Ramadan’s Return

When we last wrote of controversial Mid-East Studies scholar Tariq Ramadan, he was set to arrive in the United States to teach at Notre Dame on a newly minted visa that the last presidential administration had denied him.

The   Bush Administration was concerned about his stated views (he had called the September 11, 2001 attacks upon the United States “interventions”) as well as his family tree (his grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood).  If there’s an account of turmoil surrounding Ramadan’s lectures to the Fighting Irish, we haven’t found it. Nevertheless, his lineage hasn’t changed and his pronouncements could be described, at best, as enigmatic.

In a recent blog posting, he denounced extremism on all sides of Middle East conflicts before concluding, “The modern era has summoned Muslims to a global jihad of knowledge, of education, of dialogue, of communication and of resistance.”

“A jihad of serenity, peaceful, non-violent, of bearing witness. Our point of departure is self-knowledge, and self-criticism that avoids the extremes of interpretational deception and self-flagellation. A Muslim conscience must emerge, one that can clearly state what Islam is and what it is not (in full respect of diversity and pluralism), and to denounce hypocrisy, both our own and that of self-serving or populist ideologies. An open conscience that is able to respond to the legitimate questions of a majority that seeks to understand, as well as a courageous conscience that can stand up to the racism of a minority that deceives, lies and manipulates. Our commitment must be individual, local, national and worldwide. The dynamics that today have made Islam a problem have also transformed it into a question : it is the responsibility of Muslim women and Muslim men to step forward with confident answers.”

To be sure, in this day and age, jihad may be an attention-getting noun. Nonetheless, it may not be one Ramadan would want to use in order to win friends and influence people.

“There are few positions in Muslim Brotherhood circles more critical than secretary general of the Muslim World League,” former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy said in a speech given on August 8, 2012. “In fact, one of the MWL’s founders was Sa’id Ramadan, the right-hand and son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s legendary founder.”

Sa’id Ramadan is the father of Tariq. “The MWL is part of the foundation of the grand jihad — what the Brotherhood also calls its “civilization jihad” against the West,” McCarthy explained in his remarks at the National Press Club. “Nevertheless, the MWL has a long history of deep involvement in violent jihad as well.” McCarthy spoke at an event organized by Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy.

“According to Osama bin Laden himself, the Muslim World League was one of al-Qaeda’s three top funding sources,” McCarthy pointed out to the overflow audience at the Press Club. As a U. S. Department of Justice attorney in the Southern District of New York, McCarthy successfully prosecuted many terrorism cases, including the case of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Currently, McCarthy, the author of The Grand Jihad, writes for National Review Online and P J Media. He will be a featured speaker at a conference that Accuracy in Academia’s sister organization—Accuracy in Media—will hold at the Heritage Foundation on September 21, 2012.

For more coverage of the press conference McCarthy spoke at, see Cliff Kincaid”s column, Romney Urged to Address Muslim Brotherhood Infiltration.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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