Islam's European Reformation?

The controversial Tariq Ramadan's latest book promotes a "Western" version of Islam. Is he the "Muslim Martin Luther"?

Late last month, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton lifted a six-year visa ban on the Swiss Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan, an Oxford professor and Europe's premier voice of reformist Islam, had been prohibited by the Bush administration from entering the U.S. on the grounds that he had given money to the Palestinian militant group Hamas - a charge he vigorously denied. Ever since, Ramadan has polarized public opinion in both America and Europe: the left lauds him as a "Muslim Martin Luther," while the right demonizes him as an extremist in sheep's clothing. Despite the passionate debate, neither side has shown much interest in the substance of Ramadan's message - conveniently summarized in his concise new book, What I Believe (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Ramadan wrote What I Believe as "a work of clarification." In it, he emphasizes that his goal is to fashion a distinctively "Western" expression of Islam that does not require Muslims to choose between their national identities and their religious one. According to Ramadan, a person can be both fully Muslim and fully French, British, or German; these multiple identities shift and blend depending on the situation we face.

Ramadan's intellectual agenda reflects his own unconventional upbringing: his maternal grandfather was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical group that championed the establishment of an Islamic state in Egypt and which launched the modern era of Islamist politics. Ramadan's father, Said, was one of al-Banna's senior deputies, and after al-Banna's death, he went into exile with his family in Geneva. There, he committed his life to preserving and disseminating al-Banna's legacy. The first of Said Ramadan's children born in Europe was Tariq. Caught between the Islamist cauldron of Egypt and cosmopolitan Geneva, Tariq grew up parsing his multiple and seemingly competing identities. As he writes, "I am Swiss by nationality, Egyptian by memory, Muslim by religion, European by culture, [and] universalist by principle."