Brother Tariq The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan Caroline Fourest
Caroline Fourest analysed Tariq Ramadan's 15 books, 1,500 pages of interviews, and approximately 100 recordings, and concludes "Ramadan is a war leader," and the "political heir of his grandfather," Hassan al-Banna, stating that his discourse is, "often just a repetition of the discourse that Banna had at the beginning of the 20th century in Egypt," and that he "presents [al-Banna] as a model to be followed." She argues that "Tariq Ramadan is slippery. He says one thing to his faithful Muslim followers and something else entirely to his Western audience. His choice of words, the formulations he uses – even his tone of voice – vary, chameleon-like, according to his audience."
Olivier Guitta, writing in The Weekly Standard, welcomed the U.S. decision to refuse Ramadan a visa, because Ramadan "calls Arabs ‘my brothers and sisters’ while addressing all others as ‘madam,’ ‘sir,’ or without any honorific." He further claimed that the former head of the French antiracism organization SOS Racisme, "Malek Boutih (an Arab Muslim), told Ramadan after talking with him at length: ‘Mr. Ramadan, you are a fascist.’" In an interview with Europe 1 Boutih likened him to "a small Le Pen"; in another interview he accused him of having crossed the line of racism and anti-Semitism, thus not genuinely belonging to the alter-globalization movement. Bertrand Delanoë, Socialist mayor of Paris, declared Ramadan unfit to participate at the European Social Forum, as not even "a slight suspicion of anti-Semitism" would be tolerable. Talking to the Paris weekly Marianne, Fadela Amara, president of Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissive, a French feminist movement), Aurélie Filippetti, municipal counsellor for the The Greens in Paris, Patrick Klugman, leading member of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France and Dominique Sopo, head of SOS-Racisme accuse Ramadan of having misused the alter-globalization movement's ingenuousness to advance his "radicalism and anti-Semitism." Egyptian intellectual Tarek Heggy has also charged Ramadan with saying different things to different audiences.
Christopher Caldwell, American journalist and senior editor at The Weekly Standard, as well as a regular contributor to the Financial Times and Slate, describes Ramadan as being "the very embodiment of double language," which Caldwell defines as, "not saying two different things to two different audiences," but, rather, as "preaching a consistent message that will be understood in different ways by two different audiences." According to Caldwell, "When Ramadan speaks of 'resistance," and calls on Muslims everywhere to wage it.." "Europeans... have chosen to believe that... he really means 'reform.' He does not. He means jihad."
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