Dr. Tariq Ramadan – from Islamist to Reformist - Asjad Bukhari

Tariq Ramadan is prominent Islamic writer and professor of contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University.  He is from high profile religious family with excellent academic credentials. Founder of Muslim Brotherhood Hassan al Banna was his maternal grandfather. His father Said Ramadan was a prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and went into exile during Gamal Abdul Nasser’s time from Egypt to Switzerland where Tariq was born.

As part of his Canadian tour 2017 organized by CJPME (Canadians for Justice and peace in Middle East) he delivered his talk in Calgary under the title “Creating Thriving Societies in Troubling Times” on 18^th January 2017.

Highlights of his talk:

One should not oppose humanity by using spirituality; Don’t accept what is unacceptable; Challenge your politicians as Canadian not as Muslim or some other ethnic or geographic identity;  Muslims should join mainstream politics, raise voice for all injustices whether it is for blacks or for aboriginals or any one; Raise your concern to your elected leaders and argue them not to support dictators and military rulers in other parts of the world; Don’t accept double standard, if human life is important in Europe or North America it should be important in other parts of the world as well. He criticise west for supporting Gulf States and completing ignoring their human rights records.

His talk was full of appealing sentences that would help multicultural society like Canada to come together. My focus was looking for his views about political Islam or in other words Islamism.  Then there were two relevant questions where he touched that:

Answering the question regarding apologetic behavior from Muslims after terror attacks, he said we should condemn those acts as it goes against the basics of Islam but we should put in perspective the motives and causes of those acts of terror as well. For me this sounds typical “but” and this answer would bring us again into apologetic narrative.   

I asked the question: In my view other then imperialistic agenda political Islam is another reason for the uprising and trouble in Muslim World, how important it is to encounter the narrative of political Islam and how we achieve that? He suggested regarding political Islam we have to be careful, we should not classify all of Islamists or political Islam under one list.  Some are reformists and some are legalist. Some want to change into Islamic system peacefully and some are violent. We have to differentiate them. With this answer I comprehend that in his view nothing wrong with political Islam as long the movement is peaceful. 

In my view this is the point where Muslim societies need clear vision to separate religion from power politics. Narrative from Islamists is: Islam is a complete system of morality, justice and governance, whose sharia laws and principles should be the sole basis of governance and everything else in life. Establishment of Islamic state is the ultimate goal of message of Islam.  Until this point every Islamist group is on the same page but when it comes to develop the module and implementing Sharia then every sect and school of thought has its own interpretation and every group is too charged then it is inevitable to avoid armed conflict. That is another debate rather that so called sharia law that allows slavery and too many other controversial things is applicable in this DNA age or not.

Since the Afghan jihad of 80s the destruction of Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq and parts of Pakistan made it very clear that using religion as political ideology is gateway to exploit religion - once you allow the exploitation of religion then nobody has full control on that. This is the most slippery road for societies.  In this regard it is important to recognise that the narrative created by the founders of Muslim Brotherhood and Jamat Islami of Pakistan made huge influence on Islamic insurgence and terrorist groups like Taliban, ISIL etc. Ayman Zawahiri was Muhammad Qutb’s direct student and he was the mentor of Osama bin Laden and other leading members of al-Qaeda and Taliban. Lines between violent and none violent Islamists is very thin and it is only a matter of opportunity and situation and all can jump into violent jihadi armies.

 Tariq Ramadan as Reformist:

In Tariq Ramadan’s writings and lectures one can see two different standpoints and prospects. One for Muslims living in the western world and other about Muslims world and political Islamic movements in that part of the world. For some critics it is double standard that is creating confusion and giving excuses for extremist Islamist groups to exploit Muslims for political and personal agendas. But in Tariq Ramadan’s point of view most of the issues involved religious texts that Muslims take seriously, so simple act to condemn would not change anything in Muslims societies but opening the debate on these issues can lead towards reforms in those rules.

In terms of interpretation of Islamic theology he is reformist. These are the significant areas of difference between his views to traditionalists: He rejects binary division of the world into the ‘house of Islam’ (dar al-Islam) and the ‘region of war’ (dar al-harb). He is against all forms of capital punishment but suggests that Muslim countries could remove such laws after wining popular narrative on this issue and without foreign pressures.  He sees hijab as an Islamic prescription, but he suggests it is against Islam to compel a woman to wear hijab. He is also tolerant about music. He condemns suicide bombing and maintain that terrorism is never justifiable, even though it can be understandable in terms of political resistance.

No doubt Tariq Ramadan is most influential reformist in today’s Islamic theology with large following around the globe.  I hope he realise that the problem with Islamists (political Islam) is: Once they take the power then these reformist ideologies will supersede with classic Shari law that is mostly based on 7th and 8th centuries tribal desert culture and it clearly contradicts in several areas with 21^st century’s basic human values. We witnessed this in Afghanistan of 90s and parts of Iraq and Syria. Separating power politics from religion is the only way to resolve this conflict. Make religion as personal matter for spirituality and morality and public law should made on secular ground.