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Tariq
Ramadan debates Nicolas Sarkozy, the French minister of the
interior
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After
September 11, the question of what Islam is really about became the
subject of many fiery debates. With photos of Bin Laden chasing
Westerners everywhere, Tariq Ramadan, with his trimmed mustache and
neatly pressed suit, presented a different face of Islam.
Ramadan
was thrust into the limelight in 2004, after the US Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) revoked his visa. Ramadan, a prominent Islamic
intellectual and the grandson of Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the
Muslim Brotherhood, was supposed to teach religion, conflict, and
peace-building at the University of Notre Dame. According to Russ
Knocke, a DHS spokesman, the decision was justified on the basis of
“public safety and national security interests,” (Pipes, 2004).
The incident raised many questions about Tariq Ramadan in particular
and Muslims in Europe in general.
Some
people argue that the young philosophy lecturer is attempting to
bridge the gap between European and Islamic values. In his own words,
Ramadan believes that “We need to separate Islamic principles form
their cultures of origin and anchor them in the cultural reality of
Western Europe” (Trying to…, 2004). Ramadan, who wrote his
doctoral dissertation on Nietzsche, “[enjoys]the support of thinkers
and intellectuals of the caliber of the late Edward Said, Naom
Chomsky, Francois Bugart, Edgar Morin and Norman Finkelstein,”
(Sid-Ahmed, 2004). Lecturing in the United States, France,
Switzerland, and Belgium, Ramadan has been attempting to create “a
coherent European Muslim personality,” urging Muslims in Europe to
stop isolating themselves from the rest of society, and to get rid of
the “unhealthy schizophrenia” and “inferiority complex” they
live with (Bechler, 2004). Ramadan “has authored and co-authored
over 20 books and over 700 articles,” and his “Western Muslims and
the Future of Islam,” was considered one of the best non-fiction
books of 2004 by the Christian Science Monitor (Ramadan calls…,
2005).
But
Ramadan has also been harshly attacked by the Western media. “The
campaign against him has acquired dangerous proportions reminiscent of
the Inquisition,” with the French media calling him an anti-Semitic,
reactionary Islamist (Sid-Ahmed, 2004). American writers, such as
Daniel Pipes and Lee Smith, accuse him of being “a cold-blooded
Islamist” and the “Trojan horse of jihad in Europe”
(Pipes, 2004).
In
terms of the Muslim world, Tariq Ramadan has long been “absent from
our public discourse” (Sid-Ahmed, 2004). Nevertheless, as a result
of his recent call for a moratorium on corporal punishment in the
Muslim world, Ramadan now find himself in the eye of a religious and
political storm.
At
a time when already little is Islamic about the Muslim world, the last
thing Muslims expected was a call for a suspension of the remaining
vestiges of Shari`ah in the legal systems of Muslim countries.
However, on March 30, 2005, Ramadan issued his call for a moratorium
on corporal punishment. According to Ramadan, “these penalties are
applied almost exclusively to women and the poor, the doubly
victimized, never to the wealthy, the powerful, or the oppressors.”
He argues that, regarding hudud, or Islam's prescribed
penalties, “positions remain vague and even nebulous, and consensus
among Muslims is lacking…” Muslims today, according to Ramadan,
seek to apply Islamic penalties or hudud merely for the idea of
application itself rather than the aim or maqsid of such an
application, which gives them a sense of fidelity to Islamic
teachings.
Ramadan’s
call is based on the argument that “political systems and the state
of the majority Muslim societies do not guarantee a just and equal
treatment of individuals before the law," and that by maintaining
a superficial relationship with scriptural sources, "we betray
the message of justice of Islam.”
Ramadan
find himself in the eye of a religious and political storm. |
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A
notable feature of Ramadan’s call is the absence of any juristic
opinions to support his views. Ramadan refers to “the majority of
the `ulamaa’s [religious scholars]” without specifying
names or citing juristic proofs. At the same time, the `ulamaa’s
responses to his call were negative. “When this call comes from a
respectable scholar like Dr. Tariq Ramadan, it may encourage others to
disrespect the laws of Allah,” Muzammil H. Siddiqi, President of the
Fiqh Council of North America and former President of the Islamic
Society of North America (ISNA), told IOL.
Sano
Koutoub Mustapha, an Islamic scholar of the Islamic Fiqh Academy of
the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), also disagreed with
Ramadan, saying: “If we call today for an international moratorium
on corporal punishment, stoning and the death penalty, then tomorrow I
am so worried that they may ask Muslims to suspend their Friday
prayer.” And Tariq al-Bishri, the former head of Egypt’s State
Council and a prominent Islamic thinker, described the moratorium
initiative as “juristically baseless.”
Interestingly,
Ramadan addresses several questions to Islamic religious authorities
around the world at the end of his proposal. Judging by the
overwhelmingly negative feedback to the proposal itself, it would seem
to have been prudent for Ramadan to have discussed the issue with the `ulamaa'
before, not after, issuing such a controversial call.
Ramadan’s
proposal surprised many people; the issue of implementing or
suspending hudud, applied as they are in a very limited number
of countries and in limited circumstances, is peripheral at best.
Hence, the call, coming from a European Muslim, is largely irrelevant
to many Muslims. Commenting on the proposal, Ahmed al-Rawi, chairman
of the Islamic Organization in Europe, wondered “where on earth such
hudud are applicable? They are not implemented in all Muslim
countries and there are some reservations on the application of these hudud
in Saudi Arabia.”
In
point of fact, the current situation in the Muslim world is the
selective application of Shari`ah, in which hudud do not play a
significant role in the first place. The part of Shari`ah that is
applied in most Muslim countries is largely related to family, or
civil law. It’s also important to note that, in Islam, one of the
main functions of hudud is deterrence.
Parallels
can be drawn between this controversial proposal and the heated debate
over the death penalty that occurred before the execution of Timothy
McVeigh in 2001. “For most Americans the execution of Timothy
McVeigh... [was] an act of justice, the desired retribution for the
greatest act of domestic terrorism in America’s history.”
Responding to the argument that the implementation of the death
penalty is biased, many people “opposed a moratorium, arguing that
it would make more sense to remove the bias from the system rather
than to suspend the implementation of a theoretically just penalty”
(Ahmad, 2001). Many Muslims used the same line of reasoning in
responding to Tariq Ramadan.
Problems
in the application of a law cannot be solved by freezing it. By
Ramadan's logic, any unjust application of a law, Islamic or
otherwise, should be solved by suspending the law altogether. “Dr.
Ramadan should have called for better and more comprehensive
application of the Shari`ah. He should have criticized more openly and
clearly the misapplication of the hudud in some Muslim
countries,” said Siddiqi.
Commenting
on Ramadan’s call, Dr. Emad Shahin, a professor of political science
at the American University of Cairo, said: “Such a call can be
understood in the light of two contexts: a general one and a
particular one. Concerning the general context, the calls for reviving
Islamic thought and discourse regarding many issues, including
education, youth, and women, have turned into a phenomenon.” He
argues that such calls are manifested from time to time in the form of
intellectual debates that attempt to prove that Islam is compatible
with Western values. In this context, we have heard many intellectuals
set out to prove that Islam is “democratic,” in the sense that it
is compatible with Western democratic values, and have also recently
seen a Friday prayer lead by a woman in the United States.
Moving
to the particular context, Dr. Shahin added that while Ramadan's
initiative could be understood in light of the general circumstances,
"Ramadan’s environment as a European has a great influence on
his call,” as he is effectively proposing a “European Islam.”
Shahin believes that Ramadan is trying to find a place for European
Muslims inside Europe; he wants Muslims in Europe to live in harmony
with Western values, which would give them the chance to live
peacefully without being discriminated against.
The
call highlighted the thorny relationship between political and
religious authorities in Islam. |
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But
the initiative, according to Dr. Shahin, comes as part of what he
considers a “dismantling of Islam.” By being selective while
dealing with Shari`ah, “we are tearing Islam apart from within,”
he explains. While agreeing with Ramadan that Shari`ah cannot be
reduced only to hudud, Shahin maintains that hudud are
an integral and essential part of Shari`ah, and cannot be ignored
simply because they represent only one aspect of it. “The
marginalization of certain aspects of Shari`ah can have grave
consequences in the future,” Shahin adds, raising the rhetorical
question: “Should Shari`ah be twisted to suit societal behavior or
should it be the guide for it?”
Dr.
Shahin describes the initiative as the latest manifestation of an
apologetic attitude adopted by Muslims, whether in the West or in the
Muslim world. He attributes the Western fear of Tariq Ramadan to the
fact that “he is very appealing to Europeans, taking into
consideration the growing Islamic influence in Europe.”
The
proposal by Ramadan, who was ranked by Time magazine as one of the 100
most influential people in the world, brought many controversial
issues to light. It highlighted the dilemma facing Muslim
intellectuals; they are either accused by the West of being
“terrorists” or “extremists,” or accused by the Muslim masses
of being “too moderate” or “westernized.” Ironically, in some
cases, including Ramadan’s, they face accusations from both sides.
This situation has left many scholars bewildered, resulting in either
extremely aggressive or extremely apologetic attitudes. It also
brought up the historically thorny issue of the relationship between
political and religious authorities in Islam.
Tariq
Ramadan captured Europeans' attention with his televised debate with
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister and future presidential
hopeful. During the debate, Sarkozy surprised Ramadan by a question
about Islamic penalties, such as stoning and amputations.
Surprisingly, Ramadan’s response had to do with ijtihad, or
personal reasoning, and its role in “[coming] forward with
alternatives to such practices” (Sid-Ahmed, 2004). Considering
Ramadan’s proposal in light of this incident raises many
questions and concerns.
Thus,
it is important to examine Tariq Ramadan’s initiative in its proper
context. Despite Ramadan’s denial that the proposal had anything to
do with the West, the initiative seems to be part of Muslims' efforts
to find a place for themselves in an increasingly hostile world.
However, where such efforts impinge on the fundamentals of Islam, such
efforts should be based on clear-cut juristic evidence and extensive
prior consultation with the community of `ulamaa'.
While
it is likely that Ramadan’s call will be welcomed and manipulated by
the West, in the Muslim world it is expected to generate little more
than vociferous verbal assaults on Ramadan, and a heated, ultimately
fruitless debate.
Works
Cited:
