Marina's Hero

He held a prestigious post as a professor at  St. Antony’s College, Oxford, with a chair funded especially for him by the Emir of Qatar. And at the same time, he held a second important position (and received, no doubt, an even larger salary than he was already getting at Oxford) as the head of the Islamic Law and Ethics Research Center, his own academic fiefdom, in Qatar. But now he is on “leave” from Oxford, a “leave” that is undoubtedly going to be permanent. And he can’t very well head his Islamic Law and Ethics Research Center sinecure in Qatar when he has been told not to set foot in Qatar ever again.

Still, he has his many unswervingly loyal followers — two million Facebook friends and 200,000 followers on Twitter, and 135,778 who have signed a petition demanding that Tariq Ramadan be released from prison.The Internet is full of “temoignages” (testimonials) to the greatness of Tariq Ramadan. Here’s the first one I came across: “I still remember. I was a child when I first listened to Tariq Ramadan. His words have had an effect on me, like a father who learns to walk to his child, to awaken my curiosity which was, until then, in the early stages.

His thought, but also his way of expressing it, with sweetness and nuance, has been a principle for me in any approach to learning and teaching. I had the chance to meet him at various seminars where I was able to discover a simple and accessible man to his entourage, full of kindness and kindness. He is for me a thinker that enriches my thoughts, a brother who feeds my spirituality, a passeur of light that awakens my conscience and especially a man who constantly recalls hope.”

The latest news on Tariq Ramadan does not come from France, where he is in prison awaiting trial, after several women (Muslim)  accused him of rape and extreme sexual violence. You surely remember his very first accuser, one Henda Ayari, who had earlier written about Ramadan in her book J’ai choisi d’être libre (“I Chose To Be Free”), giving him the alias “Zoubeyr” because, at that point, she was still terrified of what he might do to her, given how violently he had already treated her in their encounters. Ramadan is both very powerful and, as she knew, very sinister. In fact, her fears were justified, for once she bravely accused him publicly, she received more than 3,000 death threats within just a few days. She now is forced to live under round-the-clock guard.

Here is how she had described Tariq Ramadan, giving him the name “Zoubeyr”: “This man, Zoubeyr, transformed before my very eyes into a vile, vulgar, aggressive being – physically and verbally,” she wrote. And then she explained that she was now giving him, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, his real name: Tariq Ramadan. “For modesty, I will not give the precise details here of the acts he made me submit to. But it is enough that he took great advantage of my weakness and the admiration I felt for him. ”