Tariq Ramadan: “Do not demonise Islam”
Guido Rampoldi 10 November 2008

This article was published in La Repubblica on November 6th, 2008.

Two years ago in Regensburg, when the Pope quoted a Byzantine emperor who complained that Islam had a dominating and warrior vocation, Tariq Ramadan sensed in the pontiff’s words what almost all intellectual Muslims did, which was anti-Islamic prejudice. Whether that was a hasty interpretation or because Ratzinger decided to correct that unfortunate statement, the crisis over time provided an opportunity for setting up a Christian-Islamic Forum in which Ramadan takes part. One cannot guarantee that this Forum will put an end to a millennium of conflictual relations. However, if we are to believe the Muslim philosopher, it could release relations between Christianity and Islam from the emotional overload resulting from a dual misunderstanding. The Christian misunderstanding, says Ramadan, lies in imagining Islam as a powerful religion, practiced with an intensity unknown to Westerners, and hence capable of undermining Christianity even in its European stronghold through massive immigration.

The Pope’s insistence in emphasising Europe’s “Christian roots”, or his hostility to Turkey’s entering the European Union, can precisely be explained as the perception that “Muslims are far more religious than Catholics” and hence may well prevail. “And yet in Europe, as elsewhere, the majority of Muslims, I would say 80%, are not practising. And those who practice the most are not the immigrants, but students.” Also mistakenly, Muslins still see Christianity as the dominant religion, as it was in the days of colonial occupation. “In countries with an Islamic majority, Christianity is considered an instrument of the West and one used in its battle for power. All this for example means that whatever the Pope might say, he is not listened to. One assumes that he intends to defame Islam, describing it as a violent religion, and that therefore he should be condemned (as a matter of principle).” Will the Forum manage to calm relations between the two religions? There are at least two reasons that give us hope. The first is the complete fiasco of the neo-con right that created conditions that encouraged the emotional overload mentioned by Ramadan. The second reason is the speed with which even deeply-rooted prejudices can experience a crisis.

Ramadan himself is an example of the transience of stereotypes. In 2006 American anti-terrorism prevented him from accepting an academic appointment at the American University of Notre Dame. Sarkozy treated him like a dangerous extremists. Articles and pamphlets accused him of practising the Taqiyya, the technique of dissimulation permitted by the Koran, pretending to be a lamb with Christian interlocutors and showing the fangs of a wolf with Islamic audiences. Public opinion mainly saw him as the avant-garde of a cunning Islamic invasion of Europe, a role he seemed destined to play also due to his descent from the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Al Banna. Two years later however, Ramadan’s name no longer caused the enraged opinions expressed by a large group of European Islamologues, now reduced to pitiful silence by events that have taken place. Ramadan was co-opted first by the Blair government as a consultant on terrorism, then by Oxford University where he now teaches and finally by the Vatican, which chose him as one of its interlocutors at the Forum currently being held in Rome. As is now clear and as proved by two recent books (one an essay by Nina zu Furstenberg and Islam and Freedom by Ramadan himself), this former “friend of terrorists” is in fact a Muslim reformist of ‘liberal’ extraction, if the word is not excessive, since he has adopted a decisive choice, that of contextualising the words of the Scriptures and not stopping at the literal meaning but rather searching for the profounder one.

The problem experienced by reformism is its lack of power. Disliked by authoritarian regimes, ignored and ill-defended by Europeans, in the West it is locked within intellectual circles with limited influence. And yet in Europe the Islam of Reform, no longer having to fear raids by the secret police, could in theory attract increasing numbers of immigrants. Ramadan’s gamble is that it will end up by changing Arab, Asian and African Islam, but on condition that it does not remain extraneous to European democracies. Hence Ramadan’s annoyance with private schools for Muslims, or the analogous British models favouring the gathering of Muslim students in the same state institutes. “This is segregation, sectarianism. Ideas should, on the contrary, mix and be debated, so that everyone has an equal opportunity to choose.” For analogous reasons, the Muslim philosopher (who has Swiss nationality) exhorts Italian Imams to preach in Italian. “This allows the creation of a sense of belonging to the State, a crucial element and to powerfully present the message that Italy is our home” explained Ramadan at a meeting with the press organised by the daily newspaper Il Riformista.

His idea of an Islamic-Christian dialogue is linked, above all, to sharing a method which consists of acknowledging the irreducible difference concerning issues that are strictly theological and eliminating them from the debate so as to concentrate on justice, equality and on how ethics should be applied to the economy. These are subjects on which he believes the two religions tend to converge. It is equally necessary to bear in mind that crucial words mean one thing for Europeans and another for non-European Muslims. “Laicity”, for example, for some means the separation between Church and State, while for others it means Saddam Hussein, the most secular, but also the most ferocious among Middle Eastern tyrants. Finally, it is of the utmost importance to distinguish between Islam and immigration (this equation results in conspiracy theories that see migratory flows as a plan for invading Europe). As Ramadan emphasises, migrants do not represent the Ummah, the legendary Islamic nation, but societies and countries, each with a history, and often one of conflict with their neighbours.

Hence it is only in the European imagination that compact ranks of Muslims, Europe’s future dominators, actually exist. The same could be said of Christians. There is no such thing as Christianity since even the schools of thought that exist within Catholicism differ greatly, ranging from the theology of liberation to ultra-conservative extremism. If this were true, and if as Ramadan says the majority of Christians and Muslins are non-practicing, then we should ask ourselves if it is possible to expect great results from a Forum debating two elements with such mobile characteristics, “Islam” and “Christianity”. Of course it is not a waste of time. But the success of this kind of meeting is perhaps ensuring that they become superfluous in the future.

Translation by Francesca Simmons

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