A few months ago, Tarik Ramadan has been invited to a TV programm in order to debate with Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior minister. Sarkozy is a right-wing politician who is using the religious identity of so-called Muslims for his own political aims. Although the French government has been presented as a bunch of fanatic antireligious people by some foreign medias, the reality is quite the opposite. Sarkozy wants North Africans, Africans, Turks, etc., to identify themselves as Muslims, and not as citizens or as workers. He has no intention of seriously defending secularism because France is not the secularist-atheist monster presented by foreign medias. And that is why Sarkozy put the final touch to the creation of the Muslim Council which will contribute to accelerate the division of French and foreign people living in France into opposed religious communities. But when Nicolas Sarkozy came to this TV programm, he appeared as a democrat, a strong partisan of secularism and an antiracist.
He confronted Le Pen and denounced him as a fascist and then attacked Mr Ramadan, the idol of part of the French antiglobalisation movement, and of various multiculturalist or vaguely anti-imperialist circles. Mr Ramadan likes to make lists of Jewish (or so-called Jewish) intellectuals favourable to Zionism and Israël, as if the fact of supporting Sharon or Peres was a purely « Jewish » speciality. And then he looks surprised, scandalised and hurt when he is accused of using antisemitic methods, quite common in the ultraconservative or fascist press. He thinks that the stoning of women should be discussed (this great intellectual proposes a « moratorium » : in other terms, Muslim women should not stoned but should wait with this menace over their head until "religious scientists" kindly decide to stop punishing « unfaithful » wives). Ramadan thinks that Israël should be replaced by a Palestinian state where Jews would « live in peace like in all Muslim countries », he said.
Ramadan was invited to the European Social Forum last november in Paris, as if this gentleman had anything useful or interesting to say about so-called « liberalism » or capitalism.
Exactly like in Britain, part of the French Far Left is thinking that hiting on Mr Ramadan will enable revolutionaries to influence the young Muslim « rebels » living in French suburbs. The only problem is that Mr Ramadan is not an adversary of capitalism…and will surely never be.
FOR THOSE INTERESTED a much more detailed article called "40 reasons why Tariq Ramadan is a reactionary bigot" has been put on this website in April 2005.
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