Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (37 page)

Once again, the reliance on a doublespeak, internal and external, is not
confined to Islamists alone. It is a tactic used by all sects and by all movements that wish to conceal their objectives. But Ramadan is a champion at
this game, even modulating his tone ofvoice to fit the public he is addressing.
On his audiocassettes, when speaking to a Muslim audience, his tone ofvoice
is that of a full-fledged preacher, even scary at times. Almost all his sentences
are laced with quotations from the Koran, and he never pronounces the name of the Prophet without adding the ritual benediction: "Peace and blessings
on his name" in Arabic. When speaking at a public meeting or on TV, Ramadan keeps a low profile, speaks in a slightly timid, academic voice, hardly ever
cites the Koran and, above all, carefully avoids mentioning the name of the
Prophet, so as not to have to recite the obligatory benediction.

In fifteen years, the "heir presumptive" has become an expert at defusing
semantic landmines. All his expressions, all his euphemisms are carefully
thought through and judiciously calculated, so as to overcome resistance and
convert the skeptical. The rest of his strategy comes down to a shrewdly conceived program of infiltration, by which he convinces those on the Right as
well as those on the Left; the most anti-religious as well as the most religious;
Tony Blair as well as the anti-globalists ... And all to the one end that he will
never admit: advance of the dawa-Islamization as the Muslim Brotherhood
conceives it.

Some people have been onto Ramadan's doublespeak for awhile. Arab and/or
Muslim journalists and intellectuals, for example, are not fooled. They are too
well aware of his method to be taken in, and are impervious to accusations of
"Islamophobia." Antoine Sfeir is one ofthem. Editor ofthe Cahiers de I'Orient,
not only is he an expert on Islam with a perfect mastery of the subject, but he
is also a Lebanese intellectual esteemed both in France and abroad. A Christian-one who is both Arab and pro-Palestinian-he is an ambassador of the
Orient respected for his culture, his discernment, and his typically Levantine
manners. He is one of the very first journalists to have warned ofTariq Ramadaris "double discourse." His vigilance was matched by that of Lyon Mag,
an independent investigative journal based in Lyon that was well situated to
observe the devastation sown by the preacher. In October 2001, one month
after the 9/11 attacks, the journal braved the taboo and asked the question that
everyone had tried to duck: "Should we be afraid of the Islamist networks in
Lyon?"8 The result of the inquiry was devastating for Ramadan, whose ambiguities stood revealed. It was the first article that had really served to unmask
him. It was also the first time that the preacher decided to go to court. But Lyon Mag did not back down. In January 2002, the editorial staff decided to substantiate their allegations by interviewing Antoine Sfeir, who confirmed what
they had thought. Sfeir spoke of "a skilful orator," "a persuasive fundamentalist," "a specialist in doublespeak." He did not class Ramadan among the violent, but by no means minimized the danger he represented:

I consider the non-violent to be the most dangerous, precisely because they appear
inoffensive. The terrorists are hunted down. The non-violent appear reassuring.
Sometimes they even succeed in putting an end to delinquency in certain neighborhoods. And this delights the police, who don't themselves have enough authority to
impose order. To me, it's the Islamists that are most frightening .... All these movements that are actively opposed to integration, it's a real time bomb.

The analysis could not be more accurate. It is therefore all the more embarrassing. And this time, for once, Ramadan could hardly accuse Antoine Sfeir
of racism without making a fool of himself. And there was no question of
intimidating Sfeir by leaving insulting messages on his answering machine
or putting pressure on his superiors. So he went to court a second time. The
two cases, the lawsuit against Lyon Mag and the suit against Sfeir, were combined into one. The verdict was tough on Ramadan. In the decision handed
down on May 22, 2003, the Appeals Court of Lyon agreed that Sfeir was right
to declare that the language employed by preachers such as Tariq Ramadan
"can influence young Muslims and can serve as a factor inciting them to join
up with those engaged in violent acts."

Embarassing. But Ramadan found a way of softening the blow. He had
people believe that he won against Sfeir by deliberately mixing up the two
cases, the one concerning the editor of the Cahiers de ('Orient and the other
concerning Lyon Mag. He did this so that he could claim on TV that he had
won his lawsuits against all those who had accused him of resorting to a double language. On the TV show Campus, for example, on December 4, 2003,
he was targeted by Guillaume Durand: "You lost the lawsuit against Antoine
Sfeir ... " But Ramadan persevered ... and lied: "No, I won my suit against
Antoine Sfeir." The Cahiers de l'Orient editor couldn't get over it: "I knew he
was adept at doublespeak; now I know he's a horrendous liar as well."

When I began this inquiry, I had, as you can imagine, certain preconceptions
about Tariq Ramadan. Having read a number of his books, I expected to be
analyzing a form of discourse that was deceptive in its complexity but not
necessarily duplicitous. I was convinced that the portrait I would gain would
be not of a progressive anti-globalist, but of a bigot and a moralist-though
not especially of a fundamentalist. I thought I would come across the Muslim
Brotherhood, or at least their influence; but I still believed Ramadan when he
claimed he was an independent thinker. I do not believe him any longer.

The months spent dissecting his evolution, his discourse, and his impact
have convinced me that he is a pure product of al-Banna's ideology, without
doubt one of its most dangerous emissaries, and certainly the most effective.
The opacity of his objectives is not due to the complexity of his language: it is
a rhetorical Trojan horse, skilfully put together so as to confuse and finally to
overcome resistance. Thanks to a double-sided sales pitch that conveys one
meaning on the "inside" and another on the "outside," he lives up to all his
promises: he disarms those who are wary of Islamism, establishes "spheres
of collaboration," discredits the liberal Muslims and radicalizes the others. It
is quite possible that some tendencies within the Brotherhood are not wholly
in accord with the strategy employed by al-Banna's grandson, but the others
are quite right to trust him. What he is in the process of accomplishing, following in the footsteps of Said Ramadan, could well result in the realization
of his father's dream and that of al-Banna before him. Like his father, Tariq
has understood that the future of Islamism is to be played out in the West. He
is better equipped than his father to penetrate democracy, to take advantage
of freedom of speech to exploit the naivete of the West and make it his area
of operations: for dawa, for shahada-and for revenge. Surprising though it
may seem, it is this dream that motivates Tariq Ramadan, descendant of the
founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who fills in for us, lecture after lecture,
the outlines of an ideal society made up of Muslim individuals faithful to
their origins, traditional Muslim families, and a Muslim "social arena."

But Ramadan is not without his own particular way of advancing towards
this ideal. While remaining scrupulously faithful to the strategy mapped out
by his grandfather, a strategy of advance stage by stage, he adapts it to his context. He aims not at a national takeover of power in Egypt, but at a transnational cultural revolution. That is why he never stays put; why he is constantly
jetting from one airport to the next, either to sap the forces opposed to Islamism or to galvanize the Muslims-ever in search of conversions, obsessed
with the idea of coordinating this "Islamic revival." His father and his grandfather alone changed the course of history. Tariq Ramadan has inherited
their energy. He is perfectly capable, on his own, of hastening the coming of
obscurantism.

Do we have here a providential man we can expect to modernize Islam
and encourage dialogue between civilizations? The answer is no. And it is
high time we put an end to our naivete lest we become his accomplices.

i Quoted by Xavier Ternisien in his portrayal of Tariq Ramadan in La France
des mosquees [France and its Mosques],
Paris, Albin Michel, 2002, pp.
206-22.

2 TV program videotaped in November 1997 by the Belgian broadcaster
RTBF.

3 " Lintellectuel musulman fait peur!
[The Muslim intellectual is frightening!]," Le journal du Mardi, no. 155,
March 9, 2004. Interview with Laurent Arnauts and Malika Es-SaIdi.

4 Homme, January 2004. Homme is the
premier Moroccan meri s magazine.

5 Laura Secor, The reformer," Boston
Globe, November 30,2003-

6 Alain Gresh and Tariq Ramadan,
L'Islam en questions [Questioning Islam], a debate organized and presented by Francoise Germain-Robin, Sindbad, 2002, pp. 33-34. Babel/Sindbad
collection directed by Farouk Mardam-Bey (1st ed. 2000).

7 The Muslim Brotherhood's creed, ratified by the third congress ofthe Muslim Brotherhood in March 1935, in
Olivier Carre and Michel Seurat, Les
Freres Musulmans (1928-1982), Paris,
EHarmattan, 2001 (fisted., Gallimard,
1983)-

8 Gresh and T. Ramadan, L'Islam en
questions, p. 35.

9 Ibid., p. 37•

io Tariq Ramadan cassette, "Courants
de la pensee musulmane contemporaine [Trends in Muslim contemporary thought]," parts 2 and 3 on "Hassan al-Banna," Tawhid.

it The glossary in question had been
commissioned by a Nouvel Observateur
journalist but was refused because of
its extremely partisan contents. Tariq
Ramadan published it as an annex to
Etre musulman europeen, but not without protesting against this "bizarre
way of proceeding" and against this
censorship." Tariq Ramadan, Etre musulman europeen: etude des sources islamiques a la lumieres du contexte europeen [To Be a European Muslim: A
Study of Islamic Sources in the Light of
the European Context], Lyon, Tawhid,
1999, tr. from English by Claude Dabbak, p. 418.

12 Ingy Al-Qadi and Yolande Youssef, Al-
Ahram Hebdo, June 14, 2000.

13 Thameem Ushama, Hassan al-Banna, Vision et mission [Hassan al-Banna: His Vision and His Mission], Perce-
takan Zafar Sdn. Bhd, Kuala Lumpur,
1995, P. 31-

14 Tariq Ramadan, Aux sources du renouveau musulman. D'al-Afghani a Hassan al-Banna, un siecle de reformisme islamique [On the Origins of the Muslim
Renaissance: From al-Afghani to Hassan al-Banna; a century of Islamic reformism], Lyon, Tawhid, 2002, p. 203
(ist ed. Bayard, 1998).

15 Sura XL11, "Consultation," 36-38, The
Meaning of the Holy Koran, ed. Abdullah Yusuf Ali, new ed., rev. tr., Beltsville (Md.), USA, 1989 114091-

16 Salaf in Arabic means the "devout ancestors." It is important not to confuse
literalist Salafism with the reformist
Salafism (not literalist but still fundamentalist) of Tariq Ramadan, who is
fundamentalist but not literalist. See
also Chapter 3-

17 T. Ramadan, Etre musulman europeen,
p. 418-

18 Interview with Ali Merad, March 8,
2004.

19 T. Ramadan, Aux sources du renouveau
musulman, p. 22, note 6.

20 Interview with Mohamed Sifaoui,
June 2004-

21 The second jury, presided over by
Philippe Borgeaud, was made up
of Bruno Etienne (IEP, Aix-en-Provence), Reinhard Schulze (Berne), Richard Friedli (Fribourg), and Sylvia
Naef (Geneva).

22 Contrary to tradition, no copy of the
thesis is available in the library. Only
the Bayard edition exists with, in the
form of an epigraph, the statement by
the Dean ofthe Faculty of Letters, June
30,1998-

23 Carre and Seurat, Les Freres Musulmans, p.11.

24 Quoted by Tariq Ramadan, Aux sources du renouveau musulman, p. 11.

25 Hassan al-Banna, Epitre aux jeunes
[Letter to the Young].

26 This and the quotes that follow are all
taken from Hassan al-Banna, "Les cinquante demandes du programs des
Freres Musulmans (1936) [The fifty
demands of the Muslim Brotherhood
program of 19361," Islam de France,
no. 8, October 2000.

31 In Hassan al-Banna. Vision et Mission,
Thameem Ushama, a Brotherhood

historian, took offense at the idea that
the "enemies" of the Brotherhood had
used this episode to discredit them,
but does not deny the facts.

27 Interview with Michel Renard, January 12, 2004-

28 T. Ramadan, "Courants de la pensee
musulmane contemporaine: Hassan
al-Banna."

29 Ibid.

30 Carre and Seurat, Les Freres Musulmans, p. 18.

32 Hassan al-Banna, Al-qawl al fasl [Last
Words], 1948, and Al-Baydn [Declaration], 1948, two posthumous brochures quoted in R. Sa'id, Hassan..., p.
149. Commented in Carre and Seurat,
Le Freres Musulmans, p. 32.

33 Ramadan, Aux sources du renouveau
musulman, p. 200.

34 Ibid., p. 218.

35 Given as the model to be imitated by
Tariq Ramadan in his cassette devoted
to Hassan al-Banna and in Aux sources
du renouveau musulman.

36 T. Ramadan, Aux sources du renouveau
musulman, p. 281, note 3-

37 al-Banna, Epitre auxjeunes.

38 T. Ramadan, "Courants de la pensee
musulmane contemporaine."

39 Gresh and T. Ramadan, L'Islam en
questions, p. 25.

40 Carre and Seurat, Les Freres Musulmans, p. 37.

41 T. Ramadan, "Courants de la pensee
musulmane contemporaine."

42 Carre and Seurat, Les Freres Musulmans, p. 23-

43 Zaynab al-Ghazali, Des jours de ma
vie [Some Days from My Life], Beirut,
Al-Bouraq, 1996, preface by Tariq
Ramadan.

44 Ibid., PP. 57-58.

45 Ibid., p. 58-

46 T. Ramadan, Aux sources du renouveau
musulman, p. 182.