February 14, 2007
What the West Can Learn From Islam
Tariq Ramadan in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
In late September, I finally received a response to the question I had been asking the Bush administration for more than two years: Why was my work visa revoked in late July 2004, just days before I was to take up a position as a professor of Islamic studies and the Henry Luce chair of religion, conflict, and peace building at the University of Notre Dame? Initially neither I nor the university was told why; officials only made a vague reference to a provision of the U.S. Patriot Act that allows the government to exclude foreign citizens who have "endorsed or espoused terrorism." Though the U.S. Department of Homeland Security eventually cleared me of all charges of links with terrorist groups, today it points to another reason to keep me out of the country: donations I made totaling approximately $900 to a Swiss Palestinian-support group that is now on the American blacklist. A letter I received from the American Embassy in Switzerland, where I hold citizenship, asserts that I "should reasonably have known" that the group had ties with Hamas.
What American officials do not say is that I myself had brought those donations to their attention, and that the organization in question continues to be officially recognized by the Swiss authorities (my donations were duly registered on my income-tax declaration). More important still is the fact that I contributed to the organization between 1998 and 2002, more than a year before it was blacklisted by the United States. It seems, according to American officials, that I "should reasonably have known" about the organization's alleged activities before the Homeland Security Department itself knew!
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 02:58 PM | Permalink
Comments
The problem I have with these kinds of writings is that they appear to be wrong and/or misleading.
"Some of what we highlight today as core principles of Islam derive from the specific cultures of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia; we read our texts mainly against the backdrop of a period, since the 13th century, when Muslims in those areas were struggling against Western aggression."
This is just factually wrong. Southeastern Europe and Anatolia from the 13th century onward to at least the 18-19th centuries can best be described as Muslim (Turkish) aggression against the West. The Crusades can partially be described as Western aggression, but there's no way you can describe the Reconquista that way, or the Fourth Crusade (which originated in a plea for help from the Byzantine Empire). This is a ridiculous construction, only made even thinkable by the later complete collapse of Muslim state power vis-a-vis the West in the 18th, 19th, and into the 20th centuries. Outside of the Middle East, the 13th century is right in the middle of Muslim aggression against North India and predates the Muslim efforts to destroy the Hindu kingdoms of Indonesia.
But there's an even more important thing missing here. Ramadan's focus is on improving states where Muslims are the majority through the influence of Muslims in Western states. That's all well and good, but it doesn't have much to do with Western thought. His big example is of love for the poor and the downtrodden, but the Christian gospels are already full of this - it's not like Westerners need additional support for these ideas from Islam. Precisely because Islam is western and or Semitic in orientation, it doesn't actually bring much that is new to a culture already steeped in Christian and Jewish thought.
It's much easier to make a case the the West can learn a lot from Buddhism or Hinduism, which there hasn't been that much contact with, than with Islam, where everyone already has discussed each other's ideas for at least a thousand years.
Posted by: Hektor Bim | Feb 15, 2007 10:04:36 AM
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