Daniel Pipes and Tariq Ramadan

“Readers of my previous comment on Tariq Ramadan will no doubt have come away with the impression that I don’t much like Daniel Pipes. This is not an entirely accurate assessment of my opinion of him. I think Pipes is an unreconstructed bigot and xenophobic fanatic whose academic work fails to meet even the lowest standards of scholarship, whose career has been built on politically driven attacks, and who has set up with his ‘Campus Watch’ as a terrorist front designed to intimidate academics and ensure that there is as little debate, discussion or rational thought on Israel, US foreign policy or Islam as possible. His research and scholarship are not intended to better inform action but to support specific agendas, usually revolving around hating some foreign force or people. Instead of fostering debate, his work is intended to intimidate. Pipes advocates religiously targetted surveillance, he supports making federal university funding conditional on ideology, and he has helped to terrorise professors who are named on his website. In short, I think Pipes is swine.”

Scott Martens demolishes Daniel Pipes.

Fistful of Euros, 31 August 2004

Scholar under siege defends his record: Tariq Ramadan refutes Daniel Pipes

“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

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What you fear is not who I am – Tariq Ramadan

“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.

Globe & Mail, 30 August 2004

Ramadan

“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.”

Abu Aardvark, 24 August 2004

‘We must be free to criticise without being called racist’ says Polly Toynbee

“It is bizarre how the left has espoused the extreme Islamist cause: as ‘my enemy’s enemy’, Muslims are the best America-haters around. The hard left relishes terrorism: a fondness for explosions and the smell of martyrs’ blood excites their revolutionary zeal, without sharing a jot of religious belief.”

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, 18 August 2004

British Council official in anti-Muslim row

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.

Guardian, 6 August 2004