Tariq Said Ramadan:
Tariq Said Ramadan is an intellectual celebrity from Switzerland, born on the 26th of August in 1962 in Geneva. His masterpiece is based on a philosophical and political reflex which is influenced by Islam.

Hassan El Banna’s grand child from his mother’s side, founder of the Egyptian association of the Muslim brothers and sons of Said Ramadan, founder of the Palestinian branch; he was born in Geneva in 1962. During his studies, he got a B.A degree in Arts (philosophy), then a PHD in language, literature and Arab civilisation. Tariq Ramadan sees El Banna as one of the recent Muslim artisans and devoted a part of his doctorate research to him, called: The sources of Muslim resurgence fro m Al-Afghani to Hassan al-Banna; a century of Islamic reformism. Ramadan sees himself as a Salafist reformist who is seeking Islam of Heydays, far from the interference of foreign cultures. Then, Tariq Ramadan studies Islamic sciences at Al-Azhar University in Cairo (from 1992 to 1993).

Since 1994, he comes to France and give conferences. Near the UOIF, he participates every year in his congresses. He supports the republican indigenes who condemns France as being a state that does not assume its post colonial responsibilities.

In Switzerland, he teaches at Saussure high school in Geneva. He is also charged of giving courses about Islamology at Fribourg University from 1996 until 2003. The Catholic University of Notre Dame In south Bend in Indiana proposed to him the post of a teacher of “religions’ relationships, conflicts and peace promotions), by the beginning of the year 2004, under Joan B. Kroc charges. In August of the same year, the American government refused his “work visa” request without any explanations. After that event, several American intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky and Edward Said, signed an agreement that supports the academic freedom. During the summer of 2005, Tariq Ramadan gets an invitation to visit the scholars of Oxford University and take part in Tony Blair’s group reflex about Islamism problems in The United Kingdom.

Tariq Ramadan is married and father of four children, one of them studies at the boyish Islamic high school which is lead by Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens). His wife is French and converted to Islam since their wedding. Hani Ramadan, Tariq Ramadan’s brother, is a Muslim activist. He lives in Geneva where he teaches French and manages an Islamic centre there. In November 2006, The European Magazine Voice awarded him of the annual European price concerning the personalities coming from countries that do not belong to the European Union.

Tariq Ramadan was very well known in France in 1994, after the publication of the masterpiece “Muslims in the secular state”. He pleads for the fact that Muslims who live in the Occident should not consider themselves as strangers or as temporary residents but, on the other hand, they should see themselves as rightful citizens. According to him, this change in mentality should avoid any estrangement. He demanded the right of “being a European Muslim” (A title of one of his books), asking immigrated parents not to get confused between culture and religion. He insisted in parallel on the second generation that was born in the occidental countries to keep on respecting firmly the Koran and Hdiths in cooperation with the hosting country instead of their parents’. He considers, particularly, that Muslims should become active citizens and react against injustice acts in different associations like (syndicates, Parents of students, etc…).He feels sympathy towards certain analysis of Karl Marx (“I have never stopped saying that we had quickly buried Marx”).

Ramadan declares that he does not see any conflict between “being Muslim” and “being rightful a citizen” in occidental countries. He recommended, also, that occidental intellectual Muslims should be more immersed in the occidental manners and not only in religious studies that come out from Islamic countries.

Tariq Ramadan teaches the respect of Koran through the respect of traditional rules and fundamentals to distinguish the reading from any other rationalist lecture which can seek the interference of occidental factors. The most important thing to him is the effort of interpreting –Ijtihad- that Muslims should reach, and avoid a literal reading of Koran. They should, according to him, take in consideration the historical and current context of Islamic laws and traditions. Indeed, he declares, for instance, in November 2003 on the Beur FM radio: “There is the reformist rationalist tendency and the “Salafie” tendency in which Salafism tries to remain faithful to foundations. I belong to that kind of tendency; in other words, there are given principles which are necessary to me, and which I cannot betray as a Muslim”.

In his book, Muslim in the secular state (Tawhid), he wrote the following: “A Muslim, a resident or a citizen, must consider himself under the effect of a moral and social contract with the country where he lives. In other words, he must respect the laws”. He is notably criticized by the journalist and essayist Caroline Fourest who reported in her book “Tariq brothers” that Tariq Ramadan said in one of his cassettes (Living in the Occident) that Muslims should respect the laws of a given country if only they match the principles of Islam. Tariq Ramadan supports what he had said by precising, in the same cassette, that it was the case of the occidental democrats.

His writings and statements are carefully observed by those who are interested in Islam and the future of the Swaziland intellectuals. Tariq Ramadan is among the ones who are targeted by the critics of intellectuals, politicians and organisations of rights and lefts. We can mention the political arch that starts from the extreme left towards the right: the Struggle of workers, Bernard Cassen (Attac), Max Gallo, Manuel Valls, Alexandre del Valle (UMP), Feminist organisations like Pro-choice, etc…He was deprived from staying in France for some months from November 1995 until the beginning of 1996 for “Threat to public safety”.

Tariq Ramadan is defended by other personalities such as Vincent Geisser or François Burgat who say that he is neither sexist, nor anti-Semite, nor Islamite. In one of his articles, on the website Oumma.com, the journalist Ian Hamel declares the existence of a French campaign Anti-Ramadan. He explains: “I have interrogated specialists from the French secret services, Civil servants in the interior ministry, and they all agree that Tariq Ramadan is not a Muslim brother, let alone the fact of being their boss in Europe”.