Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (15 page)

The next day the press was unanimous in its praise of Sarkozy's knockout. The left-leaning Liberation trumpeted: "Sarkozy clobbers Ramadan's
double talk." It seemed as if the preacher was permanently sidelined. But
that was to forget the workings of celebrity, the public's curiosity, and, above
all, Tariq Ramadan's way of working. He bounced back as always, sending off
to Liberation a riposte, in which he offered a point by point analysis: "For the
last month, hardly a day goes by without an article critical of me appearing
in the press. Up to now I have had neither the time nor the desire to reply to
this avalanche of comments, the answers to which are already to be found in
my articles and books. "76 And indeed, he had never taken the time to reply to
the accusation of "double talk" that had been clearly directed at him over the
preceding fifteen years. The reply that he provided for Liberation also side stepped the issues. Ramadan objected: "When it came time to expose me for
the benefit of an audience of six million, he [Sarkozy] had nothing in hand
as proof of my double talk, except my brother's statement and the remarks
made by a woman in a book for which I wrote the preface. You must admit
it's next to nothing; it's high time for the French to take note." As to the question of stoning that he had not convincingly condemned: "My position is
clear and bears repeating here: I have said and written that, for me, stoning
is something that can never be applied." The moratorium was a pedagogical
tactic to allow for an evolution of opinion in the Muslim world where, Ramadan claimed, his position was in the minority. The subtleties of this remark
will become apparent in Part 11.

There was a background to the settling of scores between Tariq Ramadan and
Nicolas Sarkozy in the television program loo Minutes to Make Your Case. The
preacher had given the Minister of the Interior a hard time when the French
Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) was being set up. After 9/II, political
leaders and a number of French intellectuals thought it a matter of urgency
to create a council that could provide a structure and, more importantly, provide institutions for French Islamism so as to isolate it, in particular, from
the Algerian, Moroccan,and Saudi Arabian influences that plagued it. The
project had been brewing for some time, but Nicolas Sarkozy's predecessors
had not carried it through, lest, in so doing, they should grant the Union of
Islamic Organizations of France a certain legitimacy to the detriment of the
secular Muslims of the Paris Mosque.

The first elections to the council, held in April 2003, marked the rising power of the UOIF, which was now on an even standing with the Paris
Mosque. As if it was not enough to have set a place at high table for the association with the closest ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Sarkozy decided to
celebrate the event by attending the annual UOIF congress held in Le Bourget on April 19, 2003. On arrival, he received an ovation from an audience
in which the women (wearing headscarves) were seated on one side and the
men on the other. The atmosphere got a bit chillier when Sarkozy reminded his listeners that French law required identity card photos to be taken bareheaded. He was booed by the militants, even though they were under tight
surveillance. The scene was immediately broadcast on all French TV stations,
and this rekindled the debate on the banning ofthe headscarf in schools.

The UOIF, which had wanted to reopen the debate, had reason to be
pleased. But Tariq Ramadan remained skeptical. Not that he was against
launching the headscarf debate; on the contrary he was most amenable to
it, but the timing was not to his liking. Ever since 1997, he had been working within the Islam and Secularism commission to win acceptance for
the idea of negotiating a redefinition of secularism. The commission had
first been attached to the Education League before being sponsored by the
Human Rights League. A few more years of effort and the proposal would
come from the political Left and not from the UOIF itself, giving it a far
greater chance of success. The Le Bourget provocation, however, ran the
risk of alerting the secular, anti-fundamentalist Left. Tariq Ramadan was,
in addition, hostile to the French government's having any say regarding
French Islamism. It should not be forgetten that his grandfather had been
assassinated after negotiating with the Egyptian government, and that the
Muslim Brotherhood was decapitated after the failure of the negotiations
with Nasser. Even if he knew that times had changed, he saw the establishment of a French Islamism under the aegis of the French state in the
same light. No doubt state interference would have been less painful to
accept if he had been chosen to be part of the CFCM. Instead of which,
the increasing influence of the UOIF within this organization diminished
his personal power. He was extremely reticent and expressed his objections
in articles published in Le Monde, in which he criticized, in particular, the
"breakneck speed" enforced by the Minister of the Interior and the rush to
wind things up with the risk of failing to respect "the autonomy of religion
guaranteed in a secular state." 77 The dispute between the two men was to
explode publicly in ioo Minutes to Make Your Case. Nicolas Sarkozy, after
granting the UOIF a legitimate place within the CFCM, then unmasked
Tariq Ramadan's double talk on prime time. As for the preacher himself,
he seized the occasion to challenge the Minister of the Interior to make the French Council of the Muslim Faith "independent." He had lost a battle,
but refused to lose the war.

More discreetly, Tariq Ramadan sent "a message to the Muslims of France"
in the form of an audiocassette, distributed by the Islamist bookshops, in
which he revealed the reasons for his anger.78 He adopted the tone of a warlord making use of a clandestine radio frequency to transmit his final instructions. The recording, obviously made shortly after the Le Bourget affair, was
put out by the Ligue Nationale des Musulmans de France (National League
of French Muslims).Tariq Ramadan was furious: "I'm angry at my own community, I'm not angry at Nicolas Sarkozy." He berated those who had replied
to Sarkozy's provocation, which was foreseeable, by provoking him in return.
"Dear Brothers and Sisters, you are no longer children, we lack maturity,"
he said, before exhorting French Muslims to exhibit more "discernment."
Ramadan reminded his followers that the essential thing was a dawa, far
more silent but far more efficacious. He cautioned them: "Don't be zealots
in your Islamic activities ... our work has several different dimensions." His
directives were clear: "Do not abandon the suburbs on the pretext that you
belong to the university ... because if you don't take things in hand, no one
will!" but "I find that the field work is being abandoned." He congratulated
"the Brothers and Sisters who are dependable," who had been coming to listen to him for years and who represented "the true strength of this community": "Here in Rosny [a Paris suburb] and throughout the region, I know that
the people here will not necessarily be reliable and hang on, but I can tell you
one thing: if in the neighborhood there are five or fifteen people who stand
out, who are patient, and who set high standards for themselves, who work
together at an overall project, that's how we'll change things."

The tone, which was already melodramatic, became sinister when Tariq
Ramadan brought up the CFCM. He feared a clash with the liberal Muslims,
but, above all, he was concerned by the aftereffects of his quarrel with the
UOIF, and he issued a warning: "The major problems will involve our brothers." The warning continued: "Today, in the national community, they will
try to sow dissension, to set us one against the other, to find hypocrites in our
ranks" and "among us there is the gypsy [the devil]." Tariq Ramadan's harsh est criticisms were reserved for Muslims who did not share his plans for
the future. He spoke of "people who are capable of lying, traitors who are all
smiles when they are with you and insult you when speaking to others." It is
to be an ordeal, but Tariq Ramadan loves playing the role of the martyr. At any
rate, he explained, "the Prophet has experienced failure, he knows that men
can betray and tell lies, he knows that the serpent lies hidden behind some
people." The most frightening was yet to come. Tariq Ramadan informed
his supporters of hard times ahead: "The coming years will be as difficult for
Muslim society as our progress has been rapid, because this time they will be
there waiting for us."

The most disturbing thing about this speech is not the warlord-like tone,
which reveals a Tariq Ramadan very different from the one we know from
watching television; no, the most alarming thing can only be understood if
one keeps in mind the Muslim Brotherhood's history. The tone, but also the
words and even certain sentences, come amazingly close to the speech given
by Hassan al-Banna shortly before his death, in which he announced that the
progress made by the Muslim Brotherhood was to cause them problems; the
speech in which he announced the transition to another stage. All very disturbing when one knows of the Geneva Islamic Center's contacts and the
company it keeps.

On frequent occasions, the Ramadan brothers' shady reputation has caught
up with them; they have even been suspected of inciting hatred or acts of terrorism. Despite his angelic looks, which have often beguiled the general public, Tariq was the first ofthe two brothers to have caused concern to the French
authorities. On November 26, 1995, as he was about to cross the frontier
between Switzerland and France at Verrieres-de-Joux on his way to Besancon
to attend a conference, he was informed that he was being denied entry into
France as "a menace to public order." Ever since the bomb explosion in the
Saint-Michel metro station, the French authorities had feared that the terrorists of the Armed Islamic Groups (GIA) would renew their attempt to export
violence to France. The arrival of a preacher acting as the spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood's version of dawa was not really welcome. In effect,
there was good reason to believe that the Geneva Islamic Center-of which
Tariq Ramadan is still an administrator-served as a European stopping-off
place for militants of the FIS and even the GIA.

In 1994, Islamists calling for support for the jihad in Algeria took part
in the first congress of Tariq Ramadan s association, the Muslim Men and
Women of Switzerland. The following year, on March 11, 1995, members of
the FIS and the GIA co-organized a meeting with the Geneva Islamic Center in front ofthe United Nations headquarters. It was, in effect, a sort of outdoor prayer meeting: each participant had his prayer rug, while the speakers
took turns at the rostrum. Two orators, microphone in hand, conducted the
public preaching session: Said Lalli, a former FIS deputy, and Hani Ramadan. Tariq Ramadan also took part in the gathering. Richard Labeviere and a
French-speaking Swiss TV crew tried to record the event, but the event stewards violently attacked them and prevented them from filming. The "ambassador to the outside world" was not supposed to keep the same company as
the "interior ambassador," even if, in fact, he did.

The event's logistics, in particular the supply of the sound system, was
handled by Ijra, an organization run by former members of FIDA, a group
with close ties to the GIA that has been responsible for the murder of Algerian intellectuals.79 On March 7, 1993, for example, FIDA claimed responsibility for the assassination of the director of the Algiers School of Fine Arts.
Since the "civil concord," a government measure that provided guarantees for
ex-Islamist terrorists in order to bring peace back to Algeria, Mourad Dhina
(alias Sheikh Amar) and Moustapha Brahimi, two of its leaders, had been
in exile in Switzerland, where they took advantage of the freedom of speech
provided by the European democracies to publish a propaganda bulletin, AlQaddt (The Cause), distributed in French, Belgian, and Swiss Islamist circles.
The bulletin paid a vibrant tribute to Said Ramadan on the occasion of his
death. It claimed to continue in the same tradition, which implied being close
ideologically to Said Ramadan's official heirs.8' For Richard Labeviere, author
of an investigative piece on the "European Networks of Algerian Islamists"
for Les Cahiers de l'Orient, there is no doubt that Said's two sons were in touch with the editors of The Cause: "Mourad Dhina, as well as Moustapha Brahimi, had close ties to the Ramadan family, whose two sons, Tariq and Hani
were also in Switzerland. The latter were instrumental in teaching them the
virtues of pragmatism in a complex political and social setting. I'M Dhina and
Brahimi continue to frequent the Geneva Islamic Center. On September 18,
2004, Brahimi gave a talk on "the personality of Imam Shafii." On October
2, it was Mourad Dhina's turn. The Ramadan headquarters thus still retains
official links with the GIA veterans who publish The Cause.

The journal The Cause claimed to be the "Voice ofthe elected representatives ofthe Islamic Salvation Front." Though the body is (unfortunately) legal,
this is far from reassuring. In fact, the editors-Mourad Dhina under the pen
name Abou Omar and Moustapha Brahimi under the name Mustapha B.were both active members of the FIDA-GIA, and The Cause served to relay
their message. But in order not to lay themselves open to arrest, the authors
were careful never to refer explicitly to calls for an armed jihad, except for traditional invocations, for instance those of Ibn Taymiyya. There were exceptions when it came to obituaries, as, for example, when Mustapha B. published an article entitled "Sheikh Cherati, my brother, my friend" in tribute to
the F IS theologian known for hisfatwa calling for a holy war in 19 9 z. He had
just been killed by the Algerian security forces.8' But for the rest of the time,
only a well-informed reader could catch the jihad references that come in the
midst of internationalist, anti-globalization articles, some simulating concern with human rights. The Cause on occasion alluded favorably to the Zapatista movement in Mexico or quoted from an Amnesty International report,
but of course only when it was a question of denouncing torture in Algeria.
But the obsessions of this official mouthpiece of the FIS, which was in effect
run by FIDA members, would rapidly resurface. The journal made a practice
of targeting French intellectuals, often Jewish (Bernard-Henri Levy, Andre
Glucksman, and Jean Daniel), accusing them of attacking Islamist ideals.
French secularism and the French Revolution, which gave birth to "liberty,
equality, fraternity," were pilloried on every page, particularly when it came to
rendering the murders committed by the GIA more palatable by explaining
that the French Revolution had done worse. You would think that the Alge rian Islamists had not got used to the idea that France no longer governed
Algeria; The Cause regularly dispatched menacing letters to French deputies.
In 1995, shortly after the presidential election, the group again threatened
Jacques Chirac: "Since you want to symbolize change, allow me most humbly to advise you to stop French meddling with what is happening in Algeria. Begin by admitting that what is happening now in Algeria is part of the
plan scrupulously carried out by the stooges that the French administration
planted in our country before 1962.... But our people are determined to get
rid of these puppets and break the hand that takes pleasure in manipulating
them."83 The menace was taken seriously. All the more so as the group reaffirmed its commitment to armed jihad in a letter addressed to a French deputy: "War is declared against the junta in power and its allies until the day
when an Islamic state is established in Algeria."84