For some reason, Professor Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen and Muslim philosopher, has been treated with uncommon generosity by Western media. He gets a friendly hearing at Le Monde, the CBC, the New York Times, you name it.
Journalists enjoy his tone, which is restrained, and admire his academic achievements, which include a fellowship at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. They warm to him when he opposes the Muslim bombings in Europe. “His politics offer an alternative to violence,” as Ian Buruma wrote admiringly in the Times three months ago.
But this week, for the first time, Ramadan has come under sustained attack in a major journal. The June 4 issue of The New Republic (a sister publication of the National Post) carries what may well be the longest, most searching piece in its history, a 28,000-word essay, “The Islamist, the journalist, and the defence of liberalism,” by Paul Berman, a first-class American political writer.
Berman sets out to strip away Ramadan’s claim to be an open-minded intellectual, truly dedicated to honest discussion between Islam and the West. By the end of the article not much of Ramadan’s reputation remains intact.
He’s often taken positions that impose Islamic standards on Europe. In Geneva he helped suppress a planned production of a Voltaire play, and he favours teaching Islamic biology alongside Darwin — an idea that horrifies liberals when raised by Christians in America but becomes more acceptable when proposed by Ramadan.
He calls himself a reformer but on many issues, including global politics, he doesn’t stray far from Muslim orthodoxy. He sees the war against the Taliban as an American “retaliation against the people of Afghanistan” and in convoluted ways he expresses both anti-Semitism and sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers. In public debate he’s refused to come out against stoning women to death for adultery. He doesn’t like that idea himself, he says, but he feels he shouldn’t vigorously oppose Islam’s accepted practices at this stage. Instead he favours a moratorium on stoning while it’s discussed.
Journalists treat Ramadan as a voice of sanity who appeals to young Muslims across Europe. That’s a nice thought but nowhere near the truth. His views are directly opposed to most of the principles that journalists in the West claim to uphold. No doubt he will answer Berman’s article as he always answers criticism, with accusations of anti-Islamic bigotry.
Still, don’t blame Ramadan. He’s slippery and inconsistent, but his views are on the record for anyone to read. He hasn’t betrayed the journalists of the West. In their eagerness to cover themselves and prove their open-mindedness they have (in this case as in many others) betrayed themselves and their culture.
