... It was often so. His eyes were bright, his expression penetrating and intense, conveying at one moment his warmth, his gentleness, his tears; at other times fortifying his determi nation, his commitment, his anger. It was a difficult thing for me when I caught the expression in his eyes-wide-open, powerful, suggestive-questioning eyes that went with his words straight to my heart that was woken, aroused and shaken by them.14

  From his earliest years Tariq Ramadan felt he was different from other children. When he was eight, he used to kick a soccer ball with all his might, dreaming of becoming a sports star, but his coach was obliged to explain to his team mates that, as required by his religion, Tariq took his shower fully dressed so as not to show himself naked.15 At school, he was a fairly bright student-diligent even. He asked one of his teachers for his opinion of a play that he had written. When older, he offered to give remedial instruction courses for younger students who were having trouble, a family reflex. His grandfather had two obsessions: train minds and train athletes (he encouraged militants to be physically fit). His grandson chose teaching as a vocation and amassed exploits in sports: ski instructor, soccer coach, a ranked tennis player. His hyperactivity was less a proof of integration of some kind than an expression of the malaise and suffering that haunted all the members of his family.

  Haunted by exile

  The Ramadan family probably never fully appreciated the charm of Lake Geneva. All is drab when one's eyes are fixed on the Nile. For them, Switzerland was never a land of refuge, but a land of exile. A golden prison, where the essential thing was to organize for revenge, organize for the day when the Muslim Brotherhood, deprived of their nation, would return in triumph to Egypt to join in an Islamic government. Tariq Ramadan was brought up with the myth of this return, continually postponed. In this context, becoming integrated or "dissolved"-an expression that he uses frequently-in the West was out of the question. His brothers and his sisters learned to grow up in a family welded together by the promise of return. From his earliest years, he suffered to see his father endure exile. "His life was not life," he wrote when his father died, as a way of describing his forty-one years spent away from Egypt, haunted by the fear ofbeing kidnapped or liquidated by the Egyptian secret service.

  Before being banished from Egypt, Said Ramadan had already chosen to be the roving ambassador of the Brotherhood. But it is a different matter when the choice is not a free one. In addition to holding secret meetings and fomenting conspiracies in the name of the cause, Tariq Ramadan's father had to struggle to find funds. His son has bitter memories of the day when money from the Saudi benefactors stopped pouring in. For years, the Rabita sponsors had supported the family without protest and had subsidized all of Said Ramadari s projects. But after thirteen years of financial infusions, he could no longer tolerate the Saudi authorities' right to supervise his activities, and he wanted to have greater leeway, even if that meant refusing the hand that had nourished him in exile. According to the Center, Saudi contributions came to an end in 1971, but this remains to be proved. At any rate, Tariq Ramadan recounts that his father was in pitiful straits: "We were totally without financial support; we had no money left. I remember that I couldri t leave the country, we had no means, and no papers."26 Said Ramadan had been stripped of his Egyptian nationality by Nasser, after having been condemned in absentia to three twenty-five-year prison sentences for high treason, in particular for having organized the World Islamic Congress in Jerusalem and damaging relations between Syria and Egypt. Years later, the Egyptians were to try to mend relations with the Brotherhood by proposing that Said Ramadan request that his nationality be reinstated; but he refused the opportunity, because-according to the Geneva Islamic Center-"he considered that he had never stopped being Egyptian." He could have asked for Swiss nationality, but had always scorned the idea. As a result, his children had a total of six different nationalities acquired in the course of his various political negotiations, but which he considered borrowed identities, and which, for a long time, kept them from making a place for themselves as real Swiss citizens. Tariq Ramadan readily admits that "this remained with me as something terribly disturbing and painful."17

  For years, he felt himself to be a foreigner living in Switzerland. As a youngster, he had but one obsession: to return to Egypt-not that he had been born there, but he always considered it as his real homeland: "I always dreamed of returning to Egypt; it meant returning to my roots. Egypt was the land I most cherished and that deep down was `my' country. Nothing in my political or religious concerns made me feel Swiss." In 1978, the opportunity arose. At a time when the relations between the Egyptian authorities and the Brotherhood were on the mend, Sadat was ready to try out a policy of appeasement. Hassan al-Banna's grandson took advantage of the chance to return to his native land. At the age of sixteen, he imagined Egypt to be a hotbed of radicalism, where all the politico-religious passions that he had known since childhood were to be found concentrated. The encounter with this my
thical land was a real letdown. Suddenly he realized that the heroes of Muslim fundamentalism that he had dreamed of meeting in Egypt were not in Egypt, but in Switzerland. And he had grown up surrounded by them. The Egypt he discovered was a peaceful country, totally unlike the image of radicalism that he had fashioned for himself: "I must say that what I found there came as a great surprise. Basically, it was a great disappointment. In Switzerland I lived in a dynamic world intellectually, one that was activist .... For me, Egypt stood for the myth of the encounter with the concrete realities of a world that other militants had devoted their lives to. When I got there in 1978, I found a quite different political reality .... I did, to be sure, find the roots of a past with which I immediately felt in harmony, but I understood, despite my young age, how timid and insipid the political convictions were-far less developed than my family's."28 Ramadan is quite clear. Disappointed not to have found in Egypt ideologists as fundamentalist as his parents, he decided to return to Europe and learn to take advantage of his Swiss citizenship, the better to advance the cause of political Islam, and one day-why not?-take the revenge so longed for by his father. He even envisaged asking for French citizenship, which he could have obtained, thanks to his wife. But, for the time being, he could not keep still. Since nowhere did he feel at home, why not be at home everywhere? The sense oftotal rootlessness drove him to want to travel the world-but not any old way. At eighteen, he joined an Islamic relief organization.

  From Islamism to pro-Third World Islamism

  When journalists ask him about his personal evolution, Tariq Ramadan prefers to describe himself as a "Third-World Muslim' who graduated from relief work to being a militant alongside trade unions and leftist organizations. He is apt to talk of Coup de Main (A Helping Hand), an association he set up with fellow teachers when he was assigned to a secondary school in Coudrier (Switzerland) in the r98os. The laudable objective of the organization was to encourage young students to act responsibly and develop a sense of solidarity, in particular regarding cultures other than their own. The association, which was financed by the Geneva school district, offered the studentsand Tariq Ramadan-the opportunity to travel to Mali, Senegal, Tibet, India, Burkina Faso, and Brazil. As a secondary schoolteacher participating in this program, the preacher was to encounter Sister Emmanuelle, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Edmond Kaiser, Hubert Reeves, Albert Jacquard, Guy Gilbert, Rene Dumont, l'Abbe Pierre, and Dom Helder Camara, one of the leading figures of liberation theology. The meetings were on occasion brief, but they were to stand him in good stead. Tariq Ramadan never missed an opportunity to speak of these encounters, however fleeting, so adding the right touch to the image of a perfect third-world globetrotter of the socially minded Christian kind. He dwells in particular on the encounter with Dom Helder Camara as a way of suggesting a comparison between the Muslim Brotherhood's Islam and liberation theology.

  Liberation theology took root in the late r96os in a very special context, as a means of resistance against the fascist and communist military dictatorships of Latin America. It drew on Christ's message to defend liberty and social justice, before being submerged in a broader radical left movement based no longer on a political system but on ethics. The Muslim Brotherhood movement can, indeed, appear similar-if you leave out the fact that its aim has been to replace a military dictatorship with a theocratic dictatorship, in the meantime fighting to establish a society in which individual liberties are denied, co-education despised, women dominated and forced to wear the veil, and sexual minorities persecuted-all in the name of the sharia.

  Comparing the Muslim Brotherhood with liberation theology is as absurd as believing that Tariq Ramadan is a Marxist because he is pro-Third World. In his case, support for the Third World is always linked to his Islamist commitment. He claims to have worked alongside associations such as ATD Fourth World or Medecins sans Frontieres, but fails to mention that, for the most part, he was involved with the Islamist solidarity network, Secours Islamique, otherwise known as Islamic Relief. It is no ordinary relief association, but rather an organization that spreads Islamism via relief aid.29 The association was presided over by a certain Hany al-Banna. The name sounds familiar, but Tariq Ramadan insists that it was just a coincidence, that he was not a relative. Above all, Tariq Ramadan would have us believe that, since he is no relation of Hany al-Banna, he was never active in Islamic Relief. He exploits this error in order to discredit any investigation into his connection with the organization. At times, his denial is even more adamant. When Serge Raffy was preparing an article that appeared in the January 29, 2004 issue of the Nouvel Observateur, he was astonished to receive a letter from Hany al-Banna's lawyer stating that his client had never known Tariq Ramadan. A surprising claim, given that the Daily Trust, dated November 27, 2003, reported on a conference organized by the Muslim Council of Britain, during which Hany al-Banna and Tariq Ramadan shared the platform! They had occasion to meet once again during the annual conference of the FOSIS (Federation of Student Islamic Societies) held at Nottingham University between June 17 and 20, 2004. Moreover, in the course of a lecture given to a Muslim audience that was taped in 1999, Tariq Ramadan claimed that collaboration between the Geneva Islamic Center and Islamic Reliefwas of his doing! "I was personally involved, since I was on the executive board of the Islamic solidarity organization with which you are familiar and which did a terrific job here in Reunion under the name Islamic Relief. We worked with them in Geneva when I was on the board."3° Furthermore, he urged his Muslim audience to pay no attention to the rumors spread by "the Western media" intent on "discrediting the association." In another conference on the media, returning again to the issue, he asserted that, despite the ques tionable reputation of the humanitarian organization, there are still journalists "honest" enough to speak well of the organization if things are properly explained to them .... In fact, Islamic Relief has long been remarkably successful in having people forget its Islamist features by referring to itself as an equivalent to the Red Cross. But the Red Cross does not have similar ulterior political motives. Thanks to its numerous sponsors in the Gulf states, Islamic Relief has dispatched militants to all the war zones where traumatized people might well turn to political Islam for consolation. They have turned up in Chechnya, Bosnia, Yemen, Iran, and, of course, Algeria, where every earthquake serves as a pretext for spreading their influence, as they distribute blankets and hot meals. Their charitable work is real enough, as is that of the Christian organizations in Iraq, but their true intention is undeniably to demonstrate that solidarity comes from Islam and not from the West. Similarly, the associations linked to the American religious Right that distribute food to the Iraqis make no secret of their attempts to convince them of the advantages of made-in-USA Christianity. Baptist organizations spent $250,000 sending blankets and powdered baby milk to Iraq in order to get close to the population, for motives of their own. Mark Kelly, the Baptist spokesman, explained quite clearly that they hoped to turn unbelievers into believers: "Conversations quickly get around to our faith."31

  That's exactly the approach taken by Islamic Relief. It is also in this spirit of Islamic evangelization that Tariq Ramadan joined the African Cooperation Fund. The name suggests a charity organization that collects funds to help Africa. In fact, funds are collected above all to Islamize Africa. Ramadan presides over the governing committee and determines the goals for the bureau, which was created in August 2000 on the occasion of the first symposium of French-speaking Muslims. The resolutions of this symposium devote considerable space to the role of the dawa and the appropriate strategies for spreading the Islamic message, and then report on the creation of a fund destined "to provide African countries with books, cassettes, pedagogical material, and any other equipment designed to promote the transmission of knowledge."32 Needless to say, it is Islamic knowledge that we are talking of.

  There is one African country that Tariq Ramadan knows particularly well: Sudan. Islamic Relief was one of the very few humanitarian organi
zations authorized to open an office there in the 199os, the very time when Hassan al-Tourabi issued his statement in praise of Tariq Ramadan. "The high priest of Islamism," the leading figure ofthe Sudanese regime, then in the midst of reinstating the sharia, was at the height of his power. In 1994, he was forced by international pressure to allow the French secret service to kidnap the terrorist Carlos. In 1996, he agreed to expel Osama bin Laden. In the meantime, Khartoum was a haven for terrorists. Every year, al-Tourabi staged a Popular Arab and Islamic Conference (PAIC), a sort of high mass intended to bring together nationalists and Islamists. A few pro-Palestinian radicals used to attend, but above all it was a meeting place for Muslim extremists, numerous delegates from the FIS, and notorious hostage takers. It was not uncommon for the closing ceremony to feature a splendid parade of kamikazes or youngsters armed with Kalashnikovs shouting "Death to Israel." Tariq Ramadan took part in the celebration in 1993. As he did when he travelled to Yemen (where another Muslim Brotherhood branch was seeking recognition), he contacted the journalists. One journalist recalled seeing a most likeable young man, obviously respected by the Islamists thanks to his relationship to al-Banna. Tariq Ramadan had been preaching for two years in the Muslim Brotherhood network and was earning a reputation inside the closed world of Islamism. Al-Tourabi took him seriously enough to consider him "the future of Islam."

  First steps as a preacher