“I doubt you can do *ANY* better in substantiating your allegations than by re-posting second hand material sourced from the internet.”

I’m with Sunny, I can’t see any value in prolonging this argument since it’s just become a series of diversions from the central issue.

But i have serious concerns about Ramadan

Surely this isn’t the sort of lame discourse you came here for zinzin? When you can’t win an argument you want the other to “admit” to something irrelevant so you can feel good about “western civilisation”?

Tariq Ramadan is ok. I’ve gone to many of his talks and I usually end up agreeing with him. Contrary to popular belief he is very critical of Muslim regimes and even the victim mentality of British Muslims. I’m not as a big fan of his as Ziauddin Sardar but he is way better than most such commentators.

Anyway, this thread has seriously derailed. Please stop comparing who has the hardest dad.

Ramadan came to prominence when he tried to censor Voltaire. Or is Dennis McShane a dubious source.

Also don’t lecture me on Chomsky. I have read his works and respect his politics but Chomsky references the works of enlightenment figures to highlight such crimes.

Anas this is turning into a victims poitics discourse. How about you acknowledging the prophets warmongering.
Then i will drop the issue.

Lately, I have been going through an interesting experience. I am constantly being told “the truth” about who I am: “You are a controversial figure”; “you engage in double-talk, delivering a gentle message in French and English, and a radical – even extremist – one in Arabic, or to a Muslim audience in private”; “you have links with extremists, you are an anti-Semite”; “you despise women” etc.

When I ask about the source of this information, invariably the response is: This is well-known, it is everywhere, check the Internet and you will find thousands of pages referring to this.

A closer examination reveals that what we have is journalists or intellectuals quoting each other, conclusively reporting and infinitely repeating what others said yesterday, with caveats. Rather than using this as an occasion for reflection, the response to this finding is usually: “Well, there has to be some truth in all that.”

Strange truth, indeed! 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?

How about my statements of Sept. 13, 2001, calling on Muslims to speak out, to condemn the terrorist attacks
and acknowledge that some fellow Muslims are betraying
the Islamic message?

What about the articles in which I condemn anti-Semitism, criticizing those Muslims who do not differentiate between the political Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the unacceptable temptation
to reject the Jews simply because they are Jews?

Are you familiar with my chapters and taped lectures promoting women’s rights and a revival leading to an Islamic feminism, and rejecting every kind of mistreatment (domestic violence, forced marriage, female circumcision etc.) and all sorts of discrimination?

Finally, are you acquainted with my extensive study of the Islamic scriptural sources and efforts to promote a new understanding, a new way for Muslims to remain faithful to their principles and, at the same time, able to face the challenges of the contemporary world?

To seek “the truth,” one must read, listen carefully, check and recheck for clarity and consistency, and be willing, if for a moment, to be decentred. Very often, even within the academic field, I encounter individuals who are not familiar with my writings. When this becomes obvious in the course of discussion, their final argument is: “Well, aren’t you the grandson of Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood?” As if this was sufficient proof of all the allegations.

My response is: So what? And what do you really know about him and his life history anyway?

Furthermore, are one’s thoughts genetically transmitted or do one’s morals and ethics descend from the vices or virtues of one’s pedigree? This obsession with my genealogy is frankly disconcerting, for it is dismissive. Those so focused on my genealogy should examine my intellectual pedigree, which along with my grandfather and father includes Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche.

And from the NY times.

In 1928, Hasan al-Banna, Mr. Ramadan’s maternal grandfather, founded the Muslim Brotherhood, a revivalist movement that advocated a return to Islam as a defense against Western colonialism and decadence. In 1949, Mr. Banna was assassinated at the age of 42. Mr. Ramadan never knew his grandfather; he studied him.
He is critical of his grandfather’s sloganeering – “The Koran is our constitution” was one motto – disagrees with him about “many things about the West,” and scoffs at the idea of an Islamic state.
But he says his grandfather is misremembered in several ways.

For instance, although the history of the Muslim Brotherhood is dotted with violence, and the group gave rise to more militant organizations, Mr. Banna himself was not personally violent, nor did he legitimize violence, Mr. Ramadan said. His empathy for the poor was admirable, Mr. Ramadan said, and his thinking was more nuanced than many followers and critics understand.

Mr. Ramadan has said repeatedly that he is not affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which renounced violence in the 1970′s but has been periodically banned in Egypt, as it is now. He has relatives who are members but, he said, “they are not happy with me.”

Still, Mr. Ramadan’s genealogy is a big part of what makes him suspect to European intelligence services, just as it is what affords him a platform from which to preach about making Islam more modern.

“People make a big issue about his lineage,” said Ingrid Mattson, a professor of Islamic studies and Muslim-Christian relations at the Hartford Seminary. “But there are millions of Muslims who will listen to him precisely because of it. That’s why it’s crazy, keeping him out. “

I doubt you can do little better in substantiating your allegations than by re-posting second hand material sourced from the internet. And, regardless of his supposed secret motivations and his dissimulations (and unproven fraternal links to the Muslim Brotherhood), Ramadan has repeatedly spoken out on Islamic human rights abuses and has given a prominent voice to criticism of Islamic regimes. As the quote states, given the size of audience his genealogy affords him, the fact that he has the ear of millions of Muslims, means that his anti-torture, pro-human rights message will have a very large and receptive audience in the Muslim world.

Interesting that you use Chomsky as a stick to beat the west. Chomsky is a defender of the enlightenment. For the record Anas many Enlightenment figures criticised the brutality of European Imperialism. Suggesting that the Islamic world has a bloody history comparable with the west is something you can not face.

Chomsky’s a defender of Enlightenment values and the institutions that uphold them (to an extent since he’s an anarchist), but a thoroughgoing critic of how these values are implemented in reality, and how democratic institutions are abused and circumvented by the powerful. I mean, you can endorse the democratic values and standards of Ancient Athens and still criticise it for maintaining a system of slavery, and for not allowing women to vote – that’s what Chomsky does, the distinction between theory and reality I suggested above.

Finally, I’m sorry, but Islam’s bloody history (and it is bloody) is nowhere near comparable to the West’s. You’ll recall such episodes as the genocide of the native peoples of Australia (they managed to wipe the Tasmanian aborigines off the face of the Earth) and the America’s, the genocides undertaken by many European countries in Africa (e.g.,the Belgians in the Congo and the Germans in Namibia), the decimation of Africa’s population through slavery (Islam also had a slave trade but its effects were nowhere near as disastrous as the European Slave trade which was practised on an industrial scale and helped underpin the Industrial revolution) , the holocaust, Uncle Joe’s mass genocides in Russia.

Ramadan is essentially an Islamist who tell lie to kufrs and speaks a truth that would shock is liberal supporters.

The words Muslim Brotherhood run through Ramadan as Blackpool does in a stick of rock.

“For her 2004 book Brother Tariq, Caroline Fourest, a French expert on Islamic fundamentalism, studied Ramadan’s 15 books, 1,500 pages of interviews, and–most important–his 100 or so tapes, which sell tens of thousands of copies each year. Her conclusion: “Ramadan is a war leader.” When an interviewer from the weekly L’Express asked Fourest how she could be so sure that Ramadan was indeed the “political heir of his grandfather,” Hassan al-Banna, here’s how she replied:

Because I’ve studied his statements and his writing. I was struck by the extent to which the discourse of Tariq Ramadan is often just a repetition of the discourse that Banna had at the beginning of the 20th century in Egypt. He never criticizes his grandfather. On the contrary, he presents him as a model to be followed, a person beyond reproach, nonviolent and unjustly criticized because of the “Zionist lobby”! This sends chills down one’s spine when one knows the extent to which Banna was a fanatic, that he gave birth to a movement out of which the worst Jihadis (like Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number 2 man of al Qaeda) have emerged, and that he wanted to establish a theocracy in every country having a single Muslim. Tariq Ramadan claims that he is not a Muslim Brother. Like all the Muslim Brothers . . . since it’s a fraternity which is three-quarters secret. . . . A Muslim Brother is above all someone who adopts the methods and the thought of Banna. Ramadan is the man who has done the most to disseminate this method and this thought.

In response to her book, Ramadan calls Fourest an agent of Israel but doesn’t refute her findings.”

A tactic that the Maududists of the MCB use if in doubt play the Israel card.

Chomsky is wrongly slurred. In Ramadans case there is ample evidence to back up such claims that he is an Islamist, fascist and a liar.

Interesting that you use Chomsky as a stick to beat the west. Chomsky is a defender of the enlightenment. For the record Anas many Enlightenment figures criticised the brutality of European Imperialism. Suggesting that the Islamic world has a bloody history comparable with the west is something you can not face.

Also Anas Secular societies are successful, religious societies are abject failures.

Ramadan has been called names, sure, but it proves little since so has Chomsky (self-hating Jew, holocaust denier, anti-American, etc, etc). You asked me to give an example of an Islamic figure who has brought “to light the wrongs that the Islamic world have committed”. Prof Ramadan has been vocal about condemning human rights abuses in the Islamic world — something which you haven’t contradicted.

Regardless of her other qualifications and character traits, Hirsi Ali cannot technically be called an Islamic equaivalent to Chomsky, as she is an atheist and not a Muslim having renounced Islam (it’s on her Wiki page).

This is from Wikipedia. A good starting point but in itself not enough. Unfortunately Ramadan is against Free Speech unlike Chomsky.

Anas you are right about the repressive nature of many Islamic states. However despite this there are Human Rights groups and other opposition groups of a liberal hue in Africa and Asia even the Middle East. Unfortunately in the Middle East the main opposition to such repressive states is the fundis.

Your choice of Ramadan is laughable he is a suspect figure in my book and i say this having read two articles on him in The New Statesman which were very positive. The Grandson of Al-Banna.

If you put forward Hisi-Ali i would have held my hands up.

Where is the Islamic equivalent of Noam Chomsky bringing to light the wrongs that the Islamic world have committed?
That was the question i asked.

RE: human rights in the Islamic world. The problem is that most of the governments in the Muslim world are repressive totalitarian regimes in which dissent is effectively criminalized — hence the lack of Muslim Chomskys. Same reason there aren’t many African Chomskys, Chinese Chomskys, etc.

However, there are several brave Muslim journalists/academics in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey (Orham Parmuk was in trouble recently for his comments on the topic we were discussing above, as have other writers and publishers who’ve refused to toe the govt’s line) and in many other Muslim countries who do stand up to repression and human rights abuses. In Afghanistan there was the very courageous organisation RAWA which stood up for Women’s rights and against the cruel and inhuman treatment of the female population.

A few months back I went to see a lecture by Tariq Ramadan, and whatever else you might think about him you can’t deny that he isn’t extremely critical indeed voiciferous about human rights abuses and torture in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt (where he was made to watch torture of prisoners as a threat against making vocal condemnations of the Egyptian regime).

To quote him from a recent prospect interview:

A Why? Because they know exactly what I am saying. I criticise the fact that they are dictatorships and that the Saudi government is betraying Islamic teachings. When I called for a moratorium on Islamic punishments (death penalty, corporal punishment and stoning) I said it on French television when 6m people were watching, as well as in Islamic majority countries.

Anas you don’t appreciate how much irony is in such statements.

Z-Z, Firstly Wikipedia was investigated by Nature who found it to be comparable in accuracy to the Encyclopedia Britannica (http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html) — I’ve used it plenty of times in lieu of textbooks or academic sources and never found it wanting. Secondly, the information in the quotes I gave is uncontroversial and generally uncontested. The Young Turks definitely were in power at the time of the Armenian Genocide, and they were in the process of trying to secularise Turkey.

As for Niall Ferguson, he is not beyond reproach as a historian. Many academics challenge his claims about the history of the British Empire. But in the case of the Armenian genocide, from my admittedly scant knowledge of Ferguson’s work, I think he’s claiming that ethnic hatreds were the main motors behind the genocide, and not religion per se (although religion is a way of separating off different groups). Compare it with his analysis of the persecution of Bosnian Muslims during the Yugoslav conflicts, he sees both of them as being the result of underlying ethnic hatreds.
Whereas, you seem to be insinuating that Muslims are somehow more bloodthirsty or prone to violence than say Christians.

As for the genocide itself, yes, it may have been made possible by attitudes among Muslim Turks themselves, just as the Holocaust was made possible by anti-Jewish feelings among non-Jewish Germans. But ultimately the genocide was part of a program that had been devised by the Young Turks in order to further their own aims, they were directly responsible for what happened.

There is no irony intended in my statements. Compare the treatment of minorities in Christian countries, right up to the holocaust, and the Yugoslav war, to the treatment of Dhimmis in Islamic countries. Countless Sephardic jews chose to flee to the Islamic East rather than stay in Spain after the re-establishment of the Christianity. I don’t really need to go through the history of pogroms, of the Catholic Inquisition do I?

As for the West’s not being quite as self-reflective as you might think I present the following piece by Noam Chomsky makes my point better than I could:

http://www.chomsky.info/talks/1990—-.htm

Most folks I spoke to in the community were absolutely outraged and I’m glad, for whatever reason, more such killings are being investigated. One of my concerns is how honour killings are talked about in the mainstream media, and why.

I remember Fareena Alam writing about honour killing and the ‘cultural pressures’ that led to them in The Observer. I emailed her to disagree. I knew these two aforementioned brothers long before they were sent down. One was an ex pimp. Both were very very nasty pieces of work. Murdering their sister will have been something they almost relished – ‘honour’ merely provided the justification.

I had a white friend who lived unmarried with a Pakistani girl. The shame she bought on her family was public. They didn’t kill her. They disowned her, refusing to even acknowledge her though she lived down the road from them. Homour is not automatically linked to violence and murder.

It’s a complex issue. Shame Roger Ballard, whom I admire for his ethnographic work, got it so badly wrong on this occasion. But ‘expert bashing’ hardly constitutes an intelligent analysis, although it makes good copy.

I suspect the basis of Roger’s difficulty is that he recognises the complexities surrounding honour, but like other male ethnologists, his contact with Muslim/Asian women will be extremely limited and he is thus not engaged with their concerns.

Wasalaam

TMA

The most important article you posted was your own.

And I suspect you know it. You wrote what no-one else has written, that freedom of speech is something Muslims should embrace. It was quite the most brilliant bit of judo I have ever seen.

Are you really going to stand as a Tory?

BYW will you let me put my piece up? Your audience is the only one I want to talk to.

It demonstrates how sickening and real this is
And what lengths and extremes people are willing to go to, if their child defies them. All in the name of honour
I ask where is the honour. The honour that many say they act in when this happens. This is the underling issue here.
There is no honour and this must be heavily stated and supported by all.
It is not honour with in any sense of the word. It is senseless murder, a crime and an
un honourable act. It is the deliberate murder without a purpose, those who carry it out only do so for their own self-gratification in mind. And for the public and social image of their so-called families.

The fact that they would kill their own child is beyond everything,

As for “Babu English” – what’s that, another way of calling someone a Punkahwallah, like my Faisal Bodi does? I know, it’s terrible isn’t it. How dare these brown people stand up against oppression within their own community. It must clearly be because they want to be like the white man. Sabina clearly hates women too, right?

Until they do they will not understand the hatred for Women that exists in, not merely India and the sub continent, but generally.

Tell us something we don’t know. Nothing riles me up more than colonial era slurs though. You’ve suddenly dropped massively in my estimation. You may as well join Faisal Bodi’s campaign to abolish refuge houses because they supposedly break up families.

Plus, more people to kill. Not a coincidence that 5 people on that list were rulers or invaders of China.

Interesting study:

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/JCR.ART.HTM
From 1900 to 1987 state, quasi-state, and stateless groups have killed in democide (genocide, massacres, extrajudicial executions, and the like) near 170,000,000 people. Case studies and quantitative analysis show that ethnic, racial, and religious diversity, economic development, levels of education, and cultural differences do not account for this killing. Rather, democide is best explained by the degree to which a regime is empowered along a democratic to totalitarian dimension and secondarily the extent to which it is characteristically involved in war or rebellion.

Wikipedia is not an academic source, Anas you would not get any respect in academia if this was the basis of your argument. Anas if you believe that the Armenian Genocide happened because the Young Turks took power then you are a fool. Genocides are usually many years in the making perhaps the Armenians religion as christianity and as a result being dhimmis(sub-human) made them targets for genocide.

“So I was right. And if you want to talk about pogroms and suchlike I think you’ll find them far more prevalent in the Christian West than in the Islamic East.”

“The West is self-reflective

In theory Yes, in practice No”

Anas you don’t appreciate how much irony is in such statements.

The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն, Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı) — also known as the Armenian Holocaust, Great Calamity (Մեծ Եղեռն) or the Armenian Massacre — refers to the forced mass evacuation and related deaths of hundreds of thousands to over a million Armenians, during the government of the Young Turks from 1915 to 1917 in the Ottoman Empire

And then if I click onto the link for the Young Turks, I find:

Another guiding principle for the Young Turks was the transformation of their society into one in which religion played no consequential role. In this ultra-secular and somewhat materialistic structure, science was to replace religion

So I was right. And if you want to talk about pogroms and suchlike I think you’ll find them far more prevalent in the Christian West than in the Islamic East.

BTW, what’s Boris Johnson’s connection with all this, wasn’t his great great grandfather an official in the Turkish empire?