Who is Tariq Ramadan?

Guernica magazine explores the intellectual background of Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim figure often cited in the West:

In 2006, Paul Berman attended a seminar in Sweden which featured the Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, just-resigned Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Bassam Tibi, the critic of Islamism. Berman was meeting both Ramadan and Hirsi Ali for the first time, and their fame preceded them. “He and I sat together, talking,” Berman says of the former, “then he made his presentation. I listened to Ramadan speak, and had a very strong reaction to his presentation. I felt that it was manipulative and a little demagogic and very unpleasant. On the other hand, I was impressed by Hirsi Ali.”

What puzzled Berman was how his impression of Ramadan clashed markedly with Ramadan’s reception in the media. Berman began to read Ramadan closely, which he describes as his em>métier<. French writer Caroline Fourest had cited Ramadan’s double talk, a habit of saying something moderate to non-Muslim audiences and something different to Muslims. But this wasn’t exactly what Berman found.

Rather, Ramadan had the habit of openly revering figures like Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (and Ramadan’s grandfather). Al-Banna was closely associated in the forties with the Palestinian Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, leader of “the most violent wing of the Arab Revolt.” As Berman would learn, the anti-Semitic and Fascist strain used by these figures, that extremist organizations like al-Qaeda are heir to, was not merely rhetorical.

In fact, the Mufti had been a star in the Nazi propaganda war during World War II. The Mufti’s appeal to the Nazis was partly a result of his adopting the Nazi idea of a demonic worldwide conspiracy of Jews, which, during the war, he broadcast on Nazi shortwave radio programs across the Arab world. But Nazi awe of the Mufti also had plenty to do with the support graced by al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood, as it went through its growth spurt. While other war criminals were facing trials after the war, the Mufti, who had called for eradication of the Jews, received a hero’s welcome in Eqypt. This was thanks to al-Banna.

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