An Interview of Tariq Ramadan -World Renowned Intellectual Scholar

AUTHOR: Walking The Tightrope Of Peace

By Afia Mansoor

It is human nature to controvert that which questions preset notions. We don’t like to be told that the foundations we stand on are erroneous. Individuals who challenge the status quo are often ripped apart in great detail to make a judgment of their every utterance, each skeleton in the closet, and even to events affecting their lineage to hold onto some feeble thread supporting one’s challenged notion. That is how it has always been.

Author and academic, Tariq Said Ramadan is no exception to the rule. He has been walking a tightrope for he talks of building bridges while sticking to his religious principles. His challenge is monumental. On the one hand he faces ‘moderate Muslims in the West’ who demand the ‘abrogation of selected Quranic verses’ and on the other he faces Muslims who are at each other’s throats to declare their interpretation of Islam as the correct one. He is reviled by Islam haters and admired by open-minded seculars in the West.

He has been labelled various things by his critics; ‘a magician’, a ‘Janus-faced bigot’, an ‘anti-Semite’, a ‘dangerous man’. Interestingly his supporters have given him their own labels; a ‘Muslim Martin Luther King’ and ‘bridge to the chasm between the West and Islam’. Three of the World’s most influential magazines; Time, Prospect and Foreign Policy have placed him high in the top 100 contemporary intellectuals. Some in the US feared his scholarly presence so much that his appointment at the Notre Dame University was cancelled on charges that he had funded terrorist organisations. His immense popularity in France has brought him several times on state television in debates with critics. One such debate with President Sarkozy, the then Interior Minister and a staunch opponent of Ramadan, was widely publicised in the media.

He is enigmatic to say the least. Hear him and you will be impressed. Talk to him and chances are you will be floored.

Ramadan was in Lahore recently to give a talk on ‘Islam in the 21st Century — the struggle within’, arranged by the University of Management & Technology as part of its Khurram Murad Memorial Lecture Series. Here too Ramadan commanded rapt attention. His words were appreciated by all who were prepared to have their set notions challenged. The ones who weren’t prepared squirmed in their seats. For perhaps another set, his fluent Arabic was reason alone to admire him; failing to get a grasp on the essence of his message.

The man has always been a distinguished individual. He was born in 1962 in Switzerland after his Egyptian family was exiled from their native land following the murder of his grandfather Hasan Al-Banna by the Egyptian government agents. Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood which gained immense influence and was banned in 1954.

Ramadan grew up in a family that practiced Islam strictly, but never imposed the religion onto the children. So much so that one of his brothers had given up anything to do with religion. Ramadan, however, had a yearning to grasp knowledge from every source.

According to an interview with Ian Buruma for the New York Times, he said, ‘It was not easy, growing up in a committed Muslim family while dealing with people outside who were drinking, and all that. But I was protected on ethical grounds, as a religious person, first of all by playing sports, every day, for two hours or more — football, tennis, running. And reading, reading, reading, five hours a day, sometimes eight hours.’

Ramadan integrated into the European culture and yet held closely to his Muslim roots. He did his MA in Philosophy and French Literature and PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Geneva. He also went back to his ancestral Egypt to receive intensive one-on-one training in Classic Islamic Scholarship from scholars at Al-Azhar. He has taught at several universities of Switzerland and is currently the Professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford University. He also holds the chair to ‘Identity and Citizenship’ at the University of Erasmus Netherlands where he is a visiting professor. He is a Senior Research Fellow at Doshisha University, Japan and the Lokahi Foundation in London. He is currently the President of the think-tank European Muslim Network in Brussels and holds an advisory position with the EU. He has authored more than 20 books and contributed about 700 articles in books, academic reviews and magazines. The best about him is the successful balance of spirituality and reasoning that he has achieved and espouses.

At the seminar in Lahore he spoke at length of issues within the Islamic community. He said the Muslims needed to make ‘an intellectual commitment to a spiritual challenge’, they needed to accept the diversity of all Muslims who practiced Islam as per their school of thought while emphasising the need to draw a firm line to protest and stick to the fundamental principles of the Quran and the Sunnah. The crux of this highly engaging talk was that Muslims today need to accept their own diversity, open themselves to progressive knowledge of all spheres in life, provided it is not against the divine Islamic principles, even if it is coming from a ‘kafir’ mind.

He challenged the audience to bring him one ayat or hadith to the effect that women should not be allowed access to education; a reference to the tribal mullah philosophy. He said that Muslims need to act out the virtues their faith espouses such as punctuality, discipline, loyal citizenship and accountability, etc. He wished the Muslim community could open itself to critical thinking and debate.

Responding to a few questions Ramadan voiced optimism about the future of the community:

Do you foresee a Muslim renaissance ever taking place again?

TR: Yes I hope so. There is a silent revolution taking place in many countries where the community is in minority as well as the majority. There are new thoughts, understandings. We are facing the reality of crises. We don’t have all the answers but at least there is growing awareness that we have to reform ourselves. Everywhere in Australia, US, Canada, Africa and beyond Muslims are realising the relevance of their religion in modern times.

You spoke about the importance of a Muslim to be spiritual. Can you explain what spirituality is?

TR: The spiritual aspect is the heart of Islam. Spirituality is the marriage between emotion and reason. Being spiritual is to go through introspection; understanding the meaning of Allah’s ayats and then acting them out. That is why Allah has said ‘Verily, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the succession of night and day, there are signs for those with insight.’

He wants us to ponder and draw lessons. There is another ayat which says, ‘in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find comfort.’ Hence there is this intimate dimension of spirituality in Islam. And then Muslims are asked to act out those lessons and be consistent.

When I do anything with the thought of Allah it becomes a spiritual action. Spirituality in behavior is spirit in action. Which is why there is a hadith to the effect that, ‘What is in your heart is confirmed by your action.’

The Quran is a multidisciplinary book that includes divine commandments and anecdotes to teach by explanation. Do you feel that enough research is being done into the teaching anecdotes to understand their relevance in modern times?

TR: That is a very important issue. Firstly the Quran needs to be read by all so it revives your heart and brings you closer to Allah. An individual can do lay reading (and interpretation) to draw lessons for his or her own life. Then there is the sophisticated reading and interpretation by scholars into the rules, principles and anecdotes as per the context and the present society.

We have new interpretations (tafseer) to Quran coming out every 50 years. But a lot of work needs to be done to adapt the tafseer to modern times and issues. For this the scholars need to be well versed in knowledge pertaining to all the diverse fields in order to interpret the Quran.

What is the nature of your research involvement with Japan?

TR: I am working on a book called Radical Reform: Islam Ethics and Liberation which will be out by the next September. It is about usool-ul-fiqh and will have case studies on five fields: medicine, arts & culture, gender issues, religion & politics and religion & philosophy.

I have proposed a methodology and framework of fiqh covering these areas because I think these five areas need a lot of focus and attention of Muslim scholars. These frameworks are being used by Japan’s Dosisha University.

This Article was published in Books & Authors, Dawn Newspaper