The controversial Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan is making waves in the European press by calling on "all people of conscience" to boycott Italy's largest book fair for honoring the state of Israel.
This year, the Turin Book Fair, a festival of readings and signings (May 8th to 12th), has chosen to honor Israel on its 60th anniversary of statehood. The Israeli novelists David Grossman, Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and Edgar Keret are on the program.
But that didn't sit well with Ramadan, a professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford and at Erasmus University in the Netherlands and a highly contested figure who has been profiled here, criticized here and here, and who wrote about the Koran for the Book Review here.
In an interview on Feb. 1 with the Italian news agency ADN Kronos, Ramadan called on "all people of conscience" to boycott the Turin fair. "We have to be clear about this: we cannot support anything that comes from Israel," he said. Doing so, he added, would be "abetting the destruction of Gaza at the hands of the Israeli occupation."
Ramadan continued, "from now on we cannot recognize the legitimacy of celebrating the state of Israel, which leaves death and desolation in its wake." The issue, he said, "is not an Islamic or Arab question, but a matter of world conscience." (Ramadan also called for a boycott of the Paris Book Fair, to be held from March 14 to 19, because it too will honor Israel.)
In Italy's leading daily, Corriere della Sera, the Turin festival's public organizers and main private sponsor stood by their decision to honor Israel. The mayor of Turin, Sergio Chiamparino, said that to deny the Israeli people "the right of free expression" would be to take "a fundamentalist line, which unfortunately is invading Europe and corrupting many people, especially on the left."
(Like most Italian papers, Corriere moronically doesn't maintain live links to its articles, but this pro-Israel Italian blog posted the article's contents.)
Responding the next day in La Repubblica, Italy's main center-left daily, the French-Moroccan novelist Tahar Ben Jalloun opposed the boycott — saying it would "give the state of Israel grounds to present itself not as an occupier of the Palestinian territories, but as a victim." (Ben Jalloun's statement is available in French on his Web site.) "Boycotting the next Turin Book Fair won't pave the way for peace and reconciliation," Ben Jalloun wrote. "Criticize the policies of a state. Criticize a novel on its literary merits."
Others have since weighed in. David Grossman told La Repubblica that "in principle, I am opposed to the culture of boycotts, because the essence of culture is dialogue." And the Italian novelist Claudio Magris wrote opposing the boycott on the front page of Corriere. Again, no live links, but this blog is keeping track of everyone's position.