[ April 22, 2024 ]
Deep Thoughts from Tariq Ramadan
by Robert Spencer
Reza Aslan, the immature young apologist for the Islamic Republic of Iran and Sharia oppression, recently bragged in a tweet about being among the “people that press actually takes seriously.” But how does the “press” select those whom it “actually takes seriously”? Does it undertake a rigorous selection process, weighing the intellectual heft of a public figure’s writings and statements, determining whether they stand up to logical and factual scrutiny, and have something of benefit to convey to the public? Of course not: increasingly the figures whom the mainstream media lauds as voices of wisdom are simply those who parrot today’s dominant Leftist talking points, no matter how bereft of substance they may be.
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Besides Aslan himself, who has repeatedly shown himself to be abjectly incapable of defending his views without resorting to baseless ad hominem attacks, the most notorious media-created pundit is Tariq Ramadan, the much-lauded “Muslim Martin Luther.” Ramadan has been filling his Twitter feed with maxims and epigrams that he apparently thinks will bolster his reputation as a deep thinker, but which in fact only reveal him as more worthy to be a writer of Hallmark cards than an internationally respected pundit. A sampling (spelling and grammar as in the originals):
We must learn that our encounters like our separations are acts of initiation:we can love wht is and,in the end,know only hurt and suffering
Near to you or without you. Why do we love? Why do we break apart? Why, indeed?
To judge is to love. Suspending one’s judgement is a better way of loving …and to love, in spite of judgement,is truly to love.
Listen without passing judgement,or rather judge there is nothing on which to pass judgement.To judge is human,& to judge is to love
A character trait,a smile,an expression,a feeling,a wound, a silence or an absence:everything speaks to those who know how to listen.
It is up to every one of us to discover the extraordinary that lies hidden in the heart of the all too ordinary presences in our daily lives
Absence. Meaning. Life is flying, people are leaving. The heart is crying, the heart is smiling. Oh God, to learn to thank.Simply to thank !
Life is beautiful, life is sad. This life is not Life. To live is to love
To tell the people we love we love them, and to truly love them. With courage in the heart, tears in the eyes.
As embarrassing as these half-baked platitudes and nonsense are, Ramadan’s followers reverently retweet them as if they were oracles from on high, and no one says a word about the nakedness of the emperor. And so it is with the reception Ramadan is accorded in the mainstream media: it stems from his saying what the media establishment wants to hear, not from any actual substance on Ramadan’s part.
For what substance there is to Tariq Ramadan is, in fact, quite sinister. Many of his statements seem studiedly ambiguous. He admits the possibility that “a Muslim is allowed to live in a non-Islamic country” only so long as “he is able to protect his identity and practice his religion” — a caveat that has already become a source of unrest in France and elsewhere. Referring to Islamic law’s death sentence for apostates, Ramadan argues that it doesn’t apply to “one who would leave the faith for personal conviction without trying to betray Islam and Muslims thereafter, in any way.” He adds: “The necessary attitude is therefore a minimal respect for the faith that one leaves and a sensitivity by those that continue to practice it.”
Ramadan doesn’t explain what form this “minimal respect” must take, and since he leaves the death penalty in place for those who do dare to “betray Islam and Muslims” thereafter, one may legitimately wonder just how compatible his self-proclaimed moderate vision of Islam really is with European and American secularism.
It must be remembered that Ramadan is the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ramadan says that “there are some things of my grandfather’s with which I agree and others with which I don’t agree.” However, he never has specified anything al-Banna said with which he disagrees.
In fact, several years ago Ramadan contributed a Foreword to a new edition of al-Banna’s Risalat al-Ma’thurat, a collection of key texts from the Qur’an and Hadith. Ramadan describes the book as “the core of spiritual education for all members of the Muslim Brotherhood.” He writes glowingly of his grandfather, lauding al-Banna for the “quality of his faith and the intensity of his relationship with God. Anyone who had ever been in contact with him perceived and experienced this.” He describes al-Banna’s teachings as “simple and luminous.”
He gives no hint in this Foreword or anywhere else that he actually rejects any of al-Banna’s thought – and yet al-Banna was a belligerent Islamic supremacist who wrote: “In [Muslim] Tradition,” al-Banna writes, “there is a clear indication of the obligation to fight the People of the Book [that is, Jews and Christians], and of the fact that Allah doubles the reward of those who fight them. Jihad is not against polytheists alone, but against all who do not embrace Islam.”
Does Ramadan renounce these aspects of al-Banna’s teachings? He has never done so, although most assume that he does. Tariq Ramadan, despite his reputation as a Muslim reformer, sidesteps the extremists only by taking refuge in ambiguity and tweeted cliches.
And his sycophants swoon over his wisdom, as the mainstream media persistently assures us that here is a man with something to say.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, Did Muhammad Exist?, is now available.
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16 Comments
11 years ago
Wonder what Genre of Hallmark Cards, Ramadan would be capable of contributing to.
Troubled relationships?
Is there a year round Horror section?
11 years ago
What an insult to Martin Luther!
11 years ago
I can’t read the Jihad Watch banner at the top of this page: under the word “Jihad” it says something about “Atlas Shrugs” that I can’t read, even with 400% magnification: what is the word right before “Atlas Shrugs”?
11 years ago
Tariq Ramadan — Eng Lit 101 Messiah.
Maybe he could put in a word for the four women and two men (taking that one-half a man thing literally again) sentenced to death in Pakistan for dancing under sharia?
Between deep thoughts on existence of course.
D
11 years ago
Resa Aslan, Islam’s little closet-gay spokesperson, is trying to be ‘deep’ by quoting one of the many brave poets that rose from the terror and brutality of Islam speaking against the narrow religion and rule that kept the people in fear and oppression. These mystic poets had their throats cut and their tongues cut and eyes plucked out for speaking about love, wine, women. They were Islams biggest apostates by claiming that they themselves had actually merged in their Allah – in contradiction to the Koran. These are daring claims that Islam does not tolerate. It’s pretty sad that Aslan’s poor translation fail to see that they actually don’t represent any greatness of Islam, but tells the tale of the horrific cruelty of a religion that thrives to suffocate any humanness and life out of its subjugated followers.
11 years ago
Max, the word you can’t make out is “at”.
The entire banner reads:
“Jihad Watch
at Atlas Shrugs by Robert Spencer”
11 years ago
So, THAT’s where Ohbummah is picking up his platitudes…. LOL!
Time for the “Muslim Martin Luther” to nail his “95 ‘feces’ (theses)” to the door at al-Azhar University! What? No holy boldness, Tariq? Well, a diet of WORMS for you, you spineless snake.
KAFIR AND PROUD!!
11 years ago
Robert is being slightly disingenuous in his description of Reza Aslan as being “young and immature.” If the bio info posted online is accurate, Aslan is 40 years old, which is borderline middle age, while Spencer is only ten years older. So why all the paternalism?
I followed Ramadan’s tweets for a while — rubbish propaganda for Islam as the supreme religion of peace and love.
D
11 years ago
Jamadagnii: You could have fooled me! Aslan’s efeminite voice and pinheaded views, mannerism and body language indeed comes across as young and immature.
11 years ago
We’ve had Mao Zedung’s little red book and Muammar Qaddafi’s little green book.
Watch out for Reza Aslan’s little pink book.
11 years ago
Oh! Thanks Richard, as soon as you said “at”, I can see the same pattern in the second “a” in the word “Atlas”. It is unusual, though, to take the letter “a” and mutilate it in the manner shown (by taking a slice out of it).
11 years ago
Ramadam got his Masters in Ambiguity from Oxford University where he is Professor of Islamic Studies.
11 years ago
No, Max Kuenkel, not correct.
http://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/staff/iw/tramadan.html
Brother Tariq is where he’s at thanks to HH Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, and he was placed in Oxford after he was kicked out of Leiden:
Fitzgerald: Tariq Ramadan and How He Got His Chair At Leiden
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/01/fitzgerald-tariq-ramadan-and-how-he-got-his-chair-at-leiden.html
11 years ago
@Max Kuenkel@ The “a” is not mutilated.
It and other letters in the masthead are sandblasted because they’re weathering the “winds of jihad” (see the blog of sheik yer’mami)
11 years ago
Religon in the hands of nutters must be squashed. Over the centuries there has been this type of b/s spewed out by Christians. What puzzles me is these Muslims have come to non Muslim countries. By choice , usual an economic one, then want that country to become like the country they left! If there is any logic in that would someone enlighten this confused old man.
