Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan

by Caroline Fourest

  Secularism + individual liberties = moral permissiveness

  First accusation against the West: excessive secularization. After having defined secularization objectively as "a process whereby the public sphere is freed of the influence and authority of religion," he warns against what he describes as "the negation of religion' that results when secularization is pushed too far: "Excessiveness has turned something positive into something negative. We have freed ourselves from religion, and finally, by taking it too far, have come to deny the reality of religion in the education we give to our children and the people."9 This view is common to many of the supporters of an "open secularism," but it is quite a different matter coming from a preacher who is such a fundamentalist and so politically-minded, and in whose eyes the ideal society is one marked by "reference to God and his revelation." 10 He berates, as well, "the promotion ofthe individual that culminates in the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man." This same extremism has led to a form of individualism that he equates with selfishness: "The process that has granted autonomy to individuals has, when overdone, pro duced individualism." Or again, "promoting the individual is a good thing, but lapsing into individualism is dangerous." Here we have an adroit way of condemning individual liberties and the right to free choice. Permissiveness and individualism are also the accusations that Christian fundamentalists launch against the right to abortion, denounced as egoism. Ramadan displays the same bitterness. It is not expressed in a wholesale condemnation of freedom of choice that would be counterproductive (although he is adamant in defending freedom of choice when it comes to the wearing of the Islamic headscarf); rather, he tends to present individualism in caricatural terms as libertarian excess: "Liberty, which means the freedom to make one's own choices, has taken on such importance that, when pushed to the extreme, it results in people losing their bearings. It becomes moral permissiveness.""

  Modernism = decadence

  "Who can question the validity of modernity?" Tariq Ramadan declared in the introduction to his book on the Confrontation of Civilizations." It sounds reassuring. Until one discovers that it is, in effect, a confession-for it is the very question that Ramadan himself has dared to introduce. As always, he has recourse to a slight shift of meaning, whereby the rejection of modernity will turn out to be a middle-of-the-road solution. Here he makes a point of distinguishing between "modernity" and "modernism' so as to berate Western modernism as excessive and to propose in its place a counter-model: Islamic modernity. Whereas modernity simply means living in one's epoch and immediate environment, modernism means advocating a progressivism that implies liberty and a secularism considered to be incompatible with Islamic modernity. Jacques Jomier, a Dominican priest and expert on Islam, summed up the preacher's position in one cogent sentence: "It is not a question for him of modernizing Islam, but of Islamizing modernity."13 Ramadan is willing to be modern, provided that he can use the advantages of modernity to combat modernism, which he equates with Westernization.

  He urges Muslims to distinguish carefully between "modernity" and "the Western way of interpreting modernity,"14 while stipulating: "We will never be modernist to the point of saying `be done with principles,' so essential are principles to set us on the right path."15 In another lecture on "Islam and the West" he insisted: "We can live modernity, while remaining faithful to our revelation."16 The declaration does not appear to say much, unless one considers what it is that Tariq Ramadan includes in the expression "remaining faithful to our revelation." According to him, modernity and progress must come to a halt when they contravene the principles set down in the seventh century, and all attempts to adapt them entail an excess of progressivism and modernism that betrays a Westernized conception of the world. One understands better what he's getting at when listening to his diatribe against "the way Westerners live their modernity." What does he give as examples to avoid? The break-up of families, the fact of accepting homosexuals as priests, and even androgyny, which, according to him, is on the rise ... He criticizes, in particular, those who think that the Catholic Church should keep up with the times by denying Sodom and Gomorrah, "which brand homosexuality a curse."" He also condemns as excesses typical of "modernism' the cult of leisure and the taste for distraction, by which one becomes "the slave of one's own freedom, the slave of one's moral relativism, the slave of one's own pleasures."" An indication of just how fundamentalist his conception of "Islamic modernity" really is. However, a dose of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist rhetoric is enough for him to maintain ties with people on the Left: "By dint of giving preference to rationality, efficiency and productivity in the name of progress, our societies are on the brink of disaster," he explains in his book The Confrontation of Civilizations." An anti-globalist reader might well take this as an attack on ruthless capitalism. Yet it is not productivity at all costs that Ramadan criticizes, but the evolution of the family: "Islamic principles are in total contradiction to the process of which we have just spoken [the evolution of family patterns]. If modernity is to be achieved at this price, it is obvious that the Koran and the Surma refuse point blank the realization of this kind of modernism." Note that it is not only "modernism," but "modernization" that is in itself a problem.

  Not only is Tariq Ramadan anti-modernist, but he is anti-progressive as well. He is against any form of progress that is contrary to tradition and religion: "It is the autonomy that comes with progress that uproots the individual, confusing him by opening up all the possible choices that liberty provides, leaving him with a future that has no memory of the past."20 Furthermore, he tells us: "Progress that is without roots is progress that knows no limits; for it is roots that give it direction." And he has only to conclude with a citation from Albert jacquard in order to explain how it is that philosophers-moreover Christian philosophers-have shown that "progress has reached the point where we have progress without conscience, and without conscience we are left without landmarks. "21 This rhetoric is one of the classics, also used by Christian fundamentalists campaigning in the name of ethics against abortion, euthanasia, and scientific discoveries that challenge Judeo-Christian morality. Tariq Ramadan, who often uses the term "ethics," also advocates a form of progress that takes place within the framework of the sacred. He contrasts the "progress without conscience" typical of the West, with "the progress guided by revelation" that characterized the splendor of Muslim civilization: "We cannot conceive of progress that runs counter to revelation, only a progress that is guided by revelation."22 He even speaks of "Islamic progress." As a matter of principle, he refuses to conceive of Islamic progress as a mere refusal of progress as it is exists in the West. In concrete terms, his notion of "progress guided by revelation" turns out to be the antithesis of Western modernism. Which does not mean that Tariq Ramadan is not modern in the sense of refusing all the advantages of modernity. One can be a fundamentalist and still be in the vanguard of progress, especially if one makes use of technology to combat modernism.

  As a preacher bent on proselytizing, Ramadan needs computers, the Internet, and satellites to spread his faith. He cannot afford to do without these assets, but claims that he refuses the ideology that comes with them. In other words, he recommends being selective, so that exchange is consistently in one direction only: towards Islamization and never towards Westernization. "Computers are not of interest to us; they are capable of having us lose our sense of morality and our ethical sense because of all the invitations to moral perdition that accompany them."" On the other hand, he has noth ing against harnessing technology to the cause of the dawa: "Computers that can spread our message more effectively, that can make our work more productive, that can increase our capacity to edify people-of course they are of interest to us." Everyone will have understood what is meant by "edify"-the spreading of Islarri s message through cyberspace.

  Ramadan is not a separatist when it comes to methods, since he wants to succeed in propelling the world towards "more Islam'; but this modernity in terms of method sho
uld not be confused with the end objectives, which are clearly archaic. And yet ... At certain moments in the course of his talk on "Islam and the West" he comes close to agreeing with his friend Serge Latouche, who distrusts even the instruments of modernity, such as computers or television. It is best expressed in Ramadan's own words:

  Serge Latouche said one thing that had a great effect on me and that I haven't stopped thinking about to find a solution. He said: "Dear Tariq, you re a dreamer. . .." When, for instance, I said to him: "You have to select instruments and make use of them," he replied: "It's not entirely true, I don't entirely agree with you, because in the instrument itself there's already an ideology." And that, that made me stop and think, really.

  Ramadan is unsure whether or not he can use TV as a propaganda tool without risking being contaminated by it: "One could use TV to be educational, and Latouche replied: `You're dreaming. With television, given the way it's been set up, there's something about it that communicates the ideology of those who invented it. And when we're up against that, when we watch international television or television by satellite, what's to be done?' ,21

  The Taliban found the solution: they forbade it. As for the Iranian mullahs, they wage war against dissident Internet sites and satellites capable of influencing Iranians from the outside. Even though he claims to be antimodernist, Tariq Ramadan is close to being simply anti-modernity. He says he is seeking a way to adapt these tools to the reform that he proposes. But in the end his opinion leaves no room for doubt: "Even if you are not in Europe, these means of communication render you submissive to Western ways of thinking."25 It's what he calls "colonialism via information."

  The rejection of globalization as a form of Westernization

  For Tariq Ramadan, globalization is a front for a vast initiative to spread Western colonialism: "Globalization is another name for Westernization."26 He then presents the ongoing colonialism as imperialism on several levels: judicial and political, but also economic, technical, informational and cultural. Each of the conclusions he comes to could well be shared by a militant antiglobalist, sincerely devoted to resisting hegemony and the forces of standardization at work in the world, but only if one puts aside the fact that Ramadan s criticisms are based not on a refusal of hegemony-which he approves of when it is Islamic hegemony-but on hatred for the rationalist, progressive and modernist project that Western influence represents.

  Ramadan begins by condemning political and legislative colonization-a process that is still under way, since the term includes any "influence" exercised by a Western country on a Muslim nation. Even today, several decades after decolonization, Tariq Ramadan considers that colonization continues to exist, so long as the constitutions and the laws of Muslim countries have not been entirely purged of any Western influence. "If I [the colonizer] depart from you, but leave in your keeping the rules and regulations of my everyday life, I am still in your house."27 Ramadan not only complains of the judicial confusion created by the former presence of Western regimes in certain countries. As a way of eliminating this colonial past, he rejects any provisions that recall in any manner whatsoever a "Western' conception of law. "Some Muslim countries today are turning to the French, Swiss and German constitutions to find inspiration for their own laws."28 Which he finds shocking.

  Iftomorrow Morocco or Algeria were to adopt measures granting a greater degree of secularization, in particular with regard to their family codes, Ramadan would surely consider it a symptom of a "Western conception of the law" and therefore a form of colonization. In his eyes, every judicial step towards modernity represents colonial intrusion. When Jacques Neirynck asked him whether Tunisia and Turkey could serve as "models for a future Islam," he replied "absolutely not" and added: "The laws that are applied in those countries are remnants of the colonial epoch.'29 Disingenuousness has here given way to the rewriting of history. During the colonial period, the occupying nations rarely modified the habits of the occupied countries. They maintained most traditional provisions in the name of that cultural dif- ferentialism so dear to Ramadan. The secularization that the preacher condemns is the result not of colonization, but of the decisions taken by the governments of countries that became independent, such as that of Bourgiba in Tunisia. Turkish secularization is even less the result of colonization, in that it has never been colonized! At the head of the Ottoman Empire for several centuries, Turkey has always been a colonizing country, rather than a colonized country. However, the fact that Ataturk decreed secularization makes him, in Ramadan s eyes, a henchman in the service of the West. And this "colonization' will last as long as all the Muslim constitutions have not been purged of secularism, rationalism and any reference to the Declaration of the Rights of Man in favor of what, if not the sharia?

  Western influence = colonization

  Ramadan constantly shifts from a legitimate condemnation of political colonialism to the denunciation of any sort of cultural "influence" as a form of colonization. This shift results in an essentialist and even xenophobic conception of cultural exchange. It is here that his repeated calls for "an alternative Islamic culture" reveal their fundamentalism. Moreover, he often evokes his resistance to "cultural colonization' as a pillar of the Salafist reformist tradition from Afghani's time up to al-Banna. Yesterday the aim was to resist Christian missionaries; today he cites television as the peak of "cultural colonization': "It's cultural colonization that's the worst thing, and today it reaches into our living rooms with television." 30 Then come McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Hollywood films: "Hollywood, it's not a film production center, it's an industry and an industry that conveys an ideology. ,3' And, once again, he gives the example of Titanic, which he makes fun of in an anti-capitalist vein, reminding us that the film grossed more than Mauritania's total GDP. "The money spent on producing this film," he wrote, "is the equivalent of one year's GDP for Mauritania. It upsets me when I go to Yemen and I see the schoolbooks of totally destitute children decorated with photos of DiCaprio! It's not healthy. Do I have the right to say so without being considered a barbarian Islamist?"32 Ramadan would in no way resemble a "barbarian Islamist" if he were content to denounce the globalization of culture as a Hollywood-like machine eliminating diversity. Unfortunately, we know that this is only, so to speak, the tip of the iceberg of his discourse, since, in his cassettes on Islamic culture, he warns against certain films-not just in the name of resistance to globalization, but in the name of morality, the decline ofwhich he regards as part of a Western process endangering Islamic values. On the subject of the Spice Girls, he even speaks of a "cultural invasion' akin to idolatry.33 To his way of thinking, it is not a question of preserving cultural diversity, but of closing down the cultural frontiers so as to keep the Muslim world-including the Muslim community in Europe-sealed off from all Western influences that are not in conformity with Islamic principles!

  Takeover bid for Averroes

  Tariq Ramadan plays on the neo-colonial complex so as to rewrite history without being disavowed. Muslim colonization and the active participation of Arab countries in the slave trade are never brought up; it is the West that is made to bear the full burden of guilt. Another subject that Ramadan harps on continually is the neglect of Islam s contribution to the Renaissance. He is right to remind us that Andalusia was a region of extraordinary intellectual vitality, where Arab intellectuals played an active role in developing what is now our common cultural heritage. But why accept the idea of mixing only when it goes in one direction? And why do these influences not lead him to conclude that the myth of the Occident is just about as absurd and racist as the myth of the Orient, seeing as the two myths encompass the same thinkers and the same traditions of thought in entities that are neither separate nor clearly defined?

  Take the case of Averroes. Here we have an Arab philosopher, born in Spain, to whom all the rationalists said to be "Western" lay claim. Yet this claim infuriates Tariq Ramadan, who denounces it as "a colonial intellectual takeover bid for Averroes." 34 He refu
ses to consider him a rationalist, but rather as someone who made use of reason to remain faithful to his fundamental principles. Yet he has just explained to us that Averroes was a thinker who had taken part in the Renaissance, which was characterized by the emancipation of art and philosophy from religious doctrine ... And, above all, he forgets to remind us that Averroes was persecuted for his ideas by the Islamic fundamentalists of his time!