CAIRO, July 22, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Portraying moderate Muslim scholars such as Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, one of the most respected scholars in the Muslim world, and the Muslim reformist thinker Tariq Ramadan as extremists is absurd and even dangerous, a leading French writer said Friday, July 22.

In an article in the mass circulation the Guardian, Naima Bouteldja, a researcher for the Transnational Institute said front-page horror stories of extremist preachers are crude but effective means of helping to create the environment necessary for authoritarian action against the Muslim figures.

"And then there's Tariq Ramadan. On Sunday, the Swiss-born Muslim academic is due to address young Muslims at a conference at London's Islamic Cultural Centre, sponsored by the Metropolitan police. His message will be unambiguous: the authors of the London bombs were criminals, and we should not accept their justifications, whether ideological, religious or political," she wrote.

"The Sun is campaigning to have Ramadan barred from the UK as an "extremist Islamic scholar" who is "banned from America and France" and has "suspected links with terrorists".

"It warns that the "soft-spoken professor" is "more dangerous" than Hamza and Bakri because his "moderate tones present a 'reasonable' face of terror to impressionable young Muslims".

"These claims are being repeated as fact by other papers, TV pundits and politicians."