That Lusty Brother Tariq

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As we noted last week, the renowned Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan has been weinsteined. Or is it harveyed? Anyway, it’s open season on prominent males, all of whom are presumed toxic until proven otherwise, and Dr. Ramadan is no exception.

I was surprised to learn that famous Muslim men are not exempt from this latest fad. So Tariq Ramadan now has multiple women accusing him of rape — who will be next? Imam Rauf? Yusuf al-Qaradawi? At least they don’t have to worry about being convicted, as long as they go to trial in an Islamic country where sharia law holds sway.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for translating both these videos, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling.

Video #1 (interview with one of the alleged victims, Henda Ayari):

Video #2 (interview with the author Caroline Fourest):

Video transcript #1:

00:00   Well what happened, it was, in fact, I was imagining, well
00:04   I idealized him, I idealized Tariq Ramadan a lot; and I thought that we were going to eat
00:08   in a restaurant, have a glass [of wine] and talk… —And in fact? — And in fact
00:12   what happened, I went to Paris, I was put up by a friend
00:16   at first, and I left my stuff with her,
00:20   and Tariq Ramadan calls me.
00:24   “Take a taxi and join me at this address,” and he gives me the address of the hotel,
00:28   and then he says, “you join me directly in my room,” and he gives me the number of his room.
00:33   And he says “because it will be much more comfortable
00:37   to talk quietly, because there are too many people in the hotel lobby” — You weren’t apprehensive…
00:41   At that moment you weren’t apprehensive? — Not at all. Not at all. No mistrust.
00:45   For me, he was like an older brother, like a man, voilà, he’s a pious man,
00:49   a man, voilà. I went there with all my trust.
00:53   You open the door, and what happens? —And what happens, when I open the door,
00:57   he opens the door; so I see him there, he is very tall, I see him in front of me, and he tells
01:02   me to come in, and he was holding a plate of oriental pastries and
01:06   he offers it to me, I say no; and then he goes to wash his hands.
01:10   He comes back and at that moment, in fact, he kisses me right away,
01:14   so a couple of seconds later he kisses me strongly, directly.
01:18   There, I admit that I let it happen, however,
01:22   what happened a couple of seconds later, it was the worst
01:26   you could say. I never experienced anything like that, it was horror, horror.
01:30   He literally threw himself on me like a wild beast, I couldn’t breathe.
01:34   I found myself under him,
01:38   and immediately I said, “No, it’s going too fast,”
01:42   “No, please, stop,” and the more I was saying ‘no’, the more
01:46   he got angry, and in fact he hit me very violently, he slapped me on the face very strongly, then
01:50   he strangled me, so for a couple of seconds I couldn’t breathe.
01:54   I really thought I was going to die, and then he raped me,
01:59   and I was sure that on that evening, if I kept pushing him away, he would kill me.
02:03   So he did what he wanted, and
02:07   so the next day he left before me, telling me to leave discreetly,
02:11   and I left. —You were afraid you would die. —Yes, yes.
 

Video transcript #2:

00:00   You’re watching RTL. RTL morning it’s 7:19.
00:04   Yves Calvi is with you. —The Islamologist Tariq Ramadan
00:08   is being targeted by two complaints of rape and sexual assault. Two alleged victims, who talk
00:12   about a psychological and religious hold. This morning we’ll to try to understand the personality
00:16   of the man and his network. RTL morning: three minutes to understand.
00:20   Good morning, Caroline Fourest. —Good morning Yves Calvi. —Thank you for being with us live
00:24   this morning on RTL. You are a journalist; you investigated Tariq Ramadan for many years.
00:27   You authored the book ‘Brother Tariq’ published by Grasset in 2004. Those accusations,
00:32   do they surprise you? — No , they don’t surprise me, because
00:36   I myself came across several women who gave me precise
00:41   and chilling accounts since 2009. —That means you knew. —Yes I knew,
00:45   and it’s perhaps, it’s also a way to explain to our listeners that it’s not enough
00:49   to know, even when you are journalist, or even especially when you are journalist, to say,
00:53   I believe I have proved that I have courage to say it, I said it several times, I tried
00:57   to warn, with all my might, against the dangerousness of Tariq Ramadan,
01:01   but if you want to leave the territory of intellectual alertness
01:05   to go to a much more difficult territory
01:09   to prove this type of allegations, I needed the courage of those [his] victims,
01:13   and in fact, only recently, one of the victims had the courage to file a complaint.
01:18   In fact, did you yourself wish or incite those persons
01:22   to take —at least— legal action and briefly,
01:26   what have you found out, what have you discovered concerning the personality, the behavior
01:30   of this man? —Well, I already knew that the personality of Tariq Ramadan was double. I knew this
01:33   for a long time, since I worked long enough to be able to find that out.
01:38   I didn’t know that — I didn’t imagine that his duplicity could take such violent forms.
01:42   So when I met, at some point there were even three,
01:46   three women who encountered Tariq Ramadan in very intimate circumstances;
01:50   one that she told me was clearly
01:54   worth taking legal action on, and I talked about it with a judge,
01:58   so that she could in fact file complaint, but finally, that person
02:03   was very clearly intimidated and threatened, and she let me know that she
02:07   couldn’t, she didn’t feel like going through with it, and for myself, honestly, I couldn’t push
02:11   someone to take this route who lacked the strength,
02:15   because I know what it costs to oppose, especially, Tariq Ramadan —So this begs two questions,
02:19   one the psychological hold and the almost cult-like aspects,
02:23   and also, I also think about many of our listeners, and who don’t understand, no doubt,
02:27   why those women didn’t file complaints, and of course those two questions are linked.
02:31   It’s necessary for people to realize that generally, when you’re a victim of sexual assault,
02:35   often it’s very complicated, because there are sudden assaults, but there are also
02:39   Instances when you have perhaps, perhaps consented to a form of seduction, but you didn’t expect
02:43   once the door of the room was closed to be treated this way. — So seduction
02:48   doesn’t include rape. —Voilà. Exactly. So those things are very complicated to prove later in court,
02:52   and most of the victims of those attacks of violence don’t file
02:56   a complaint, because they know, that finally their word will be doubted,
03:00   and they will become the accused at some point; but when you look at the case of Tariq Ramadan,
03:04   you know that on top of all that you have all his network, and it’s not nothing,
03:08   Tariq Ramadan’s network. It’s the Muslim Brotherhood network, it’s one of the most formidable
03:12   there is in political Islam. Those women often were either converts or
03:16   religious and believers, can you imagine all it took for them to confront,
03:21   to talk against the one who is the absolute guru of many, many,
03:25   not-so-nice Islamists. —So the network you just mentioned:
03:29   are they, in fact, protecting him today, and is he indeed
03:33   the one who is activating those trials about anti-Semitism to which we were treated right away?
03:37   Look, listen. —[unintelligible] — no, no me, for 15 years
03:41   I’ve been called an Islamophobe, and other names, of course.
03:45   The moment someone opposes Tariq Ramadan, his public yells: “Conspiracy!”,
03:49   either an anti-Muslim conspiracy or a Jewish conspiracy;
03:53   or the international Zionists, according to their terminology. You understand,
03:57   if Tariq Ramadan had an appeasing effect on those militants, we would have seen it a long time ago.
04:01   What we are seeing is that in fact they are conspiratorial, they are anti-Semites
04:05   they are violent, they are hateful and they are themselves
04:10   under his hold, because in reality, Tariq Ramadan exerts a fascination
04:14   over those militants, which goes beyond an intellectual fascination.
04:18   It’s a truly sectarian, cult-like hold. — Does it compromise those women
04:22   who themselves denounce that hold, well, we understand that at the same time
04:26   there is fear, respect; they sometimes suffered very significant violence,
04:30   and also some have — for example, there is one who testifies that she
04:34   actually stayed the night with him; that she couldn’t find the strength to leave. — Well,
04:38   You understand that he’s very impressive, and there one might not
04:42   understand. — The one we are talking about, who testified, anyway, her lawyer,
04:46   in Le Parisien, according to her minutes in court, I need to say that she was lame in one leg,
04:51   and that she got hit very forcefully which prevented her from holding on to her crutches, and
04:55   that the crutches and her clothes were put away high up, so she couldn’t run away during the night.
04:59   It was only at dawn that she found strength to do it. But it’s especially the words, which were
05:03   quoted to me, and which I cannot quote precisely without having legal action taken against me,
05:07   which witness of a misogynous violence which joins the project of a society
05:11   of Tariq Ramadan, but which expresses itself in a form so brutal
05:15   that even I, when I heard it, when I read those first stories, I admit
05:19   that it gave me the chills. —Let me use my own terms:
05:23   But we are discovering a sexuality which resembled the ideas he defended.
05:27   Yes, with… —A violence towards women in all senses… — Violence, yes…
05:32   in all senses of the word: including physical violence and hatred of the other —Hatred of women,
05:36   hatred against women, in fact. —The hatred of women corresponds perfectly with
05:39   the social project defended by Tariq Ramadan. The fact of wanting them also to sacrifice a form of freedom
05:44   on the other hand is a real hypocrisy: because what I have in my head are
05:48   all the sermons, by the way, when we had a confrontation on France 3 in 2004;
05:52   I alluded to that, the allusion only he could understand. He is having a discourse about sexuality
05:56   from a moral high ground; he says that it’s absolutely illegal to
06:00   have sexual relations outside of the marriage, and of course he encourages everyone
06:04   to observe a great chastity, especially women, for whom
06:08   there is a total refusal of sexual freedom, but in fact what he is practising isn’t even
06:13   sexual freedom; we agree on that, it’s something else. —And against the practices which are in fact
06:17   denounced today. Thank you, Caroline Fourest. Let me remind you that this book was published
06:21   in 2004, entitled — this investigation — ‘Brother Tariq’, published by Grassed, and I’d like to say
06:25   that we would have let Tariq Ramadan have a say if he wished to, but we tried to contact him
06:29   up to now without success. Have a nice day.
 

11 thoughts on “That Lusty Brother Tariq”

  1. He was canned from speaking at Helsinki University as well. One major difference from being “Weinsteined”, while a woman will face a plethora of lawyers from his office, any woman daring to lay claims against a key Muslim Brotherhood operative, faces not only a team of lawyers, but the possibility of a club to the back of the head in a dark alleyway.

  2. In the wake of the Weinstein case, many other showpieces are lining up. Now it’s turn of Mr Ramadan, who has an opinion about women which is religiously determined. In this case the whining woman, looking to step in the spotlight, she gave him her phone number, waited for a call, accepted his invitation at a hotel, in his room. It would be unfair to belief that in that kind of intimate atmosphere Mr Ramadan opened his Holy Book and read her the fairy tales of thousand and one night. Henda Ayari seems to use Ramadan to launch her last book. Inside the next one she could tell about the fairy tales she learned from him inside their shared bed.

  3. In this country (USA), it’s called rape. It’s against the law. But we all know that. It appears that Mr. Tariq Ramadan considers himself above the law.

  4. A “fad” ? How flippantly dismissive, I hope it continues on and on, till all the ugliness that was being swept under the carpet is revealed and judged. I read lots of conservative blogs because they appeal to my political leanings, but to be honest conservative men have some serious problems when it comes to recognizing sexual harassment and preventing it. As a result you get a lot of articles from conservative blogosphere that treat complaints about sexual harassment as some sort of hissy fit – “oh, those ninny, annoying women are at it again”. Which is ironically reminiscent of the attitudes of men in third-world countries, I thought you pride yourselves on being better and more civilized?

    The funny/sad thing is that despite the fact that sexual harassment doesn’t know political boundaries, left-wing men are at least a little more clever on this topic and do a show of condemnation of sexual harassment (even though they might care very little for women in question). Conservatives, smarten up and step up, if you think conservative women don’t notice your attitudes toward sexual harassment you are living in a bubble. We do notice and we talk about your shortcomings behind your back.

    • to be honest conservative men have some serious problems when it comes to recognizing sexual harassment and preventing it.

      Care to source your assertion here? Where are all these conservative men? Political leanings aside, how would they prevent what other men do?

      As for your “solution” – We do notice and we talk about your shortcomings behind your back – do you have any idea how that sounds? A mature person who has a problem with another’s behavior doesn’t resolve that problem by “talking about [their] shortcomings behind [their] back”… seriously, you might profit from learning about adult conflict resolution. This isn’t it.

      • “Care to source your assertion here” – can you source observations and life experience? Perhaps if you want to see things in writing you should read more articles and comments by conservative men stretching as far back as 2012, when sexism in conservative blogosphere became kind of cool. If you watched things carefully for years, maybe you would’ve noticed that the amount of conservative women commenters decreased from sites like Breitbart, PJmedia and other popular conservative blogs, it decreased for a reason, which you apparently don’t see.

        As for women resorting to talk behind the backs of conservative men comes straight form the fact that very often conservative men refuse to listen to women when they confront them about their sexism. If a woman dares to do it in a comment section (even with the mildest of criticism), the commenters usually pile on her and immediately accuse her of being a feminazi. I’ve seen it again and again on various conservative blogs. Occasionally they would call upon women such as yourself to school those “out of line” ladies, as in – “you see a woman is telling you to shut it, therefore your assertions are nonsense, we have no sexism among us”… smugness ensues and then business as usual.

        Frankly I’m not surprised that you didn’t like my comment, I remember your articles and comments from years ago, you are the sort of woman who likes to ignore sexism, and on other occasions blame unwanted advances on women on women themselves. If you are some other Dymphna, then my apologies for mistaken identity.

        • I think there is some truth in what you say, Elena. One of the reasons is that feminism became so monolithically liberal and political, that we respond irrationally simply because we have a Pavlov response to many liberal XX viewpoints…that we think are going to be invariably Gramscian.

          If feminism had stuck to gender issues–there are plenty of these–we might have fewer idiots among us.

          These are interesting examples of different layers in the theory of mind. We should try to imagine what others are thinking but they are also reciprocating and we are thinking about this reciprocal thinking also…ad infinitum, round and round.

  5. The issue seems to have a Mars versus Venus quality.

    Nobody can assert the fairness of subjecting a male to financial ruin and possibly criminal charges on the basis of unsubstantiated and unwitnessed claims by females from years and possibly decades past. This gives an extraordinary power to any female, and minimal actual accountability.

    But, on the other hand, some of the charges against Tariq involve not inappropriate gestures or even touching, but forcible rape. And many women seem to have an innate (genetic) awe of men in power that keeps them from talking about an incident for many years. Recall that Kathleen Willey gave several conflicting versions of her testimony about Bill Clinton’s groping. Many of the women accusing Weinstein kept quiet for years, but at least a few came forward right away, and were ignored, including at least one who made her accusations immediately on a videoed news story.

    And, you have the well-documented false claims concerning the Duke lacrosse team, the Rolling Stone news story, and the mattress girl at Columbia who cooked up a rape charge as part of an art masters thesis. In these cases, women and men pursued false rape charges for personal and political reasons.

    Some of the charges against Weinstein are documented, witnessed, and even videoed. There’s a possibility of a “pile-on” effect where women come forward with stories from years before which may or may not be true, but in my opinion, there are multiple credible stories in addition to the actual documented charges, which justify bad or horrible publicity. Criminal charges, of course, ought to be limited to cases provable by rules of evidence, which should NOT be amended for rape accusations.

    We want to avoid the situation where a female has to endure repeated and chronic instances of inappropriate behavior, but not go to the extreme of making any males career dependent on never angering a female. Part of the problem is the females tendency to react differently to situations than the rules of evidence would require.

    I hope we eventually have structural constraints in place that protect people from true and repeated abuse, but avoid the feminization of men that you see in Sweden, where there are hotlines to report “mansplaining”.

    • “And many women seem to have an innate (genetic) awe of men in power that keeps them from talking about an incident for many years.”

      It’s not awe, but reasonable fear of rich, powerful, public men who’s lawyers, fans or religious followers can, and do make those women’s lives hell once there is an accusation of sexual misconduct.

      When it comes to entertainment business, art world, religious organizations, it is incredibly difficult to make a complaint and be taken seriously. Because all of these entities operate on a cult of personality, people who are from these fields have devoted followers who see no wrong in their chosen idols, even if the evidence was shoved right in their faces. Men/boys and women/girls who suffer sexual abuse in those artificial and closed worlds, will rightfully think hundreds of times before complaining to the authorities, they have so much to loose and little to gain.

      Ironically despite all of the complains from the left about the corporate world, it is actually easier to bring someone to accountability for their sexual misconduct in the corporate world.

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