Tariq Ramadan Is on Leave From Oxford After Rape Allegations

[Valin]

NY Times...a former newspaper

CARLOTTA GALL

NOV. 7, 2017

 

Tariq Ramadan, a renowned scholar of Islam, has taken a leave of absence from his teaching post at Oxford University after two women filed complaints that he sexually assaulted them in France. The university said the decision was mutual. “Professor Ramadan’s teaching, supervising and examining duties will be reassigned,” it said in a statement, “and he will not be present at the University or College.” The statement added: “The University has consistently acknowledged the gravity of the allegations against Professor Ramadan, while emphasizing the importance of fairness and the principles of justice and due process,” the statement added.

Mr. Ramadan, 55, a Swiss-born theologian and philosopher, is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at the university and a senior research fellow at St. Antony’s, an Oxford college that focuses on international affairs. The accusations have created a storm in Islamic and academic circles across Europe. Mr. Ramadan is a grandson of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1920s. He is the author of a dozen books in English on modern Islam and the Western world, and a familiar presence on television news shows and on social media.

Mr. Ramadan has said that the accusations are unfounded and has vowed to fight the cases in court. He has filed a defamation suit in Paris against one of his accusers, the French activist and author Henda Ayari. Ms. Ayari accused Mr. Ramadan of raping and assaulting her in a hotel on the sidelines of a conference in Paris in 2012. She said Mr. Ramadan had acted as an online teacher and mentor to her and then had suggested one day that they meet at his hotel.

 

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For More on Tariq Ramadan The Flight of the Intellectuals: The Controversy Over Islamism and the Press

Paul Berman

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In a gripping and stylish narrative Berman also shows the legacy of these political traditions, most importantly by focusing on a single philosopher, who happens to be Hassan al-Banna’s grandson, Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan—a figure widely celebrated in the West as a “moderate” despite his troubling ties to the Islamist movement. Looking closely into what Ramadan has actually written and said, Berman contrasts the reality of Ramadan with his image in the press.

In doing so, THE FLIGHT OF THE INTELLECTUALS sheds light on a number of modern issues—on the massively reinvigorated anti-Semitism of our own time, on a newly fashionable turn against women’s rights, and on the difficulties we have in discussing terrorism—and presents a stunning commentary about the modern media’s peculiar inability to detect and analyze some of the most dangerous ideas in contemporary society