Tariq Ramadan answers the US government’s claim that he has been banned from the US because he gave money to two Palestinian charities:
“In its letter, the U.S. Embassy claims that I ‘reasonably should have known’ that the charities in question provided money to Hamas. But my donations were made between December 1998 and July 2002, and the United States did not blacklist the charities until 2003. How should I reasonably have known of their activities before the U.S. government itself knew? I donated to these organizations for the same reason that countless Europeans – and Americans, for that matter – donate to Palestinian causes: not to help fund terrorism, but because I wanted to provide humanitarian aid to people who desperately need it. Yet after two years of investigation, this was the only explanation offered for the denial of my visa. I still find it hard to believe.”