Tariq Ramadan portrayed the Muslim Brotherhood as a “liberation movement”
The Muslim Brotherhood began organizing when, in March 1928, six companions, fired with enthusiasm by al-Banna’s preaching, sought him out to ask him to launch a political campaign in the name of Islam: “We have listened to your message, we are aware of where we stand, we are committed, but we do not know what practical steps to take to reinforce Islam and bring betterment to Muslims.”[1] The Guide will at last have the opportunity to demonstrate his gift for organization. He began by a piece of advice that would provide the Muslim Brotherhood with the means to survive the obstacles that repression was to bring – and to counter its critics: the cult of the informal. “One of his companions asked: ‘By what name shall we be called?’ And al-Banna replied: ‘None of that; leave aside appearances and officialdom. Let the principle and priority of our union be thought, morality and action. We are brothers in the service of Islam, so we are the Muslim Brotherhood.’”[2] A judicious piece of advice…. al-Banna had understood that a movement that could not be pinned down would be indestructible. In giving his movement a name that was both a title and an expression currently employed in Arabic, in which believers often address each other as “brother”, he created a means of identification that was discrete. From its birth on, the Brotherhood was both an official movement and a school of thought which one could claim to belong to, or deny being part of, according to circumstances. On the other hand the watchword was clear and unambiguous: “Our motto will forever be: God is our objective. God’s messenger is our guide. The Koran is our constitution. Struggle is our path. Death on the road that leads to God is our ultimate desire.”[3]
In other words it was never al-Banna’s intention to advocate a rationalist, secular Islam, but on the contrary to organize a movement capable of putting pressure on Egypt, and then on the rest of the world, to adopt a fundamentalist social order destructive of freedom. As proof, one has only to read the political and social program drawn up by al-Banna in 1936, a program entitled “Fifty Demands”, which was the Muslim Brotherhood’s manifesto for “concrete reform”. The manifesto spelled out in detail the steps to be taken to establish legislation, and subsequently a social, political and economic system based on the sharia. Throughout the manifesto it is said that individual liberties must yield to dictatorship by divine right. As to method, the Brotherhood intended to “go beyond political differences and direct the energies of the ‘umma’ [the worldwide community of Muslims] towards one sole aim”: the attainment of a political Islam. The organization defined its objectives as “reforming the laws in conformity with Islamic legislation, particularly as regards the definition of offences and the punishments for crimes”,[4] and spreading “the spirit of Islam throughout all the branches of government so that all citizens consider it their duty to put Islamic precepts into effect”. In the meantime, in their everyday dealings, the Brothers intended “to initiate respect for morality among the people and make everyone aware of the regulations set down by the law”, which meant that “the punishments for violations of the code of morality should be strictly applied”. This objective, which was central to the program, involved several provisions, namely “eradicating prostitution”, “treating fornication whatever the circumstances as a serious crime punishable by law”, but also “forbidding coeducation”, “considering all private contact between members of the opposite sex as a punishable crime”, “closing down dance halls and other Centers of debauch as well as outlawing dancing and any form of physical contact between a man and a woman”. And that’s only a brief résumé of the contents.
The manifesto was for many years available only in Arabic until the journal Islam de France decided to publish it in French so as to enlighten all those who, misled by the angelic presentation of the text given by Tariq Ramadan, were ignorant of the basically fundamentalist and reactionary nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. The publication of this program, which proved to be quite different from the version that Ramadan had spread among the anti-globalisation leftists, was by no means welcomed by al-Banna’s grandson. Michel Renard, one of the founders of Islam de France, recalls having been the target of the latter’s anger: “It’s then that I realized that he practiced double speak: you can’t believe in a secular society and in Hassan al-Banna at the same time.”[5] This affront to the founder’s dignity resulted in the closing down of the journal. Al-Bouraq, the house that published the journal, but also publishes Tariq Ramadan, all of a sudden cancelled its contract after the publication of the issue in question, bringing to a close one of the most stimulating editorial initiatives devoted to Islam in France.
For Tariq Ramadan it is essential that the movement that inspired him be seen in terms of his own particular perspective. For someone who is aware of the harm done by the Muslim Brotherhood’s fundamentalism – and I am referring not only to the violence but to the fanaticism that Tariq Ramadan considers as wholly legitimate – it is frightening to hear him explain to European Muslims that the “extremely critical remarks” made concerning his grandfather are to be accounted for by the fact that his “national liberation movement” was a thorn in the side of Westerners.[6] He points to the fact that the Anglo-Saxon press presented the movement in 1936 in favourable terms, until the day when the Muslim Brotherhood stood up against “the Zionist presence in Palestine”: “It is quite clear that once it became evident that there was popular support for the Brotherhood’s stance, they began to cast suspicions on Hassan al-Banna’s activities, to spread rumours about him, and disparage the movement as a whole.”[7] A way of implying that all the criticisms made of al-Banna and the Brotherhood were the result of a campaign of lies designed to protect the Zionist interests. In fact, what we can conclude from all of this is that Time magazine – which was to designate Ramadan as one of “the leading lights” in the year 2000 – was even at this early stage not particularly perspicacious….
It is true that during al-Banna’s time, the British government and King Farouk thought they could make use of the Muslim Brotherhood as a counterweight to the Egyptian left and the Wafd. According to Olivier Carré and Michel Seurat, they even received a formal grant of 500 Egyptian pounds from the Suez Canal Company, a building permit for a first meeting place, as well as a mosque under their control. These findings emerged in researching the first bulletins published by the Brotherhood in which al-Banna attempted to explain things to his companions. According to Carré and Seurat: “Banna, who would subsequently deny the gifts from the Canal Company, began by trying to justify what he had done in the eyes of his companions, who expressed their indignation, and took leave of him.”[8] Subsequently, al-Banna would simply state that he had never received any such gifts. A Muslim Brother then is free to lie or change what he has said, if it serves his purpose. At any rate, that’s one aspect of the Muslim Brotherhood’s past that Tariq Ramadan is by no means eager to remember when speaking to an anti-globalist audience – or even to an audience of Islamists that he wants to convince of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood had always, from the very beginning, been a movement of resistance against colonialism. The Muslim Brotherhood did in fact take part in the putsch organized by the army officers that liberated Egypt from the yoke of colonialism, but this liberation was only a phase dictated by the immediate context. Egyptian independence was never, for the Brotherhood, an end is itself, but a prelude to the setting up of an Islamic dictatorship.
The Brotherhood’s participation in the struggle for independence has in addition been considerably exaggerated by the movement’s propaganda. But even in the course of their attempts to falsify history, certain partisans of the Brotherhood revealed to what extent al-Banna was above all obsessed by the idea of re-instituting Islamic values. To that end he was prepared to negotiate with any government whatsoever. In 1946, for instance, he was in the thick of negotiations to obtain the right to publish a daily, and to acquire land on which to construct his propaganda Centers, when the Communists set off a massive wave of strikes in the Cairo textile industry in order to force the British to leave the country. The Communist “Committee to Liberate the Nation” asked al-Banna to send his troops to join in the general strike scheduled for February 21st, but al-Banna refused, because he did not want to jeopardize the ongoing negotiations, but also out of deep-rooted suspicion of the Communists. On the given day, a number Brothers disregarded instructions, and joined up anyway with the strikers. Bypassed by the rank and file, al-Banna finally consented to call for a strike on the following days, but refused to join in the collective movement, which then fell apart.[9] It was not until 1948 that al-Banna decided in earnest to organize joint demonstrations with the Communists against the British occupying forces. It was an alliance dictated by the circumstances – and one which did not last for long. In the same year (1948), al-Banna still included the Communists in the lengthy list of enemies who were conspiring against the Brothers : “World-wide Judaism, and international communism, the colonial powers, and the advocates of atheism and moral degeneracy – they all, from the very first day, considered the Brothers and their message as major obstacles.[10]
Caroline Fourest
Brother Tariq The doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan
[1] Oliviers Carré, Michel Seurat, Les Frères musulmans, op. cit., p.11
[2] Quoted by Tariq Ramadan, Aux sources du renouveau musulmans, op. cit., p. 11.
[3] Hassan al-Banna, Epitre aux jeunes [Epistle to the Young].
[4] The quotes that follow are all taken from Hassan al-Banna, “Les cinquante demandes du programmes des Frères Musulmnas (1936) [The Fifty Demands of the Muslim Brotherhood Program of 1936], Islam de France, no. 8, October 2000.
[5] Interview with Michel Renard, 12 January 2004.
[6] Tariq Ramadan cassette, “Courants de la pensée musulmane contemporaine: Hassan al-Banna”.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Olivier Carré, Michel Seurat, Les Frères musulmans, op. cit.,p. 18
[9] In Hassan al-Banna. Visions et Missions, Thameem Ushama, a Brotherhood historian, took offense at the idea that the “enemies” of the Brotherhood had used this episode to discredit them, but does not deny the facts.
[10] Hassan al-Banna, Al-qawl al-fasl [Last Words], 1948, et Al-Bayân [Declaration], 1948, two posthumous brochures quoted in R. SA’îd, Hassan…, p. 149. Commented in Olivier Carré, Michel Seurat, Le Fréres Musulmans, op. cit., p. 32.
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