The Swiss-Egyptian Muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan, who works as a cultural 'bridge builder' in the city of Rotterdam, came under fire in recent weeks for alleged discriminatory statements about women and homosexuals. But now it turns out he never made these statements.
"Incorrect, biased and completely taken out of context."
That is the judgement of the Rotterdam city authorities of a recent article in the Dutch Gaykrant which caused a lot of commotion around Tariq Ramadan.
Bridge builder
The article in the Dutch gay community weekly quotes old tapes of lectures by Mr Ramadan (pictured right), on which he is supposed to have said that homosexuality is a disease and that Islam does not allow it. Ramadan himself immediately denied that he ever made these statements.
Nevertheless, the article led to calls by a number of Dutch politicians for the dismissal of Tariq Ramadan by the city of Rotterdam, where he is professor of identity and citizenship at the Erasmus University and acts as a bridge builder between the indigenous Dutch and immigrant Muslim communities.
Mr Ramadan, who is very popular among young educated Muslims in Europe, has always been haunted by controversy. European left-wingers celebrate him as a bridge-builder. His view of a modern reinterpretation of Islam and for the active participation of Muslims in European societies is deemed the perfect antidote to the growing influence of fundamentalist ' salafi' Islam. But to European right-wingers Ramadan - grandson of the founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood - is often viewed as a ' wolf in sheepskin', a man with a double agenda who is actually far more fundamentalist than he lets on.
Scrutinised
The Rotterdam local authorities under recently appointed Moroccan-Dutch mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb decided to investigate the matter. More than 50 tapes on which Ramadan speaks in French and Arabic were translated and scrutinised to find out once and for all what the man really said. Last Wednesday, the results were presented in Rotterdam and the outcome is clearly in Mr Ramadan's favour. "Mr Ramadan does not speak with a double tongue", says Rotterdam city councillor Rik Grashof. The Gaykrant, he claims, quoted Mr Ramadan incorrectly and took some of his statements out of context giving them exactly the opposite meaning to what he wanted to say. Conclusion: the Rotterdam city council sees no reason to discontinue its cooperation with Tariq Ramadan.
An interesting comment on the whole affair comes from Markha Valenta of the University of Amsterdam, who is in a same sex marriage. In an opinion piece in NRC Handelsblad, she argues that the whole discussion focuses on the question whether Mr Ramadan said that homosexuality is abnormal and not permitted in Islam. But this is beside the point. Even if he said these things, it should not have been an issue. It is not just Muslims, who think homosexuality is unnatural and does not deserve full recognition, large numbers of Westerners do too. So why should we suddenly demand that Muslims say homosexuality is good and natural, even if they don't think so? argues Ms Valenta.
"What matters is that Muslims recognise the civil rights of homosexuals and lesbians and live their lives accordingly. Something Tariq Ramadan has always done. What a Muslim holds as his personal opinion is none of our business. The pressure on Muslims to publicly deny their personal convictions and beliefs is hypocritical and violates the values of enlightenment and democracy."