On 10/1/06, Dan Scanlan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
When the present-day Washington Post runs a story like this, you can
be assured that its impact is too late.
Dan Scanlan
-------------------------
Why I'm Banned in the USA
By Tariq Ramadan
10/01/06 "Washington Post" -- - -For more than two years now, the
U.S. government has barred me from entering the United States to
pursue an academic career. The reasons have changed over time, and
have evolved from defamatory to absurd, but the effect has remained
the same: I've been kept out.
<snip>
I am increasingly convinced that the Bush administration has barred
me for a much simpler reason: It doesn't care for my political views.
In recent years, I have publicly criticized U.S. policy in the Middle
East, the war in Iraq, the use of torture, secret CIA prisons and
other government actions that undermine fundamental civil liberties.
And for many years, through my research and writing and speeches, I
have called upon Muslims to better understand the principles of their
own faith, and have sought to show that one can be Muslim and Western
at the same time.
<snip>
At the same time, I do not stop short of criticizing regimes from
Muslim countries. Indeed, the United States is not the only country
that rejects me; I am also barred from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and even
my native Egypt. Last month, after a few sentences in a speech by
Pope Benedict XVI elicited protests and violence, I published an
article noting how some governments in the Muslim world manipulate
these imagined crises to suit their political agendas. "When the
people are deprived of their basic rights and of their freedom of
expression," I argued, "it costs nothing to allow them to vent their
anger over Danish cartoons or the words of the Pontiff." I was
immediately accused of appeasing the enemies of Islam, of being more
Western than Muslim.
Dr. Tariq Ramadan is a very impressive man -- he's been banned by the
right countries! It's too bad he is merely a scholar. Let him run a
country, somewhere in Europe or the Middle East.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
