A Dutch university and the city of Rotterdam Tuesday fired Islamic author and lecturer Tariq Ramadan from separate positions for hosting a show on Iran’s state television. In a joint statement, Erasmus University and the city council said his program “Islam & Life” on Iran’s English language Press TV is “irreconcilable” with his duties in Rotterdam.
We’d certainly agree that working for the Islamic Republic doesn’t become a supposedly moderate “integration adviser” who was tasked with bridging the divide between Rotterdam’s Muslim and non-Muslim communities and who also lectures students on “Citizenship and Identity.” The question, however, is why the Swiss-born Mr. Ramadan was hired in the first place. He didn’t exactly fit the bill of “bridge builder” even before signing up with mullah TV.
Mr. Ramadan, who has managed to impress a predominantly leftist audience with his eloquent talk of a “European Islam,” likes to talk about democracy and following the rule of law—but only as long as the law doesn’t contradict an Islamic principle. He rejects terrorism and violence but thinks that blowing up eight-year-old Israeli children is “contextually explicable.” He supposedly stands for a modern Islam, but he refused to reject the stoning of adulterers when then-interior minister and future French President Nicolas Sarkozy challenged him on the subject in a 2003 TV debate. All Mr. Ramadan could bring himself to say was to call for a “moratorium” on the practice.
On his Web site, Mr. Ramadan says of his firing that when people “single out a ‘visible Muslim intellectual’ for attack their real agenda is the politics of Muslim-baiting and fear.” Those are the views to which a free country entitles him—and has no obligation to bankroll.
