Dr. Tariq Ramadan

Dr. Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan was born in Geneva, Switzerland on 26 August 1962. He is the son of Said Ramadan and Wafa Al-Bana, who was the eldest daughter of Hassan al Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Gamal al-Banna, the liberal Muslim reformer is his great-uncle. His father was a prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and was exiled by Gamal Abdul Nasser from Egypt to Switzerland, where Tariq was born.

Tariq Ramadan studied Philosophy and French literature at the Masters level and holds a PhD in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Geneva. He also wrote a PhD dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche, titled Nietzsche as a Historian of Philosophy.

He taught at the College de Saussure, a high school in Geneva, Switzerland, and held a lectureship in Religion and Philosophy at the University of Fribourg from 1996 to 2003. In October 2005 he began teaching at St Antony's College at the University of Oxford on a Visiting Fellowship. In 2005 he was a senior research fellow at the Lokahi Foundation. In 2007 he successfully applied for the professorship in Islamic studies at the University of Leiden, but then declined to take up the position, citing professional reasons. He was also a guest professor of Identity and Citizenship at Erasmus University Rotterdam, till August 2009 when the City of Rotterdam and Erasmus University dismissed him from his positions as "integration adviser" and professor, stating that the program he chairs on Iran's Press TV, Islam & Life, was "irreconcilable" with his duties in Rotterdam. Ramadan described this move as Islamophobic and politically charged. Beginning September 2009, Ramadan, was appointed to the Chair in Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University.

Ramadan established the Mouvement des Musulmans Suisses (Movement of Swiss Muslims), which engages in various interfaith seminars. He is an advisor to the EU on religious issues and was sought for advice by the EU on a commission on “Islam and Secularism”.In September 2005 he was invited to join a task force by the government of the United Kingdom. He is also the President of the Euro-Muslim Network, a Brussels-based think-tank.

He is widely interviewed and has produced about 100 tapes which sell tens of thousands of copies each year.

As of 2009, Tariq Ramadan was persona non grata in Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Syria because of his "criticism of these undemocratic regimes that deny the most basic human rights".

                                                   

'What I Beleive' is a book that is written by the Dr. Triq Ramadan on Islam. This book was published by Oxford University Press on 6th of october, 2009.

Ramadan works primarily on Islamic theology and the position of Muslims in the West and within Muslim majority countries. In general, he believes it necessary to interpret the Qur'an, not simply to read the Arabic text, in order to understand its meaning and to practice Islamic philosophy. He also emphasizes the difference between religion and culture, which he believes are too often confused, arguing that citizenship and religion are separate concepts which should not be mixed. He claims that there is no conflict between being both a Muslim and a European; a Muslim must accept the laws of his country. But he is opposed to some politicians or people who try to circumvent or to give a new sense of their own laws.

He believes that Western Muslims must create a "Western Islam" just as there is a separate "Asian Islam" and an "African Islam", which take into account cultural differences. By this he means that European Muslims must re-examine the fundamental texts of Islam (primarily the Qur'an) and interpret them in light of their own cultural background, influenced by European society.

He rejects a binary division of the world into dar al-Islam (the abode of Islam) and dar al-harb (the abode of war), on the grounds that such a division is not mentioned in the Qur'an. He has been also known to cite favourably the Dar al-Da'wa (Abode of Information Dissemination). However, Ramadan has articulated both the "ideological geography" of the West and the duty of da'wa in an original fashion and one that is starkly more pro-integration than the more conservative "loyal resident alienage" articulated by such jurists as al-Qaradawi. For Ramadan, the West is neither the Abode of War nor the Abode of da'wa but "dar al-shahada," the "Abode of Testimony" [to the Islamic Message]. He argues that Muslims are "witnesses before mankind"; they must continue to review the fundamental principles of Islam and take responsibility for their faith.

Importantly, for him the "Islamic message" to which Muslims are expected to bear witness is not primarily the particularist, socially conservative code of traditionalist jurists, but a commitment to universalism and the welfare of non-Muslims; it is also an injunction not merely to make demands on un-Islamic societies but to express solidarity with them.

Ramadan has voiced his opposition to all forms of capital punishment but believes the Muslim world should remove such laws from within, without any Western pressure, as such would only further alienate Muslims, and instead bolster the position of those who support hudud punishments.

He has said "Muslim populations are convincing themselves of the Islamic character of these practices through a rejection of the west, on the basis of a simplistic reasoning that stipulates that 'the less western, the more Islamic'."

Politically, Ramadan was opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He believes that jihad against the United States military in Iraq was justified as an act of resistance to oppression.

He has condemned suicide bombing and violence as a tactic. Perhaps more importantly, he believes that terrorism is never justifiable, even though it is sometimes understandable.

He was opposed to the French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools.