An Islamic scholar, whose work visa was rescinded days before he was to start teaching at the University of Notre Dame, said Tuesday he has resigned from his tenured teaching post, automatically precluding a second visa to enter the U. S.
Tariq Ramadan submitted his resignation to university officials Monday, citing the U.S. State Department’s failure to expedite his application for a second work visa after abruptly revoking his first one just before his scheduled move from Geneva, Switzerland, to South Bend.
The resignation automatically voids the second application process and precludes his entry into the United States until he applies again.
“It was not possible to continue like this, being ignored and neglected,” Ramadan said in a telephone interview from his home in Switzerland. “It’s also a question of dignity.”
Ramadan was to begin teaching Islamic ethics and philosophy in August, a joint appointment with the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and Notre Dame’s classics department.
But in July, under a new section of immigration law significantly altered after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, his visa was revoked, citing only national security concerns. Ramadan said he has never been told what brought about the sudden reversal. An unconventional scholar, he urges Muslims to integrate Islam with modern times through an ongoing process of interpreting the holy texts.
His grandfather is Hassan al-Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood, a conservative religious and political organization that sought to overthrow the secular Egyptian government. It has since renounced violence as a means for political change.
It was Ramadan’s novel teaching approach that appealed to Notre Dame administrators. In September, he led a discussion among the 18 students in his Islamic ethics course via videoconference.
“Faculty and students at Notre Dame and at other U.S. universities were looking forward to engaging him productively on a variety of issues central to our times,” said R. Scott Appleby, director of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute, in a statement. “Such dialogue, we believe, is an essential requirement to a deeper understanding of the complexity of the Muslim world.”
Daniel Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum and Ramadan’s most vocal critic, said the protracted reapplication process “points to the substance of the materials [the Department of Homeland Security has] about him.”
Pipes has alleged Ramadan has ties to terrorists, charges that Ramadan disputes.
“Radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution,” said Pipes, a former University of Chicago professor. “It’s been pleasing to me that this interpretation is gaining ground.” But John Esposito, a Georgetown University professor and author of “Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam,” said Ramadan’s resignation silences a moderate Muslim voice.
“It raises enormous questions about the climate that’s been created after 9/11 where too often people are presumed guilty rather than innocent,” he said.
