Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan [Hardcover]

Caroline Fourest (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1594032157 | ISBN-13: 978-1594032158 | Publication Date: January 3, 2008 | Edition: 1

Tariq Ramadan is a global phenomenon. A Swiss-born Muslim activist, he is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical group credited with inspiring modern Islamic radicalism. Ramadan is fluent in English, French and Arabic. In Europe, he is the most quoted and circulated writer on Islam. His writings are a regular feature of major English-speaking newspapers, but his real message is revealed in his speeches to Muslim groups in France, Africa, and the Middle East. Caroline Fourest has carefully transcribed and translated those speeches and shows that Ramdan's ingenious rhetoric is a Trojan horse, fostering the anti-Semitic and anti-Christian values of fundamentalist Islam on its latest battlefield: Western civilization.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Caroline Fourest is a French feminist writer, journalist and editor of the magazine Prochoix. A graduate in sociology and political science, she has written many books on such topics as the conservative right, the pro-life movement (France and USA), and current fundamentalist trends in the Abrahamic religions. She blogs regularly on herhomepage (French). --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 150 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; 1 edition (January 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594032157
• ISBN-13: 978-1594032158
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #617,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant expose, February 10, 2008

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (Hardcover)

Tariq Ramadan is always shown to be the good face of 'moderate European Islam' and he is trotted out, or rather trots himself out, everytime there is some question about the ability of Europe to swallow and assimilate its millions of Muslim immigrants. A passionate defender of Muslims he pretends that Islamism is but a tiny minority and that Islam and European civilization can go hand in hand. But despite having been born in moderate and tolerant Switzerland he learned none of the nuetrality of that country. Instead as this book shows he speaks with two mouths: one to Europeans and Westerners and another to his fellow Muslims in Arabic

In fact Ramadan is a practitioner of 'Taqieh', the Muslim Shiite idea that is defined as "to hide the truth is the ultimate art of a Moslem" according to Interruptions. This book does the reader of the service of translating what he says in Arabic and showing that it does not jive with what he says in English and what is often quoted in English language media.

A fascinating expose that will surely startle anyone familiar with this influential individual.

Seth J. Frantzman

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable Study That Goes Just A Bit Too Far, January 15, 2011

By 

D. Ashal "Just some dude" (Aztlan, holmes) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (Hardcover)

I applaud Caroline Fourest for making sure that people know who they're really dealing with in Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan is feted by many people as a 'moderate' Muslim voice and a bridge between Islam and The West (and unfortunately Fourest thinks in these same rigid, esseentialist categories, but I'll get to that). The general reaction to Ramadan is revealing in itself; most of his message, examined critically, is hardly "moderate" but simply a toned down version of fairly typical Caliphist rhetoric, and even then many Orthodox Sunni Muslims consider Ramadan to be a sellout with no credibility. If Ramadan represents anything, it's that the supposedly healthy body of moderate Muslims is largely mythical, with most supposed moderates either being eloquent extremists or de facto atheists. The recent murder of Salman Taseer, and the reactions from the Muslim world, threw this into even sharper relief than before.

Fourest shows that even though Ramadan's message for his 'Western' audience is fairly unremarkable, his message for his Muslim audience is quite a bit more frank. Ramadan's ideas are, in substance, not that different from that of the Ikwhan whom his family is so closely associated with. And the Ikwhan's penchant for dissimulation has reached new depths with Ramadan, who can say 'night' to a Dutch or French audience and 'day' to an Arab one, as Fourest shows quite clearly here. Even if Ramadan's apologists could somehow make a case for 4/5 of the examples being 'out of context' or misleading, that last 1/5 would still be alarming. Liberal and multiculturalist defenders of Ramadan would do well to exmine Fourest's claims, and realize that ultimately what he advocates is antithetical to their values.

In my view, Fourest's biggest mistakes are two; she tends buy into the idea of Islam and the Western world as two seperate monoliths when, frankly, she should know better. As a liberal feminist, she knows that not all of the western world is exactly an enlightenment paradise, and she does say so, but lapses into rhetoric that sounds alarmingly like the European far right at times. Relatedly, her second mistake is talking about taqiyah in a way that reinforces some of the paranoia that many people feel towards Muslims. Taqiyah is NOT some kind of Muslim code that allows every Muslim to lie to non-Muslims. It is a very specific Shia doctrine that allowed Shia to pretend to be Sunni to save their lives in times of persecution. It did not "drift over" into Sunnism as Fourest implies; some Sunni individuals and some Sunni organizations are guilty of doublespeak, to be sure, perhaps most of them. But I would argue the same is true, to some extent or another, with many organizations with various origins. Islamism is a cause for a lot of concern in this day and age and the lack of a clear distinction between ordinary Muslims and extremists is a troubling one; nonetheless, claiming that all Muslims have a mandate to lie and can't be trusted is a bigoted calumny similar to those heaped upon Jews for centuries. Too many authors have advanced this idea and Fourest did herself no favors by resorting to it; her case against Ramadan was strong enough to stand on its own.

This serious reservation aside, anyone interested in the way the next couple decades play out in Europe between an increasingly Islamic population and a changing pluarlistic society should read this book.

32 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ramadan is a Wolf, March 4, 2008

By 

Ying Rath - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (Hardcover)

While Fourest's book is written (or perhaps translated) like a grocery list, this book exposes Ramadan as the wolf he is. He is the typical race and religion baiter, using the openness of the West as the tool by which he hopes to destroy it. We might write Ramadam off as a comic character if he was acting for personal wealth - and that may indeed be one of his motivations - but his main motivation is to promote his fringe and violent ideology and promote his political movement. Why the spineless Europeans allow this man to live and do his work among them is beyond me.