“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, without offering an explanation, has revoked a visa that was granted to me to teach at the University of Notre Dame. In Sunday’s Chicago Tribune on the Commentary page, Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, provided his ‘explanation’ for this action. In what follows I respond to his unfounded allegations.”
Tariq Ramadan in the Chicago Tribune, 31 August 2004
“The accusations made against me, leading to my US visa being revoked, are based on repetition not on facts.”
Tariq Ramadan on his exclusion from the US in the Guardian, 31 August 2004
“I have written more than 20 books and about 800 articles; 170 tapes of lectures are circulating, and I keep asking my detractors: Have you read or listened to any of my material? Can you prove your allegations? To repeat them is not to prove. Where is the evidence of my double-talk? Have you read any of the numerous articles where I call on Muslims to unequivocally condemn radical views and acts of extremism?” Tariq Ramadan replies to his accusers.
Geneva-born Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan has said he is “in shock” that he will not be able to take up a teaching post in the United States after his visa was revoked. The US State Department said it had cancelled the visa at the request of the Department of Homeland Security.
“Muslim WakeUp! reports that Tariq Ramadan has been denied a visa by Homeland Security, and will not take up his teaching post at Notre Dame…. this a shameful, terrible decision, which will have wide ranging implications in American (alleged) attempts to reach Muslim moderates. When the United States attacks Islamist moderates like this, it does Osama bin Laden’s work for him. Well done.”
Muslim groups and individuals have flooded the British Council with complaints after learning that one of its senior press officers allegedly wrote controversial Sunday Telegraph articles attacking “the black heart of Islam”.
The government-funded body, which recently commissioned a handbook on Islam “to prevent ignorant comments about Muslims being made in [the] national press”, has suspended Harry Cummins while it investigates the claims, which were first disclosed in the Guardian Diary.
He denies writing the articles, which have prompted calls for the Press Complaints Commission to intervene. They appeared under the byline “Will Cummins”, which the Sunday Telegraph later described as a pseudonym.
Muslim organisations say the comment pieces incite racial and religious hatred, and the British Council describes the articles as deeply offensive.
But the Sunday Telegraph has refused to rule out publishing further contributions from the author of the articles. Its editor, Dominic Lawson, told the Guardian that he did not regret printing them.
Senior British parliamentarians admitted anti-terrorism laws are being used “disproportionately” against Muslims, as the community members feel increasing persecuted after a wave of arrests and hostile media campaign.
The Labour peer Lord Judd, a committee member, said that the arrests of a dozen young men on Tuesday, August 3, underlined fears that anti-terrorism legislation of 2001 discriminated against Muslims, The Independent reported on Thursday, August 5.
“That is a worrying situation in terms of the confidence of Islamic citizens in Britain that they are not all under suspicion,” Judd told the BBC.
This came as the Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights warned in a statement that the Terrorism Act of 2000, which allows the indefinite detention of foreign nationals without trial, could have a “corrosive” long-term effect on human rights in Britain.
There was “discrimination inherent” in the Act, said the committee, saying that the government was forced to derogate – or opt out – of its international human rights obligations.
“We also note there is mounting evidence the powers under the Terrorism Act [of 2000] are being used disproportionately against members of the Muslim community,” it added.
“The ferocity of recent attacks on Muslims and Islam in the mainstream British media has led many to question what is driving these attempts to incite hatred and fear of our community. Anyone reading the British press over the past few weeks might be excused for imagining that the country is threatened by hordes of Muslims living within its borders, determined to subvert British values and convert its people to Islam, by hook or by crook.”
Anas Altikriti in the Guardian, 5 August 2004
As police continue to detain a dozen young men arrested in anti-terrorism raids across the UK, Britain’s Muslim community has reacted with dismay.
Detaining the men, all of Asian origin, has prompted complaints in some Muslim circles that they are being unfairly singled out.
Fewer than one in five of the more than 500 people – most of them Muslim – arrested under terrorism laws since September 11, 2001 have been charged with a terrorist offence, according to government figures.
“Qaradawi – an al-Jazeera regular who recently turned down the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood because he felt he could be more influential as an independent thinker – has spent the last thirty years presenting a sustained and coherent argument for a moderate approach to Islamism. He has routinely and consistently denounced terrorism and intellectual extremism.”
Abu Aardvark replies to Lee Smith, outlining the views of Yusuf al-Qaradawi and other advocates of democratic Islamism: here.