CAIRO, January 26, (IslamOnline.net) – In an article titled: “Freedom of Expression: France Ridicules Itself”, published Wednesday, January 26, Swiss Islamic thinker and philosopher Tariq Ramadan, responded bitterly to the desperate attempts by the French embassy in the Netherlands to block his participation in a literary festival earlier this week.
Within the same context, Dutch organizers of the ‘Winter Nights’ –- held January 21-23 –- expressed their anger at the French ambassador’s personal pressure on them, in a bid to prevent Ramadan from participating in the festival, according to Dutch daily Trouw Tuesday, January 25.
Within the events of the festival, Ramadan participated in a debate titled ‘The Discontent of the East’, on January 21. Prior to that event, several organizers of the debate received phone calls from the French ambassador Anne Gazeau-Secret and other employees of the embassy, the paper reported.
Dutch journalist Michael Zeeman, who chaired the debate, told Trouw,“(The ambassador) tried to convince me that Ramadan is dangerous, a wolf in sheep’s clothes, and said she didn’t understand why I would chair the event. I responded that even if Ramadan is dangerous, which I do not believe, he is allowed to speak. This is the Netherlands.”
Another participant in the debate, French islamologist Olivier Roy, was called by journalist Richard Labévière from Switzerland, who is an old friend of the French ambassador to the Netherlands.
Roy reported that the journalist warned him that participation in the debate would appear as support for Ramadan which would damage his reputation. Roy said that Labévière was indirectly referring to his position as advisor to the French ministry of foreign affairs, according to the Dutch paper.
In the run up to the festival, the French embassy had sent an article about Ramadan to two of the organizers.
The author of the article, a French research journalist, claimed in her article that the speeches of Ramadan expose him as a “fundamentalist who is fooling and deceiving with his liberal discourse”.
In an article published recently in a Dutch paper the French ambassador has accused the Dutch government of taking what she termed “an unrealistic stance towards the threat of Islamic radicalism”.
Freedom of Speech
In his article, published in French on Oumma.com Web site, Ramadan hit back bitterly at the French embassy’s intervention in his participation in the debate and the media hate-campaign that has been launched by French politicians and intellectuals to tarnish his image and prevent him from speaking at European and American institutions.
Ramadan wrote that in the past months numerous public halls and conference centers have in the last minute cancelled reservations made by organizations that would host him “Ramadan” in their events, after government officials had exerted pressure on the owners of these locations.
The Islamic thinker further wondered “how far France would go” in stopping him from expressing his opinions and why it is so afraid of the words of a free-thinking Muslim intellectual like himself.
“Do they fear that when the French will hear me speak out loud they will become aware of the lies and slander that have been spread about me? Are they afraid that French Muslims will cease to take on the role of victims and will demand to be recognized as free and independent citizens, as I invite them to do?”
Ramadan re-asserted his view that the methods of censorship and defamation which have been employed to damage him and leave no space for reasonable debate are unworthy of a democracy.
“Freedom of expression is threatened in France because the basic rights of access to free and independent speech are not respected.”
Ramadan concluded his article with an emotional appeal to our historical awareness to emphasize the gravity of what is happening.
“If today we remain silent because it concerns a “Muslim” intellectual we would act wisely to return to history and remember the shame of the same type of silence when it concerned the treatment of “Jewish” intellectuals.
“Have we then learned nothing at all? It is truly detestable that this kind of multi-dimensional racism continues to prey on our consciences and nourishes itself on our perpetual intellectual resignation.”