Tariq Ramadan

 Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic scholar from Switzerland of Egyptian heritage, is currently a senior research fellow at the Lokahi Foundation in London and a visiting fellow at St. Anthony's College in Oxford. He is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and son of Said Ramadan, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood activist who was expelled from Egypt.

 Ramadan has doctorates in Philosophy and Arabic and Islamic Studies from Geneva University, where he also studied French literature. He has also studied at Azhar University in Cairo. In 2004, his US visa was revoked after being appointed to the Kroc Institute fro International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University. His extensive list of publications include To Be a European Muslim (1998), Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity (2000), Jihad, Violence, War and Peace in Islam (2002) and The Messenger: the Meanings of the Life of Muhammad (2007). Time Magazine has listed Ramadan as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

 The following text represented excerpts from an interview conducted by Anthony McRoy which appeared in The Christian Century on August 21, 2007. The interview, entitled, 'European Muslim: the multiple identity of Tariq Ramadan,' appeared earlier in the Third Way, a British Christian magazine.

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 My chief personal desire is not only to believe in God but to be close to Him and to love Him.'

 I think this is what we are missing today in Islamic discourse. We are so pushed to be on the defensive,'to argue that Islam is not this, Islam is not that' that we are forgetting the essence of Islam. It is really a love story. Sometimes I myself have to forget everything else and come back to this essential spiritual journey. So this is what I'm asking God for myself: just to be able to love Him and to try to be loved by Him.

 Very often Muslims feel that we have to define ourselves against something, the West, or Christianity.  And we indulge in something that is really dangerous, namely, formalism. We are not teaching the people the meaning of prayer, we are teaching them the techniques of prayer. God is love and God is beauty and God is light, and to speak about that is much more important than to speak about him as judge.

 Sometimes I do go through a spiritual crisis. But if you have a deep relationship with God, He will forgive what no human being can forgive; He is the forgiver of everything. This is a jihad, in fact: it's a struggle against your own judgment, because that is the first obstacle to receiving God's mercy. Because you start to judge yourself, you forget that He can be the most merciful and can simply accept what people do.

 This is what I have learned from my Christian friends, this stress on "God is love," which Muslims sometimes forget. My first meeting with Christians was not in interfaith dialogue but at a grassroots level in South America, where people spoke of love and justice. To love people is to struggle for justice, and justice should be done in the name of love. This was called liberation theology, but more than being an ideology, it was something that people were practicing in their lives. And I think this is the main area in which we have to work together & I think that God responds to anyone who is sincere, even an atheist. God is close to all who are sincere, not only to Muslims. So when I am asked what will be the destiny of someone who is not a Muslim, I say: "God knows best. I don't know."

 Ihsan 'sincerity' is a central concept in Islam. It means that you worship God as if you see Him, because even if you don't see Him, He sees you. There are two ways of understanding this: God can be the judge of your bad deeds or He can be the opposite, your companion and your confidant wherever you are. In Islam there are two discourses, the spiritual one, "He is here," and the legal one, "Be careful!" Today we stress the second, out of fear, because of a lack of confidence & true dialogue requires consistency on both sides. To compare the ideals of Islam with the realities of the West, or the ideals of the West with the realities of Islam, is not consistent: it's merely trying to prove that you are right and the other side is wrong & once again the spiritual dimension of Islam is really important, because something I find in the heart of the Islamic tradition is universalism. In what way can I extract from scripture principles that are universal? Love is one such principle, but so are justice and equality. We need to bring this insight back to the legal field to develop a universalist approach.

 During the Middle Ages, Muslims would assess their situation and say: "There is a space where Muslims are in the majority and are safe, and there are other spaces where they are in danger, so this space is dar al-Islam and those spaces are dar al-harb." This was a specific historical vision, which perhaps was legitimate at that time but is outdated today. Where are Muslims most safe right now? The reality is that it's easier to be a Pakistani Muslim in Britain than in Saudi Arabia. So it's much more dar al-Islam here than there!

 When I speak to Muslims, I often say: "In this room there are hundreds of people listening to my talk. This is not possible in the majority of Arab Islamic countries, because there is no freedom there." So if we assess our situation in terms of the objectives of Shari'a, the way toward God (this is how I translate Shari'a; it is not a set of rules but the way to be faithful), I am much more protected here than there. We have to think not just about whether we are in the majority but about consistency with these objectives.

 Among those who still see Europe as dar al-harb are literalist Muslims, adherents of Salafism, who say, "This is not our country. We are here as a minority." I think this view is wrong, because we are now living in a globalized world. If we hold to the universal principles of Islam, we will not indulge in a binary vision. I prefer dar ash-shahada, "the space of testimony," which means that whether I'm in London or Cairo or anywhere in the world, the only thing I must try to do is bear witness to my principles before the people around me.

 This is what I am asking from a Jew, a Christian, an atheist. Don't try to convert me; just be consistent and bear testimony to your values. This is what I am trying to do as a European Muslim, and it is what we need today in order to change the world & what is needed in Europe is a reconciliation between people and their religious memories. Prevalent in Europe is something I call religious illiteracy, and it's found not only among Christians: Muslims very often have only a superficial knowledge of their religion. I think that the Christian tradition should be strong, in both ethics and spirituality. And Christians too have to ask: What is our response to the new challenges?

 The fear of the Muslim presence in Europe stems in part from the fact that Europeans don't know who they are and feel intimidated when they are facing people whom they perceive as knowing who they are and having a strong sense of identity and belonging. But in fact the Islamic community is going through a deep identity crisis as well. This encounter of mutual ignorance (and self-ignorance) is very dangerous.

To view the full interview, see http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=3596