Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (13 page)

Said Ramadan, the patriarch, the European Brotherhood's Guide, died on
August 4, 1995. The Islamic Center, together with the Ramadan family, published an obituary in three languages (Arabic, French, and English): "The
Islamic Center of Geneva sadly announces to the Muslim world the death in
Geneva on Friday 4th ofAugust of Doctor Said Ramadan. He was the founder
and general director of the Islamic Center of Geneva, which was the first center established in Europe. He was one of the spiritual sons of the Imam martyr Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement."
Unlike al-Banna, Said Ramadan did not die a martyr, but from illness, in a
Swiss hospital bed. His friends and relatives were, however, given the opportunity to claim martyrdom when Saudi Arabia refused them the right to bury
him in Medina. And why should the Saudi authorities, known to have been
at loggerheads with this Egyptian citizen for years, have granted the request?
Instead, Said Ramadan was buried in Egypt, his native country. Tariq Ramadan was not able to attend the funeral. He was obliged to return home to his
family when his wife, who had arrived in Egypt a few days earlier, informed
him that the Egyptian authorities were planning to arrest him if he set foot
in the country. It was not the first time that his entry into the country had run
into problems. Going through the security checkpoints always took longer
for him than for any other visitor, but this time it seems that a concerted decision had been taken before he even boarded the plane.

In late June, an Egyptian daily published by leftist supporters of Nasser,
Al-Ahali, asserted that "one of Said Ramadan's sons" had been seen on the
terrace of a Geneva cafe, seated next to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was sought
by the police as the leader of the Al-Jihad group suspected of involvement in
the attempted assassination of President Mubarak in Addis Ababa on June
26. Tariq Ramadan denied these accusations, which appear highly extravagant. Is it reasonable to suppose that one of the most wanted men at the time would meet in public with his friends from the Islamic Center for a cup
of coffee in broad daylight on the shores of Lake Geneva? The explanation
did not convince the European press, which sided with Ramadan, treating
it as a false accusation manufactured by the Egyptian government. But the
government had reason enough to be worried by the arrival of Said Ramadan s heir. It was a period of high tension following the attempted assassination of the president. Some forty-nine members of the Muslim Brotherhood
were accused of "having incited hatred of the government among the people" and of "belonging to an illegal organization." Their trial was then taking
place behind closed doors in a tense atmosphere, and the arrival of one of the
Brotherhood's ambassadors in exile could only fuel the unrest.

After the death ofhis father, Tariq continued his Islamization project with
renewed energy. In the months that followed, he went to Mauritius for conferences lasting several days, and there he was surrounded by Brothers and
Sisters who came to present their condolences. Ramadan was greatly moved.
On the last day he could not keep from paying tribute to the man from whom
he had learned all he knew: "It is my father's image that has been with me
from the mosque all the way here," he said, his voice trembling. "You know,
he lived forty-one years of exile far, far from his native land [author's note: here
Ramadan stops to shed tears], and what I feel now is exactly the message that
he passed on to me from Islam, namely our message is one of love."5° He
then evoked the fraternal ties existing within the Muslim community, and
especially the ties within the Brotherhood, as something that enabled them
to withstand adversity. At this moment, more than at any other, it is clear
that Tariq Ramadan realized to what extent he owed his status as a sought-after preacher to his inheritance and to his name: "It is thanks to the parents
I had, and the family I had, that I am here with you today; the merit is not
mine." This was a sentence that he would repeat several months later in a lecture, given in Brussels, to a Muslim audience with ties to the Brotherhood: "I
deserve no credit for being here with you. None at all. Because I had a grandfather who gave birth to a father who gave birth to a son. And I myself will be
judged according to what I will transmit to my son, not according to what you
see now. The day when you will see my son here before you, or see my daugh ter live as she should or my other son, and if they find the way to speak to you
in the true way, then you can say `Tariq has passed on the message."'51

This admission amounts to a political confession. Even if he sometimes
gives the impression of wanting to go it alone, Tariq Ramadan is much less
autonomous than one might think. He is limited by his status as heir, by the
fraternal ties that bind the Brothers together, and, above all, by his own family. After the death of the patriarch, it is the evanescent, but increasingly decisive presence ofWafa al-B anna that reigns over the family and the administration of the Geneva Islamic Center, which, at the time of his death, had twenty
dues-paying members and a public of roughly 500. The family's children all
joined the executive board so as to ensure continuity and share the various
responsibilities. A memorandum emanating from European intelligence services even asserted: `After the death ofthe patriarch, the family divided up the
apparently considerable sum that Said Ramadan had administered on behalf
of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The result was a spectacular increase,
both in quantity and quality, of the products and activities of the Al-Tawhid
bookshop in Lyon, as well as the As-Salah bookshop in Ferney-Voltaire."52

If this memorandum is correct, it would mean that Tariq Ramadan himself finances the Tawhid publishing house, and thus the production of his
own books and cassettes, the sales of which provide him with an income. It
appears highly probable. Yamin Makri ofTawhid affirms that every month he
pays Tariq Ramadan a fixed sum of 2,000 Euros in the form of royalties. But
even on the basis of a generous estimate, the number of books and audiocassettes actually sold would not seem to account for such a high income. Does
the money invested in Tawhid, and thus in Tariq Ramadan's productions, not
come then from the funds divided up among the children when they became
administrators of the Geneva Islamic Center after the patriarchs death? That
is what the French intelligence services assert. The same source refers to an
open conflict, which broke out when the funds were divided up between the
Geneva administrators and the Egyptian headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter insisted that certain activities linked to the dawa be speeded
up. If we are to believe the intelligence memorandums, the hyperactivity displayed by Hani and Tariq must not have come as a disappointment. The two brothers were, indeed, more visible and more productive from this moment
on. Up to then, between 1992 and 1994, they had competed to demonstrate
which of them was capable of taking over from their father. Hani set up a
"Muslim cultural space" within the Center, while his younger brother created an autonomous "Muslim Cultural Community Center" equipped with
a library, As-Salah, in Ferney-Voltaire.53 During this period, their relations
even became strained. But in the Ramadan family, quarrels are short lived.
The mother sees to it. After their father's death, the brothers were already reconciled when it came time to choose which of the two was to replace him at
the head of the Islamic Center. At the time, Tariq was already better known,
but also more likely to create scandals. The resounding failure of the MMS
congress indicated that he was not really taken seriously by the Swiss Muslim community. On the other hand, he was undeniably gifted in attracting
the outside world. It became obvious how to assign the tasks. For Tariq the
outside world; for Hani the world within.

A lot has been written about the difference in character between the two
brothers and their relative degree of charisma. Tariq Ramadan is seductive
and full of nuances; Hani Ramadan is forthrightly austere and extremist. As
director of the Geneva Islamic Center, he is the official head of the Muslim
Brotherhood at war with "Europe's atheistic materialism," and in particular
with secularism that "enforces in school programs the separation that eliminates the vertical relationship to God."54 Which is a bit disturbing to hear,
coming as it does from a product ofthe Swiss state school system ... Like his
grandfather, Hani Ramadan hardly ever recognizes the difference between
education and propaganda. He is also as haunted as was his grandfather by
the idea of being contaminated by Western decadence: "Is it not in fact true
that today, in our modern societies, despite scientific progress and material
comfort, we are prey to all sorts of evils that draw us constantly towards worship of the taghut (the irreligious) in all its forms? To cite only the unbridled
sexuality that results in adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, harassment,
rape, paedophilia, and incest."55 The specter of a loosening of moral stan dards obsesses him. In interviews, the director of the Geneva Islamic Center
never misses an occasion to recall the fact that for Islam "homosexuality is a
dead end, both in law and logic; you cant open a door with two keys.56

In 1998, Hani Ramadan brought out a book entitled La femme en Islam
[Women in Islam] published by Tawhid, a book that many found shocking.57
In it, he developed a strictly fundamentalist view of the world that is highly
moralistic. In his eyes, "if a society encourages hedonist values and unrestrained individualism; if it becomes more permissive and extols self-serving
pleasures; if it calls for the `loosening of moral standards' and authorizes fornication, it will then lose the sense of mutual confidence necessary for marriage to subsist." For which reason, "Islam advocates a restriction of freedom so as to preserve mutual confidence and fidelity." Hani Ramadan has in
mind, of course, that these restrictions on liberty, intended to guard against
adultery, be applied first and foremost to women, called on to behave with
decency and wear the Islamic headscarf. "The headscarf, in Islam, is the sign
that faith obeys the divine commandments. Why then should a young schoolgirl be prevented from expressing her belief? Forcing her to remove the headscarf, is it not repeating what the merciless inquisition and the communist
executioners have done?"58

The Geneva Islamic Center consistently urges women to wear the headscarf and to go to court if they are asked, as a teacher or a jury member, to
remove it. Hani Ramadan is the first to protest against attacks on religious
liberty. On the other hand, the Center's director never thinks of himself as
an inquisitor or an enemy of freedom when he requires women to wear the
headscarf so as to protect men against temptation, while at the same time
granting their husbands full rights, including polygamy. His writings are
conceived as testimony to the infinite superiority and the loftiness of soul of
Islam: "In its struggle against the secular extremists, Islam will, whatever
comes, remain a haven of wisdom and tolerance: `No compulsion in religion'
says the Koran. A lesson that the secular torturers never taught us!" Yet secular democracy offered a good number of advantages for those who knew how
to abuse its weak points.

Said Ramadan s sons knew full well that they could play on the neo-colo nial complex and, above all, on the open-mindedness of the democratic system to use and abuse the right of free speech. Here is what Hani Ramadan
had to say in 1995 to his followers, massed in front of the European headquarters of the United Nations to call for "an international campaign against
the ungodly": "The advantage of our being in Europe is that we can make use
of the free zones within the democratic regimes."59 Why indeed do without?
In 2001, the director of the Geneva Islamic Center published a collection of
articles on "Islam and Barbarity," dedicated to those Muslims of Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Algeria "persecuted on account oftheir faith."6° The contents are alarming, but the most terrifying thing is that all the articles were
published in the mainstream Swiss press. In his preface, Hani Ramadan
warmly thanked the Swiss daily newspaper Tribune de Geneve and Le Courrier for their "open-mindedness." One can well understand why, on reading
the legion opinion pieces that Hani Ramadan managed to have published in
the press during the 199os, almost one per month-sometimes published
simultaneously by three mass -circulation newspapers-with titles like "The
West is out to dominate Islam! '6' Always in the name of open-mindedness.

In a text entitled "The Sharia Misunderstood," published in Le Monde
on September 10, 2002, the director of the Geneva Islamic Center justified stoning as "a punishment, but also a purification." He spoke of AIDS
as a divine chastisement: "Who created the AIDS virus? You will notice that
a person who strictly obeys the divine commandments is safe from this
infection, which cannot-except in cases of blood transfusion errors-affect anybody who has no sexual relations outside of marriage, who is not
a homosexual and who does not take drugs." The moral lesson: "Muslims
are convinced of the necessity to return to the divine law, in all places and
at all times." This opinion piece did not seem to have greatly upset the editors of Le Monde, who agreed to publish it, whereas, had it been written by
a Christian fundamentalist, they would surely have refused. Moreover it
was not the first time that this newspaper had opened its columns to Hani
Ramadan-let alone his younger brother Tariq. On September 22, 2001,
just eleven days after 9/11, the same Hani Ramadan took advantage of the
"Horizons" section of Le Monde (a page reserved for opinion pieces) to put the corporal punishments advocated by Islamic law "in their proper perspective," and by the same token to justify them.