Banned in America

At the end of July, the U.S. Government revoked a work visa for Tariq Ramadan, one of the world's most important Muslim scholars, on the grounds that he is a terrorist threat. Ramadan, Swiss-born of a prominent Egyptian family, was offered a prestigious chair at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. The case illustrates, sadly, both the hyper-sensitive tendencies of the government – possibly, in this case, responding to anti-Muslim groups – and the kind of action that alienates America's five million Muslims and millions more around the world.

For the 42-year-old Tariq Ramadan looks like a dream come true – a brilliant philosopher of Islam and its evolving place in the world, particularly in Europe and the United States, who argues for a modernized Islam that favors pluralism, tolerance, feminism, and educational achievement. His work is rooted in Islamic traditions, but fully aware of the demands, challenges, and opportunities presented by the contemporary Western world. For those of us that are alarmed by the Bush administration's rough treatment of Muslims at home and abroad, but troubled by anti-modern tendencies among some Muslims, Dr. Ramadan is a measure of hope. It is hope vested not only by his eloquence, but his enormous following among Muslim youth.

So what happened with the visa? The Department of Homeland Security, apparently acting under provisions of the USA Patriot Act, requested the State Department to reverse an earlier decision to grant the visa. This is done to those who have used a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity." There is virtually no evidence that is public suggesting that Ramadan has ever espoused terrorism. As immigration expert Paul Donnelly wrote in the Washington Post a few days after the imbroglio erupted, "Notre Dame officials insist that they have reviewed every charge against the Swiss scholar and agree with the likes of Scotland Yard and Swiss intelligence, which have found them to be groundless."

The controversy around Ramadan came from a statement on French intellectuals – that some, like Bernard Kouchner and Bernard-Henri Lïàvy – were adopting "communitarian" rather than "universalist" perspectives in viewing the Arab-Israeli conflict and the war in Iraq. Translated, this means Jewish intellectuals were siding with Israel and against Muslim concerns. This point-of-view, while perhaps indiscreet, hardly qualifies as anti-Semitism, and Ramadan has been outspoken among European intellectuals in his condemnation of the rising tide of attacks against Jews in Europe, a position that has earned him plaudits in the Israeli press, including an approving interview in Haaretz.

But this is not enough for the attack dogs of the right. And here it gets interesting, because it is widely rumored that Ramadan's appointment to a major American university, one strongly associated with serious theological study, would not have been challenged if not for the intervention of anti-Muslim groups. Graham Fuller, a Mideast expert who is a senior RAND analyst and former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, told the Chicago Tribune, "pro-Likud organizations want to block people who can speak articulately and present the Muslim dilemma in a way that might be understandable and sympathetic to Americans. They succeed by presenting this as a security matter. There is no way Homeland Security would initiate this on its own."

The usual suspects on the extreme right, such as Daniel Pipes and his small industry of Web site organizations, have been tarnishing Ramadan with a cascade of innuendo. Ramadan's grandfather was a founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; his father might have had Osama bin Laden as a student; "intelligence agencies suspect" him of coordinating a meeting of al Qaeda leaders, etc. The list goes on without proof, relevance, or in many cases plausibility.