Tariq Ramadan visits US. Part of a fresh start for West and Islam?

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

De man die niet genoeg was voor Rotterdam ;)

Groet / Cees

PS. De oorspronkelijke 'ban' kwam na een intense lobby van Joodse
organisaties. Hoe zit dat met Rotterdam?

Tariq Ramadan visits US. Part of a fresh start for West and Islam?
http://www.csmonitor.com/
The US has lifted a 6-year-old ban on Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan
entering the US. His visit may go a long way in advancing Obama’s goal
of starting a new dialogue with the Muslim world.

Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan speaks at Cooper Union in New York, Thursday.

By Michael B. Farrell, Staff writer / April 9, 2010

Soon after Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan discovered that the 6-year-old
ban on him entering the United States had been lifted, he said the
decision marked a new openness coming from America.

President Obama talked last summer about forging a “new beginning
between the United States and Muslims around the world,” but many
liberal critics have complained that he hasn’t stepped far enough away
from Bush administration policies that have embroiled relations with the
Islamic world.

But images of Mr. Ramadan traveling to at least six lectures across the
US in the coming weeks may go a long way in advancing Mr. Obama’s goal
of starting a new dialogue with the Muslim world. Ramadan is an Oxford
professor who has been dubbed a “rock star” among many young European
Muslims.

He was barred from coming to the US in 2004, first under a provision of
the Patriot Act that allows the US to keep out anyone suspected of
espousing ideas that support terrorism. While the government backed away
from that initial reasoning, which kept him from taking a teaching job
at the University of Notre Dame, it later said Ramadan contributed to an
organization that funneled money to Hamas, the Palestinian group the US
considers a terrorist organization.

Ramadan denied those allegations and said he never intended for any
donation to reach Hamas. While he has been an outspoken critic of
terrorism, he has also not been shy about speaking out against US policy.

“Many US organizations believe that I am being barred from the country
not because of my actions but because of my ideas. The conclusion seems
inescapable,” Ramadan wrote in a 2007 opinion piece for the Monitor.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took up Ramadan’s case. In
January, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signed orders ending
the exclusion of Ramadan and another Muslim professor, Adam Habib of the
University of Johannesburg, who had been kept out of the US on similar
grounds.

“We do not think that either one of them represents a threat to the
United States,” said Philip Crowley, a spokesman for the State
Department, at a January press briefing. “We want to have the
opportunity potentially to have Islamic scholars come to the United
States and have dialogue with other faith communities and people here in
our country.”

The Obama administration’s decision marks a shift from the Bush stance
on visiting professors and other intellectuals whose ideas are often at
odds with American policy, says Melissa Goodman, a staff attorney at the
ACLU who worked on both the Ramadan and Habib cases.

“It’s an incredibly important first step to restoring a robust and free
exchange of international ideas across borders,” she says.

Between 2004 and 2008, the ACLU received “a steady stream” of complaints
about what it calls the “ideological exclusion” of academics, writers,
and journalists. Now, Ms. Goodman says, several people once barred from
the US are coming for the first time in years.

In addition to Ramadan and Mr. Habib, a Palestinian journalist and an
Irish activist previously denied entry have recently been allowed to
travel here.

Ramadan said in a statement that his reentry “brings to an end a dark
period in American politics that saw security considerations invoked to
block critical debate through a policy of exclusion and baseless
allegation.”

But many also say that Ramadan, whose grandfather founded the Muslim
Brotherhood, should remain locked out of the country.

Robert Spencer, of the website Jihad Watch, said in the Chicago Tribune
that Ramadan was a “stealth jihadist” who shares the same goals as Osama
bin Laden.

While many hail Ramadan as a preeminent Muslim thinker encouraging
greater engagement between Islam and the West, others say that he is a
radical whose extremist view of Islam is often masked by academic-speak.

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) has warned US Muslims to
be “on guard” as Ramadan makes what it calls his “American Islamist
Victory Tour – 2010.”

"Tariq Ramadan's entry into America needs to be met with open dialogue
from the Muslim Community, non-Muslim organizations, and the media on
the real threat of Political Islam," said M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD
president, in a statement. "It is incumbent on all Americans, especially
American Muslims, to engage Ramadan at any opportunity to demonstrate
that the US Constitution trumps the construct of the Islamic State."

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