My condemnation – as well as those of many other Muslim scholars around the world – has apparently not been heard. In Western countries as well as in Islamic countries, we witness a kind of selective hearing. People are invited to listen only to what apparently comforts their prejudices or suits some ideological agenda.
This polarization is dangerous because it engenders enmity. Our world needs more courageous, but also more consistent, voices. The reason why voices such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s are not heard in Islamic countries is not because she raises irrelevant questions (some of her arguments are indeed very relevant) but because her criticisms appear to be obsessive, excessive and unilateral. It is as if she wants to please the West and, yes, the West is pleased. But the Muslims are deaf to her voice.
The future belongs to those who are able to consistently exercise self-criticism in the name of shared universal values and not because of blindly belonging to the artificial construct of “Western” or “Islamic” civilization, or because of a hidden ideological agenda.
All betrayals of faith and principles must be denounced with the same energy: those of the Muslims when they kill or imprison innocent people, as well as those of democratic Western societies when they illegally invade another country, or use torture or extraordinary renditions. It would be good, indeed, to hear more often these non-selective – and non-selected – voices
Before you assess what Mr. Ramadan says at face value, [url=http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2043]here[/url] and [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/magazine/04ramadan.t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1]here[/url] are assessments of Mr. Ramadan’s connections to terrorist organizations, whose strength the reader can be left to judge. He is a grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the son of a radical Islamist who fled to Switzerland when the Brotherhood was banned in Egypt. His ideology is described as “‘Islamic socialism,’ an ideology, combining religious principles with anticapitalist, anti-imperialist politics, that goes back to the time of the Russian Revolution.” The anti-capitalist model probably explains his popularity with Western leftists.
I agree, as someone who has read and studies a lot on Islam, Muslim history, and contemporary questions regarding Islam in the West, I want to say that Ramadan should not be trusted in the least.
He is a master of Taqiyya which is the ethical injunction for Muslims to lie if it will cause their religion to be victorious. I have several examples of it over at [url=http://islamdom.blogspot.com/search/label/taqiyyi]Islam and Christianity[/url]