Any time this Islamofascist snake oil salesman opens his trap, the lies come spilling out, and the gullible self anointed intellectual elite sitting there, lap it up like yesterday’s caffè latte.
But first a note from Diana: Here is my most recent piece for Dispatch International, the brand new weekly newspaper edited by Lars Hedegaard, available in English, Danish, Swedish and German. (Subscription information here)
Our motto is taken from Thomas Jefferson: Freedom of the press cannot be limited without being lost.
“Now Playing in Washington: More Lies from Tariq Ramadan”
WASHINGTON, DC — When I read that Tariq Ramadan would be speaking at a local bookstore in Washington, DC on September 11, the juxtaposition gave me a jolt. Was Ramadan – the world-famous and Left-celebrated Muslim “intellectual” banned from France for six months in the 1990s for alleged terror ties, and later from the US for six years (2004-2010) for reasons said to include charitable donations to HAMAS – really an appropriate choice for this darkest of anniversaries? But there was something intriguing about the prospect. What message would this scion of the Muslim Brotherhood deliver to the largely liberal upper middle class masses who would throng the bookstore to hear him?
I had never before seen Ramadan in action, but I knew his reputation for glibness, “doubletalk”, and contradiction. From these waves of words, as I would see, listeners seem to extract what is most shiny and appealing, and, as I would watch, nod their heads in recognition.
Never mind that among his favorite Muslim philosophers is Mohammed Rashid Rida, whom Islamic expert Andrew Bostom has described as a “full-throated, public supporter of the political aspirations of Ibn Saud’s Wahhabism”. Never mind that Ramadan, grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, unequivocably states there is “nothing in this heritage” that he rejects.
The Muslim Brotherhood, a shadowy organization with violent offshoots (including al-Qaeda) is best summed up by its motto: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” But not to worry: Tariq Ramadan says he isn’t a member. Here in the bookstore, he repeatedly emphasized “dignity, justice and freedom” as the goals of so-called Arab Spring. People nodded. I doubt many realized these are the English-language buzz words of the Muslim Brotherhood, too.
Then again, maybe they did. Maybe it was Ramadan’s lineage – the grandfather he reveres, his father Said Ramadan, who spearheaded the Muslim Brotherhood’s entry into Europe – that drew the audience to his side where they could enjoy the frisson of the forbidden while taking comfort in Ramadan’s media-driven reputation as a “moderate.” But Tariq Ramadan is anything but “moderate.” Otherwise, he wouldn’t lie so much.
