He may be the “muslim Martin Luther” but author and activist Tariq Ramadan has been the object of controversy in the post 9-11 climate. In 2004, his visa was revoked by the department of homeland security because of the fear that he would use his
“position of prominence…to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.”
Despite all the suspicion, most evidence pointed to Ramadan being a scholar, not a terrorist. Furthermore, Ramadan is a Swiss citizen, and taught all over Europe, including at Oxford, with no mishaps or accidental bombings. So why the stall on the visa? Obviously, the feds didn’t enjoy Ramadan’s vocal criticism of the war against terrorism.
Recently, however, federal Judge Paul A. Crotty ordered the government to stop stalling on Ramadan’s visa for teaching at the University of Notre Dame. I went to school with Judge Crotty’s daughter and vaguely remember hearing him speak at a conference, but my respect for him doubled with this decision, but he is clearly not immune from the dreaded Legalese Virus.
Allowing the government to wait for ‘possible future discovery of statementsÂ’ would mean that the government could delay final adjudication indefinitely, evading constitutional review by its own failure to render a decision on RamadanÂ’s application. The Court will not allow this…
crikey. basically, the decision also slaps the knuckles of the DHS for assuming that there would be no judicial review of the visa denial. translate, if you will:
While the Executive may exclude an alien for almost any reason, it cannot do so solely because the Executive disagrees with the content of the alienÂ’s speech and therefore wants to prevent the alien from sharing this speech with a willing American audience.
Take that, Patriot Act! And Professor–welcome to Indiana. Enjoy the football.
More about the decision can be read at PEN American Center, an organization which works to preserve the freedom to write and be read all over the world. For the hardy, here is Judge Crotty’s full decision in its technical, DHS-bashing splendor.
This whole business of rejecting visas will soon be a moot point with new advances in cheap, reliable communications technology. If Mr. Ramadan wants to give interactive lectures in Indiana, he can do so with the comfort of his home in Switzerland by using broadband VideoConferences. The DHS cannot stop it. If he wants to teach, administer tests, conduct conferences etc, all of it can be done from remote.
When Narendra Modi’s visa was rejected, it did not stop him from addressing his supporters in NY and Miami. If someone wants Modi to inaugarate a temple, school or business in the US, pretty soon they will be able to set up a virtual-reality red-tape/scissors in NewJersey and Ahmedabad, linked together by remote-control software. So Modi can cut the tape in Ahmedabad, and the software will tranmit the cutting motion to the scissors in NewJersey, all on live video-conferencing. In ten years, we can have a virtual Modi at the Mall in D.C., addressing thousands of Desis. In your face…
M. Nam
PS: The link to PEN American Center does not work.
If Mr. Ramadan wants to give interactive lectures in Indiana
MoorNam,
It is more complicated. He was offered a faculty position at the newly formed Islamic Center @ ND. He was offered visa and then USCIS rescinded citing his past utterances.
In his younger days, he was a soccer player, and I think he is a son of an Ayatollah.
I read about this a while back and after googling him found this article from Daniel Pipes, who many might consider too partisan in this fight, but I consider credible.
Given the mood of this country post 9/11, I find the revokal defensible.
Why not go all thew way and invite him to open “Valley Of the Wolves” at the San Franciso film festival. Ridiculous…
pray tell,
1/ what is the mood of the country?
2/ how do you know?
3/ is everything that does not conform to the “mood of the country” therefore wrong?
thanks in advance.
Can give me a rec for a good book/essay by Tariq Ramadan as an intro to him? I find that these visa denials and fatwas to kill are occasionally a useful way to find interesting authors 🙂
In any case, the history of U.S. immigration policy is rife with attempts to mold the population to the goverment’s liking, including on the issue of ideology. There’s always a “9/11” invoked–before that it was Communism and before that…well, you can probably go back to the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 if you want, or even earlier. It gets tiresome to hear these national security arguments trotted out when they’re totally inapplicable, especially when the lack of good national security policy frequently comes close to getting me killed. Real national security experts actually try to figure out effective strategies, not exploit the danger to further other agendas.
Think about his employer, it’s the very conservative University of Notre Dame. They had him checked out thoroughly with the Swiss authorities, there was no gonnection to terrorism, no sympathy for it. It was pure politics.
Siddhartha,
This poll right after the attacks on 9/11 show that the majority of American people across the spectrum feel that lax Immigration and border security was responsible for 9/11.
3rd bullet point in this report proves that a majority of people do not want immigration from the countries they suspect have links to terrorism.
The subsequent polls supporting the Patriot act and NSA wiretaps show that people are not willing to take even small risks if homeland defense is involved. In my opinion this man was a risk, not big, but risk nonetheless.
Now coming to the last question. My answer is no. But I am not in charge of setting or enforcing the immigration law. All I wanted to say was there was a good case for cancelling his visa.
You mean like Switzerland?
Oy Gavolt,
Going by Ramadan’s past utterances, he seems to susbscribe to the view that 911 was America’s fault and hence America “deserved it”. This is not exactly conducive for getting a visa. Where’s the respect for the country you are trying to go to?
However, DHS’s excuse that Ramadan will whip up radical frenzy is completely bogus. A mullah in Egypt can whip up passions in Ohio muslims on an internet chat-room. He does not need a visa for that.
I bet if Ramadan was coming to teach “Metallurgy of Titanium alloys”, he would have got the visa.
M. Nam
M. Nam – I’m pretty sure that’s a misrepresentation. I know the folks involved with the decision to hire him at Notre Dame, and there’s no way they would have done so if that’s what he actually said. For one thing, the even more conservative alumni would have staged a revolt.
Here is a bit of “wisdom” from “Prof” Ramadan… (do as I tell you , don’t do as I (we ) do..)
Maybe they should allow him in, just to confirm what a hypocrite he is in person.
We must not be reading the same thing because I see no hypocrisy in the statements above. Your own principles should be the guide–it’s wrong to insult Muslims or any other religious group. That’s what I am hearing. Oy Gavolt–good point. Notre Dame is very conservative AND they wanted him at their university. Maybe because he is a you know, a scholar who deals with ideas?
“Going by Ramadan’s past utterances, he seems to susbscribe to the view that 911 was America’s fault and hence America “deserved it”. This is not exactly conducive for getting a visa. Where’s the respect for the country you are trying to go to?”
Do you have any quotes to justify this, Moornam? I am reading a book of his called ‘Western Muslims and the Future of Islam’, and so far I have to say he is one of the foremost thinkers in the Islamic world. It is a serious read for anyone who wants to understand the muslim context.
Saurav, I’d recommend this book.
yeah, Vikram. What is the hypocrisy in that statement? He admits that muslims are not self-critical, but does it mean that he doesn’t have the right to criticize others.
I blogged about Tariq Ramadan’s visa denial a couple of years ago. He’s quite well-known in France — one of the main commentators on the “Islamic perspective” in the ongoing French debates on immigration, Muslims, and multiculturalism. When I was in Paris last year, I saw him on national television, debating conservatives (or, to be precise, monoculturalists) pretty competently.
I personally don’t find his ideas on an Islamic reformation too thrilling, but it’s quite likely that he was banned by the US earlier on the basis of his grandfather’s connection to the Muslim Brotherhood organization rather than any of his actual views. (I doubt anyone at the state department bothered to actually get his books or articles translated.) So I support his right to enter the U.S.
He sure has the (Western) privilege of criticizing a country like the US within its borders after being invited to travel here. I hope he shows his supposedly balanced views by next announcing a trip to Saudi Arabia and taking them to task for their hypocrisy too. That would make a statement to both sides. It is easy to make some tepid and vague statements like “We Muslims must be self-critical” without taking anyone or anything Muslim to task, in the Western media. Though I am am sure he knows he will land up in the same boat as Salman Rushdie if he tries to say anything stronger. So yes, he is a hypocrite, like most of the “intellectuals” of his ilk.
Western Muslims and the Future of Islam is a decent book as an intro to his thinking judging from other stuff i’ve touched of his, but it synthesizes religious jibberishosity with francophone inscrutability quite often (it gets less faux abstract as it progressives, thank god). note the bizarro diagrams trying to illustrate tawhid early on. at least idols are comprehensible. ramadan is basically muslim version of a southern baptist (you can find interviews on NPR’s site, he sounds like a moderate evangelical sent through a christian->muslim regular expression), in other words, relatively liberal and ecumenical as muslims go. i wish progressives would view his stuff with the same critical eye they do christian nuttiness. olive skin doesn’t make it any less laughable.
as for the political issue, well, food-fights as usual. though i don’t think trying to shape a nation’s polity is a bad thing. most of the world’s population isn’t exactly enlightened toward atheism or homosexuality, for example.
In a related story… well semi-related story, Sheikh Riyadh Ul-Haq, a well-known cleric from the UK is scheduled to address various Muslim organisations in Toronto and Montreal. There have been appeals made to the Minister of Immigration to deny entry to the Sheikh by various Hindu, Jewish, Christian and GLBT groups. I found two links to this story. The first one is a brief
The second one is more in-depth but the headline of “British Hate Preacher to Speak at McMaster University” kinda makes me weary of bias. 😉
btw, i did like ramadan’s taxonomy of islamic schools of thought/law. they are worth the rest of the book. if your enemy makes a map of lands for you, why not familiarize yourself?
Funny how people in this thread leap to defend a man like Ramadan who makes statements like this:
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blockquote> Tariq Ramadan is dangerous not because he is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and originator of a political Islam which has wreaked havoc across the world, but because he has never distanced himself from the ideological heritage of his grandfather, whom he continues to present as the “most influential of the Muslim reformists of the century” [1] when that reformism consisted of wanting to go back to the baseline of Sharia law.
Tariq Ramadan is worrying not because he is the brother of Hani Ramadan, an Islamist theoretician who endorses stoning for adultery and considers AIDS to be a divine punishment, but because he himself reckons that one cannot be both Muslim and homosexual, even if he does not advise physical punishment for homosexuals. “God wanted things in order. And that order is ‘man for woman’ and ‘woman for man’,”, he explains in his lectures to young Muslims [2]. By taking up the Koran in a literal way, he endorses the doctrine of a divine and natural order which we would not accept from a Christian fundamentalist.
Link
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blockquote>
I am weary of people defending Ramadan and giving his bigotry a free pass, because he is Muslim and his views happen to be critical of the US government(which most people on this blog dislike to the extent that it blinds them to all else). Would they extend the same free pass to a Christian conservative, if he/she made such comments about gay/lesbian people ?
Are there any legal experts out there who can answer this ???: How much leeway does the law allow the executive branch in regards to revoking a visa, especially in regards to the first amendment?
Lets say theoretically, we have an individual who possess extreme views that can be characterized as hate (holocaust denial or separation of the races) but at the some time poses no terrorist/national security threat whatsoever. Can he be denied entry, or does the first amendment prohibit taking his views into consideration, as it would if he were a citizen?
I am weary of people defending Ramadan and giving his bigotry a free pass, because he is Muslim and his views happen to be critical of the US government(which most people on this blog dislike to the extent that it blinds them to all else). Would they extend the same free pass to a Christian conservative, if he/she made such comments about gay/lesbian people ?
of course, they just have to be non-white (unless you are in a mostly non-christian forum like SM where being a xian means there is the stain of selloutness). i’ve observed that its fine for black people to express an evangelical and fiery spirituality without eliciting the snickers from my white liberal friends that white evangelicals do. after all, they’re black people, right? they’re spiritual, what more can you expect? take a look at this guy, moving away from violence is acceptable and sufficient, only for white people is purity of heart the gold standard (e.g., civilized white people have to eschew heterosexist language, olive, brown and black, well, good enough that the savages don’t want homosexuals stoned).
Vikram and Razib:
I believe it’s called the “‘Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations”
I believe it’s called the “‘Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations”
sure, though i like to call it the “white man’s burden of moral superiority” 🙂 sometimes low expectations is prudent and pragmatic of course. bigotry against homosexuals is still normative in the non-elite west, so we can’t expect muslims to not be hyper-heterosexist. coming off the killing rhetoric is enough (i have gay friends who have traveled in the middle east, it is a bit different in the “trenches” they tell me 🙂 the problem is the importation of low expectations into the west. character matters.
“I am weary of people defending Ramadan and giving his bigotry a free pass, because…”
Vikram, I don’t give a free pass to anyone’s bigotry. I was seriously trying to understand his evidence for bigotry. My exposure to him was first through http://www.time.com/time/innovators/spirituality/profile_ramadan.html
Then, I started reading his book. And so far, he doesn’t come across as as an extremist. I am willing to change my opinion if you can show me otherwise. Click on time link for an alternate view on him.
“sure, though i like to call it the “white man’s burden of moral superiority” :)”
It goes both ways. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Iraq was a rogue nation, while U.S invasion of Iraq is looked upon normal by a lot of people.
What is your opinion about his statement on gay people I referenced in #21 ? Do you feel that is not extreme ?
Bush says the marriage is between a man and woman. He is THE president of the united states. Homosexuality is illegal in India – so India is an extemist nation?. So, let’s have some perspective here. I am all for gay marriages, but Most practising religious people find homosexuality against the natural order. so that is their opinion. One becomes fundamentalist when they want to impose their ideas on others. It didn’t seem like Ramadan was suggesting that in your quote. If he is, he has an extreme view point.
Exactly. Are you going to deny a visa to people who don’t support homosexuality? YOu might need to export a few million Americans then. And Tariq Ramadan was invited to the US precisely because of his views, and to air them and bring them to an American university. It isn’t as if he started criticizing the US yesterday. I don’t support any religious bigotry, and yes, I believe many people in this forum would criticize a white Christian for similar views. It’s too easy and often meaningless to throw around ‘pseudo,’ ‘secular,’ and ‘liberal’ as accusations.
Bush is a conservative and I don’t think anyone here likes him and not just for that view. People have blogged about the unfair treatment of homosexuals in India and in that respect India is extreme. The question with respect to Ramadan (who claims to be a “balanced” intellectual unlike Bush) who is going to be lecturing in the academic circles and to students, is whether such views are acceptable. If a Le Pen or a Jeorg Haider were to be given a US visa to lecture at universities, given their similar bigoted views, would that be ok with you ?
When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Iraq was a rogue nation, while U.S invasion of Iraq is looked upon normal by a lot of people.
fair enough, but nations are not individuals. treating nations as corporate entities brings in problems, while individuals are an easier bundle of rights and responsibilities to decompose.
Fair enough–but Ramadan is a scholar of Religion. He isn’t being invited to talk about sexuality. Of all his views you may disagree on this one, but he knows scripture and philosophy of Islam–that’s what he is being invited to teach. The other two are politicians. What is their expertise on anything? I would invite them if I wanted to know how to use bigotry, inflammatory speeches, and racist rhetoric to win elections. But then again, why go abroad to find those?
Of all his views you may disagree on this one, but he knows scripture and philosophy of Islam–that’s what he is being invited to teach. The other two are politicians.
this is an interesting point, because if you read ramadan’s books you (i did) get the impression that such ‘categories’ that divide spheres of life not something he agrees with. that is, sharia is a way of life and expands into politics (read his stuff about justice).
Joerg Haider has a degree in law and worked at the University of Vienna law faculty in the department of constitutional law Link
Le Pen studied political science and law, and was at one time the president of an association of law students in Paris. His graduate studies thesis, presented in 1971 by Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jean-Loup Vincent, is entitled Le courant anarchiste en France depuis 1945 or “The anarchist movement in France since 1945”. Link
Are they in any way less qualified subjectively than Ramadan, based on their paper qualifications ? Would it be ok to invite them to then lecture based on their academic qualifications as long as they didn’t talk about their other views ? Or is Ramadan’s qualification somehow “different” ? Do tell…
When’s the last time a Christian espousing such beliefs was banned from the USA?
The question is whether a Christian espousing such beliefs would get so much support on a board such as this that claims to be against bigotry.
Vikram,
I am not at all a fan of Ramadan. I think he is sort of on the fringe. However, I think the objection by lot of people (not on SM) was raised that DHS stepped in and told Notre Dame’s appointment was not acceptable. In principle, DHS has all the right but typically to keep academic freedoms intact, they do not interfere with Universities.
The other point also is that USA does not understand the Muslim/ Arab heart and mind, and therefore, they have been trying to get different voices onboard – be it language, culture, history, or rabble rousers.
In past, even people Gabriel Garcia Marquez were denied visa during Reagan years. Now, he comes to LA very often for his cancer treatment, and his son lives there.
” If a Le Pen or a Jeorg Haider were to be given a US visa to lecture at universities, given their similar bigoted views, would that be ok with you ?”
I don’t really know them. too busy to look them up. Still, I don’t quite understand why visas should be denied even if they have bigoted views – as long as they are non-violent and not hateful. My quick search on Ramadan seems to show conflicting information. I guess I will finish the book and make up my mind.
And just to make this clear:
Shiv Sena-BJP=bad. Nehru-Gandhi dynasty=just as bad.
Thanks.l
Well mine is that you should stop using people like me as ragdolls in your political debate.
Umm, and so if crap has happened before it’s okay to have it repeated?
And ‘the mood of the country’ is not something set in stone and decided by a small group of elite people. I definitely don’t think the mood of Americans is to deny other people their human rights, especially the right of freedom of speech which is more central to the US constitution than any other country’s.
On the upside, now we can all sleep safe and warm knowing that crazy terrorists like Ramadan and M.I.A are being stopped from continuing their random acts of, um, writing, and, singing whilst wearing huge grey hoodies. What a way to spend tax dollars 🙂
Vikram,
No, he’s just stating a fact as per his interpretation of Islam.
Razib,
Could you please expand on this ? Do you mean that, as far as ordinary people are concerned, homosexuality is more tolerated (or at least subtly ignored as long as it isn’t too “blatant”) in the Middle East, or that there is in fact more overt intolerance of it (with perhaps severe consequences) ?
I love the way your government refer to non-Americans as aliens. i’m partially convinced Area 52 is filled with confused Martians awaiting the decision on their visa application.
‘So burning Satanic Verses is primitive, but burning Beatles records is protecting the honour of our Lord the saviour’
correct
‘And Bush saying he is being led by God is noble, but anyone wearing a beard and a turban saaying it is evil?’
now you’re getting somewhere
‘And if democracy means you’re entitled to your opinion, you’re allowed to express that opinion even if you don’t agree with it?’
DENIED
‘Oh no, now I must return back to my miserable planet never knowing the delights of pancake and sweet, sweet bacon’
Like I say, I’m only partially convinced…
I remember reading VS Naipaul’s Among the Believers , journeys through Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Iran. One of the stories he tells is of Maulana Maududi, a firebrand godfather of modern day global Islamist ideology, who spent his entire life preaching hatred of Hindus, Jews and America, you know the spiel, typical Muslim fundamentalist crap about how Islam is the saviour of humanity and America is Satan incarnate and all non Muslim women are sluts from Hell. Anyway, Naipaul writes about how Maududi exemplified the utter hypocrisy of Muslim fundamentalists – despite berating America as the fountain of evil and the homeland of the Devil, he made sure his daughters were provided for to go to University there, and when he was dying of heart failure, the cheeky arrogant bastard availed himself of American modernity by checking in to an American hospital to try and save his life, fiddled with by infidels and rescued by a society that he had spent an entire lifetime preaching hatred of. This is the base and pathetic squealing hypocrisy that is commonplace amongst Islamist critics of America and more widely ‘the West’ – Ramadan may or may not fall into that category, but it is a definite phenomenon and you see it more than ever today, with backward medieval mullahs spewing hatred of Jews and the West while all the time growing fat and happy off the luxuries that their open societies provide (which they also think need to be converted to Islam) – hypocrites.
<
blockquote> No, he’s just stating a fact as per his interpretation of Islam.
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blockquote>
That sounds eeriely like the Nuremberg Defense
That sounds eeriely like the Nuremberg Defense
One guy’s rants on paper can’t be equated with an entire government passing policies that deny entry to anyone who says something they don’t like hearing
Ramadan’s exclusion from America probably has much to do with him being the grandson of the extreme right wing ideological Big Daddy to global Islamic Caliphate terrorism Hassan al Banna. They are wrong to exclude him because the sins of the father are not the sins of the son. This is a big mistake that the American government have made. If for no other reason then that it gives victim-juice for addled whiny people to squeal about the ‘hypocrisy’ of America and blah blah blah (see above)
Nevertheless, Ramadan is small prawns and his Islamist lite arguments can be easily sizzled faster than the synapses of a mini Maududist anti American whiner in full effect. Let the Islamist in! Like Maududi, they fall apart with their own self created contradictions, hypocrisy and idiotic ideology.
Vikram,
No, only if he advocates punishment for homosexuals as per Shariah.
Until and unless he does that, he is just voicing what he regards as being the “standard” view of the supposed incompatibility of homosexuality with Islam, at least in terms of his own understanding of the subject, rightly or wrongly.
Wikipedia has an interesting page on the topic.