Tariq Ramadan: The Lowdown on His Downloads

The brief story from Al-Arabiya gives us the lowdown on his downloads: “Police find 776 pornographic photos on Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan’s laptops,” Al Arabiya, December 2, 2018:

Tariq Ramadan, the “towering intellect” and “leading Islamic thinker,” who was chosen by TIME magazine in 2000 as one of the seven most important religious innovators of the 21st century, and in 2004 was named by TIME as one of the “100 Most Influential People” in the world, and by Foreign Policy readers in 2005, 2006, 2008-2010, 2012-2015, as one of the top 100 Most Influential Thinkers in the World, saw his reputation come crashing down over the past year, as he has been revealed to have been a sexual predator of an unusually nauseating kind, with a deep, abiding, nearly maniacal interest in violent sex. He has enjoyed seducing, or threatening, or physically forcing females, from 14 years old on up, to engage in sex with him, the more degrading for them, the more pleasurable for him, whether in a parked car or an empty classroom, or most recently, in one of his innumerable hotel rooms, both before and after he delivered one of his well-received talks on the ethics of Islam. His record shows that ever since he was a high school teacher in Geneva, he has been forcing his sexual attentions on the most vulnerable of victims, beginning with the teenage students he taught and whom he managed, by the application of his sinister charm and, where necessary, by the application of force, to take advantage of. But those girls were at least spared the kind of terrifying violence he would later inflict in France on his adult prey, that included, but was not limited to, Henda Ayari and “Christelle.”

Now comes the news that 776 pornographic images have been found downloaded onto Tariq Ramadan’s computer. It appears that when he wasn’t trying to cajole or force someone into having sex, or was having sex in all sorts of ways, involving all sorts of positions and orifices, or was recuperating from his sexual encounters, ses ébats amoureux, he was still preoccupied with sex. After all, even Tariq Ramadan needs to rest up before going on to his next bout. As the Greco-Roman Galen noted, post coitum omne animal triste est. Ramadan, when alone, was deriving one-handed pleasure from those pornographic images he had downloaded, which are the equivalent, in our audiovisual age, of the lascivious works which one 18th-century French wit — possibly Rousseau — described as “those inconvenient books which can be read only with one hand.”

And all this time we had thought Tariq Ramadan, that “towering intellect,” had been deep in his scholarship, studying Al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun, Kant and Spinoza. The days and nights of this ithyphallic paladin of Islam were given over, it appears, less to ethical enlightenment and more to orgasms, that our “towering intellect” required day after day.

What a full life our Mr. Ramadan, the serial rapist, insatiable sadist, and haggard masturbator, contrived to lead. And knowing what we do about him, would any of us be inclined to attend a lecture by our Mr. Ramadan on his formerly favorite subject, the ethics of Islam, as shown here and here and here? Not you or I. Perhaps Karen Armstrong (Ramadan served on the council of her “Charter For Compassion”) or Linda Sarsour (for whom Ramadan expressed his support), both unswervingly loyal to the “great Islamic thinker,” would show up. For them, it’s solidarity forever.

Several of Ramadan’s books contain the word “ethics” in their titles. One of those books is “Islamic Ethics: A Very Short Introduction.” And now we have all had, from the life of Ramadan himself, an introduction to his “Islamic Ethics” that, fittingly, turn out to be “very short” indeed.