Tariq Ramadan: Respect

The acclaimed Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan seems to have hit a rough patch in the last few years. His #MeToo moment arrived earlier than it did for most men in public life, before it became totally fashionable. He is currently awaiting trial on various charges of sexual assault.

The following piece about Dr. Ramadan has been revised and updated since it was originally published by Michael Copeland at LibertyGB.

Tariq Ramadan: Respect

by Michael Copeland

Tariq Ramadan, a muslim of Egyptian descent, held until recently a Qatari-funded chair specially created for him at Oxford. At present he is on bail in France, awaiting trial for rape and sexual contact with minors.

Ramadan’s public speaking, with a catchy Maurice Chevalier accent, is appealing in style, but nonetheless bluff-filled and vacuous. One of his techniques is to invoke admirable and attractive concepts in the abstract, and float them before his audience, like beautiful imagined balloons, to gasps of awe and admiration. Here are some of the concepts that Ramadan has called upon: “Respect!” (long pause), “Humility!” (another pause, gasps from the audience), “Critical Thinking!” (gasps and sighs all round), “Freedom of Conscience!” (swoon). The usefulness of this technique is that it is the listeners who supply their own favourable and warm qualities to the concepts, while the speaker has, in fact, offered nothing, and may well be harbouring quite different thoughts left unspoken. It is a standard device of prevarication.

Let us focus on “Respect”. An audience in England will receive that concept favourably, as denoting a deferential regard for the rights and dignity of the individual or ideology to be respected. This way the infidel audience can form a favourable impression in their minds when the speaker has not necessarily supplied one.

Respect concerns relationship. It can, though, embrace a very wide spectrum of regard, from high esteem to low esteem: it is all respect. We teach our children to respect their elders, likewise to have respect, of a different kind, for stinging nettles, snakes and scorpions. Even respect of a negative kind, disrespect, fits into this wide concept. A spokesman for Sharia4Belgium said recently: “We Muslims have not even a gram of respect for you infidels.” A measure of “not even a gram” of respect is still respect.

So much for what to tell the infidel. To muslim listeners Ramadan is clear:

“The only law we must respect and apply is the Shari’a.”

There you are — respect.

Ramadan explains Sharia in an interview with Erick Stakelbeck:

“You have another understanding of Sharia, and the understanding of Sharia is based on the human agency that is taking from the scriptural sources, the Koran and the prophetic tradition, to try to get the principles and the objectives, and say what our religion is all about, protecting the dignity of the human being, protecting their rights — men and women — and then if you have this understanding, and this is my position, this, look, Sharia is a way, it’s a path.”

Are you any the wiser? It is more informative to look at the Islamic texts and authorities. Sharia law, Islamic law, is fixed and unchangeable, and overrides “man-made” Statute law, as Anjem Choudary has so often proclaimed. It contains a number of aspects hostile to Western civilisation — no equality before the law, no freedom of conscience, no freedom of speech. Muslim lands are Dar al Islam, the Abode of Islam, while non-muslim lands are Dar al Harb, the Abode of War. That means that non-muslims are permanent enemies in an ongoing war. The Koran states that “Allah is the enemy of the unbelievers” (2:98): he ”does not love the unbelievers” (30:45). Unbelievers are “unclean” (9:28), ”the worst of creatures” (98:6), ”the vilest of beasts” (8:22, 8:55). There is a “communal obligation… to war against non-Muslims” in Jihad (Manual of Islamic Law o9.0, o9.1). The enmity is compulsory.

This is the level of respect which Islam’s core text commands towards non-muslims, and which adherents, like Ramadan, are obliged to follow. He is not free to ignore or refuse it: denying any verse in the Koran brings the death penalty (Manual, o8.7(7)). The killing can be performed by any muslim without penalty, because “it is killing someone who deserves to die” (Manual, o8.4). The state of war is continuous, with the obligation to “kill unbelievers wherever you find them” (Koran 9:5) and make them submit “until Islam is the only religion”, denoting the only source of law (8:39).

A lesser-known element of Sharia is “Permissible Lying” (Manual, r8.2), specifically authorised for use with unbelievers. This has an Arabic name, taqiyya. Ramadan knows his law. Hear him again from that same talk to fellow muslims:

“We must exploit the so-called democracy and freedom of speech here in the West to reach our goals. …we must use every conceivable means and opportunity to defeat the enemies of Allah .”

His listeners would understand that “every conceivable means” would include taqiyya:

“Tell the infidels in public we respect your laws and your constitutions…”

There we are: respect. Presumably he can, himself, practise what he preaches. He, too, could tell the infidels in public he respects their laws and constitutions, even if it is only a little respect, or even if it is a little taqiyya. Sure enough, taqiyya is what it is. Here is the full quotation:

“Tell the infidels in public we respect your laws and your constitutions, which we Muslims believe that these are as worthless as the paper they are written on.”

There you have it, the respect that Ramadan has for Western laws and constitutions. Furthermore he expresses it while recommending one of those useful Islamic lies, sanctioned because it is in the cause of Islamic goals, namely imposing Sharia by force on everyone in the future Global Caliphate. There is no shame in such a lie for an observant muslim: it is Islamic doctrine, and the speaker is, in Islamic terms, being diligent, observant, and pious. “War is deceit,” Mohammed said.

At least we now know, don’t we, children, how to regard this specimen of Academia, Mr. Qatari-funded Balloon Man — with “Respect”.

References:

For previous essays by Michael Copeland, see the Michael Copeland Archives.

7 thoughts on “Tariq Ramadan: Respect

    • Yes, agree 100%. There are lots of evidences that Islam is the continuation of the Babylonian Beast, Ninus (Nanush): Anti-Judaism and massacre of genuine Jews, being on a mission of the world conquest, pedophilia, using deceit as a warfare tool, creating the society of fear and mind control under banners of brotherhood and equality, and other things Ninus did.

      Even the story of MHMD marrying a 6 y.o whore, remembered with her epithet “Ayesha”, which means “Voluptuous Woman”, is completely in concordance. Or maybe MHMD is just a fictitious personage created after Ninus or, less likely, Emperor Justinian. But anyway, all those tyrants share similar traits and actions.

      Peace.

      • A six-year-old cannot be a “whore”. She hasn’t reached the age to reason and therefore cannot make such a moral distinction.

  1. This [epithet] taqiyya artist! So he’s a paedophile as well?? Lock him up throw away the key! Not before the muscle boys in the prison shower room induct him!

    This satan, grandson of hassan al bana, a founder of muslim brotherhood murderers terrorists, read, milestone by said qutab,

    We must [violent suggestion redacted].

  2. Let me draw what I see as the connections.

    Ramadan poses as a Europeanized, modern Muslim who tries to persuade Europeans that Islam is simply another approach to human rights, feminism, socialism and refuge from the responsibilities of life. The government is responsible for sanding off all rough edges so you can lead your life in a perpetual safe place; and Islam is expert at sanding off rough edges.

    The European kuffir don’t like to go through the discomfort of saying “no” to potentially violent parasites; don’t like to take the risk of saying something which would be disapproved of by their neighbors, or more importantly, their maternal government. So, they resonate to a vague soliloquy of soft sounds and muted lights, giving them a tingle but not challenging the intellectual muscles so neglected in government-provided education.

    But, having lulled the sheep to doze, Muslims are obligated to herd them into Muslim-controlled processing houses: they can either accept their fate or be put first in line to the slaughter. So, Muslims are not allowed to doze, but have the benefit of entitlement to all possessions of the kuffir, simply because they are Muslims and the kuffir are kuffir.

    But Ramadan is not able to completely shake off his Muslim inclinations, even knowing he is on display to fool the kuffir. Therefore, he consoles himself and is charged with sexual assault, sexual exploitation of women and age-related offenses, all perfectly acceptable under the sharia law he paints as so enticing to woke Westerners.

    Alas, Ramadan provides some amusement but is not really critical to Muslim advancement in Europe. The engines of advancement are frustrated, politically-powerful females, feminized males, violent migrants and for the more subtle requirements, Saudi-funded contributions to European foundations and leaders. Ramadan is frosting on the cake, but by no means critical to the ongoing self-destruction of Europe.

  3. Ramadan explains Sharia in an interview with Erick Stakelbeck:
    “You have another understanding of Sharia, and the understanding of Sharia is based on the human agency that is taking from the scriptural sources, the Koran and the prophetic tradition, to try to get the principles and the objectives, and say what our religion is all about, protecting the dignity of the human being, protecting their rights — men and women — and then if you have this understanding, and this is my position, this, look, Sharia is a way, it’s a path.”

    Sounds like Postmodernist babble and both ideologies are probably from the devil.
    Just re-read C.S Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. At the end of Ch 1 Screwtape advises his nephew: “Remember you are there to fuddle him.”

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