NEWS STORY: French Muslim Leader the `Prince of Double Language’

c. 2003 Religion News Service VIGNEUX-SUR-SEINE, France _ The mosque juts awkwardly from raw ground in this Paris suburb, a block of unfinished cement missing even a minaret. But throngs of bearded men, and women in long veils, crowd through its doors on a cold autumn afternoon. Upstairs, the curtained-off women’s prayer hall is packed […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

VIGNEUX-SUR-SEINE, France _ The mosque juts awkwardly from raw ground in this Paris suburb, a block of unfinished cement missing even a minaret. But throngs of bearded men, and women in long veils, crowd through its doors on a cold autumn afternoon.

Upstairs, the curtained-off women’s prayer hall is packed and noisy, as housewives trade gossip and keep an eye on mischievous children. Few in this majority francophone audience pay much attention to the large TV screen front and center, where Vigneux’s white-gowned, Moroccan-born imam drones on in Arabic.


But suddenly the image shifts, and the crowd quiets. Tariq Ramadan, dapper in a white polo shirt and dark blazer, has finally arrived.

“Some of you think that to be a European, you couldn’t be Muslim,” Ramadan tells his spellbound audience in flawless French, from a podium in the male-only prayer hall below. “You need to prove to this country that you’re French. But you need to prove that being a practicing Muslim in this country is also your inalienable right.”

Flash forward a few days, and Ramadan is again on television _ this time defending suggestions by France’s interior minister that he is anti-Semitic and fundamentalist.

“Tell French Muslims to make an effort to integrate … tell them to take off their veils,” Minister Nicolas Sarkozy challenges Ramadan, who appears on a satellite feed from Geneva. “If you ask them, I’ll believe you’re a moderate. If you don’t, it’s because you are a master of double talk.”

It’s a label often tagged to the charismatic, controversial, Swiss-born scholar. Dubbed “king of ambiguity,” and “prince of double language,” the 41-year-old Ramadan has long lived with the reputation of being a theological chameleon.

Is he preacher or posturer? Far-seeing or fanatic? Ramadan has been alternately hailed as Muslim Europe’s moderate Martin Luther, and as an alarming firebrand, inspired by his fundamentalist Egyptian heritage.

“Tariq Ramadan is an extremely dangerous man,” said Rachid Kaci, a rising young ethnic Arab politician, and member of France’s conservative Union for a Popular Movement party. “He talks about modern Islam. He talks about reforming Islam. But when he talks to young Muslims, the message is exactly the opposite.”


Few, however, will dispute that Ramadan, perhaps more than any other Muslim figure in Europe, is inspiring a new generation of Muslims to discover and assert their religious and ethnic identities.

“He’s talking about their experience of being Muslims in Europe. He’s telling them he’s lived through what they’ve experienced,” said Franck Fregosi, an Islamic expert at the National Center for Scientific Research in Strasbourg. “He talks well. He’s presentable on TV. He probably best articulates the situation Muslims live daily in Europe.”

Schooled in Swiss and Egyptian universities, Ramadan’s credentials would make resume material for an extremist leader or a champion of progressive Islam.

He is a philosophy professor and veteran of the lecture circuit, who has authored several books on reconciling Islam and the West. His grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, was the founder of Egypt’s now-banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, and his father was appointed al-Banna’s spiritual heir.

Ramadan’s uncle is still a leading member of the Brotherhood in Egypt. And last year, Ramadan’s brother, Hani, was suspended from his job as a Swiss teacher, for pronouncing himself in favor of stoning adulterous women to death.

Ramadan’s own speeches have allegedly inspired both Muslim terrorists and liberal thinkers. “The future of Islam,” Sudan’s hard-line religious leader, Hassan Tourabi, reportedly said a decade ago, “is Tariq Ramadan.”


But Ramadan is quick to reject the fundamentalist mantle. He says he has no ties with the Brotherhood, and hasn’t spoken to his brother since the stoning remarks.

“There’s a wrong and superficial impression that because I am the son, or the brother of somebody, I have to think like this or that,” he said in a recent interview at his office, in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis.

In person, Ramadan is soft-spoken, offering lengthy answers backed by religious references. The English version of his latest book, “Western Muslims and the Future of Islam” _ due out in the United States next month _ is equally long-winded.

He says “Western Muslims” is as much a primer for non-Muslims, as for those struggling with their Islamic identities.

“I think the great majority of Europeans think it is difficult, if not impossible, to be a Muslim and to be a European,” Ramadan said. “Why for example, all this discussion about Turkey joining the European union? Is it a Christian club? Or a club for all citizens promoting universal values and human rights?”

Give Ramadan a microphone and an audience, however, and the turgid discourse ends.

“First they parked us in housing projects,” he told a cheering audience, during his two-hour appearance at the Vigneux mosque. “Then they said we could leave _ so long as we shaved our beards, dropped our headscarves, accepted homosexuality.”


“It’s true he upsets people,” said Abdelaziz Chaambis, spokesman for the Union of Young Muslims in France, based in Lyon. “He’s debating the biggest personalities in France, and telling them integration hasn’t worked. That Islam _ France’s second-largest religion _ deserves its rightful place.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

More recently, Ramadan has upset Jewish intellectuals by accusing them of knee-jerk support for Israel, and for the U.S.-led war on Iraq. In turn, he was labeled anti-Semitic _ although Ramadan himself speaks out against anti-Semitism among French Muslims.

“I don’t think he’s a danger to secularity in France, as some would argue today,” said analyst Fregosi. “I simply think he’s stepped into a social and political void _ he’s the only one who answers the expectations of young European Muslims.”

“Which brings up the question: Why is there no alternative to Tariq Ramadan?” Fregosi added. “But that must be answered by the Muslim community.”

KRE END BRYANT

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