“I was confident that the Swiss litigation would stand by me, because I do my job honestly,” Ramadan

CAIRO, April 4 (IslamOnline.net) – A Swiss court annulled a government decision to sack a Muslim from his job as a high school French language teacher in Geneva for publicly defending the Islamic punishment for adultery.

The Geneva Administrative Court reinstated Hani Ramadan, deeming the State Council’s decision of February 5, 2003, as null and void and ordering it to pay 5,000 Swiss Francs in compensation, Swiss daily Le Matin reported Saturday, April 3.

Ramadan, who is also the head of the Geneva Islamic Center, had defended the stoning punishment for adulterous men and women in an article published by French daily Le Monde late 2002.

He wrote that the stoning punishment is meant to help curb the “moral degradation” in societies and put the what he saw as “divine curse” (AIDS/HIV) under control.

Ramadan said – in his article - God has initiated the stoning punishment for “His love of mankind, because AIDS came out of nothing but from promiscuousness”.

Adultery in Islam is one of the most heinous and deadliest of sins. Its enormity can be gauged from the fact that it has often been conjoined in the Qur’an with the gravest of all sins.

However, Geneva State Council said his opinions “run counter to democracy and secularism in Switzerland”.

It also argued that the article violated the principle of “reservationism” observed by the educational institution in the country, stating that any teacher should not speak his personal viewpoints out so that they would not affect the mindsets of his students at an early age.

The decision had an adverse affect on Ramadan as he was ultimately banned from teaching in Geneva by the Swiss government.

The court described the Council’s “reservationism” as too vague to justify the dismissal of the Muslim teacher from his post.

“Fair”

Ramadan described the court’s verdict as “fair”, saying he was confident that the Swiss litigation would stand by him.

He said the government’s decision was “unjust” because “I do my job (as a teacher) honestly”.

“This ruling demonstrates that we live in a state of law and that dialogue between Islam and Christianity remains possible,” he told Le Matin.

Head of Geneva Government Robert Cromer, for his part, balked at the court’s decision, noting he will study the whys and wherefores of the ruling to see whether it could be put into effect.

He said Ramadan’s dismissal decision was taken “unanimously” by the government’s members, adding religion “has no room in public education”.

Ramadan is the elder brother of famed Swiss Muslim intellectual Tarek Ramadan, who are both the grandsons of Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

In 1961, their father Sayed Ramadan founded the Islamic Center in Geneva.