Tariq Ramadan likes to get on the radio (NPR, the BBC) and explain that his grandfather, Hasan Al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood as an "anti-colonialist" enterprise. Ramadan then alludes to the Britsh in Egypt. No one bothers to interrupt him to note that the British left Egypt in 1922, and that Hasan Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Why is that?
CAMERA has a little more on Tariq Ramadan's grandfather, about whom he becomes so emotional (his voice filling with filial piety), the man who whipped up Cairene crowds to go out and attack Jewish and Coptic-owned shops, and to beat up their owners.
Here it is:
Tariq Ramadan, Your Grandfather Was a Colonialist
In a recent article appearing in The New York Times, Muslim apologist Tariq Ramadan portrayed his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood as an anti-colonialist.
This is simply not true. Al-Banna was a self-proclaimed colonialist. His own writings prove it.
In an essay titled "Our Mission" written to describe the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Banna described how the adherence to true Islam fufills the impulse embodied by a number of different "patriotisms" offered by propagandists who compete with Islam for humanity's allegiance. In the essay, translated by Charles Wendell and published by the University of California Press in 1978 (Five Tracts of Hasan Al-Banna), the author lists a number of patriotisms whose impulses are better fufilled by authentic Muslim practices. After detailing the problems of the"Patriotism of the Sentiment" and the "Patriotism of Freedom and Greatness" al-Banna writes
Or if they mean by "patriotism" the conquest of countries and lordship over the earth, Islam has already ordained that, and has sent out the conquerors to carry out the most gracious of colonizations and the most blessed of conquests. This is what He, the Almighty, says: "Fight them till there is no longer discord, and the religion is God's" [Q.2.193].
This is support for religious colonialism pure and simple. Readers will have to decide for themselves if Ramadan is either misinformed about his grandfather's beliefs, or he willfully mischaracterizing al-Banna's teachings.
Islam is a mishmash of pre-Islamic pagan Arab lore, with bits and pieces, plucked and then distorted, from Jewish and Christian sources. Though the history of early Islam has hardly gotten started, given that no Muslim scholars would dare to question the received Muslim narrative, and until recent decades, with a handful of exceptions -- such as Alphonse Mingana -- no Western scholar either would dare to apply the Higher Criticism to Islam but now, thanks to John Wansbrough, Gerd Puin, Andrew Rippen, Patricia Crone, Christoph Luxenberg, and dozens of others, even such a conventional and heretofore submissive-to-the-Islamic-narrative academic as Fred Donner shows signs of wanting not to miss the boat and consequently, getting with the program). It was created, or perhaps better morphed into, a form that would allow it to be a faith that would both promote, and justify, conquest by the primitive Arabs of far larger, more settled, more advcanced, richer populations, chiefly of Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians.
It is a faith based on the very idea of conquest, of constant expansion until Islam rules, and Musilms dominate, everywhere. That is what it is about, and Islam is itself the object of worship in Islam.
But within the putative universalist creed is another one: that of the Arabs as superior to all non-Arabs, including fellow Muslims. In Islam, a new convert (or "revert" since in the Muslim view everyone is born a Muslim) ideally should take an Arab name. Muslims should read the Qur'an only in Arabic -- all other versions were once considered illegitimate, and even today, it is only the Arabic version -- far harsher than versions in other languages, according to scholars and to apostates too -- that counts. The non-Arab Muslim must prostrate himself Arabia-wards five times a day, must idealize and emulate the customs and manners of seventh-century Arabs, must wistfully wish for, or invent for himself, an Arab lineage, ideally one from the family of the Prophet (think of all the Sayeeds running around Pakistan). The non-Arab Muslim must learn to yearn to be Arab and, though he cannot be,he must learn to follow the Arab line.
All this Hasan Al-Banna knew and accepted. And so too does his sinister, Geneva-educated smooth-talking plausible grandson, now a "professor" (his professorship at Oxford having been ordered up, and bought and paid for, by the rich Arabs of the Gulf), Tariq Ramadan.
Islam, despite its universalist camouflage and claims, has always been and always will be a vehicle for Arab imperialism, the most successful imperialism in world history.