European Muslim: the multiple identity of Tariq Ramadan

TARIQ RAMADAN is a Swiss Muslim and a proponent of "European Islam"--a form of Islam that he says is appropriate to and consistent with European culture. He combines European academic training with a distinct Islamist pedigree: he is the grandson of nassau al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist opposition group in Egypt, and he is the son of Said Ramadan, a Muslim Brotherhood leader who was expelled from Egypt.

Ramadan studied philosophy and French literature at Geneva University and completed two doctorates there, in philosophy and Arabic and Islamic studies. He also studied classic Islamic scholarship at al-Azhar University in Cairo. For some years, he taught philosophy at the College de Saussure in Geneva and was professor of Islamic studies at Fribourg University.

In 2004 he was appointed to a post in Islamic studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame, but several months later his U.S. visa was revoked. The U.S. said Ramadan had made financial contributions to groups that provided funds to Hamas, which the U.S. terms a terrorist organization. Ramadan subsequently resigned from his Notre Dame position.

He has since been a senior research fellow at the Lokahi Foundation in London and a visiting fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford. His many books include To Be a European Muslim (1998); Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity (2000); Jihad, Violence, War and Peace in Islam (2002); Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (2003); Globalization: Muslim Resistances and Muslims in France: The Way Towards Coexistence (both 2004) and The Messenger (2007). In 2004, Time listed Ramadan as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Can you say something about your background and heritage? How do you define your identity? What is your mother tongue?

I was born in Geneva into an Egyptian family, and I remember that we were always talking about the Arab world. My father and mother were in touch with people coming from abroad--mainly from the Middle East but also, because my father traveled a lot, from Asia. So Arabic was my mother tongue, and my second language at home was English.

I was helped by my parents to become involved in Swiss society. I was in the mainstream school system, taking part in sports and never wanting to be isolated. But we used to discuss going back to Egypt one day, to the mother country and our roots. In my mind and heart, Egypt was quite idealized. It was a place where people were struggling for justice, always doing good--a place where it would be easy to be a Muslim because, according to all I heard, the atmosphere was really different there.

I first went to Egypt when I was 17 and saw my larger family as they lived their daily lives. It was a shock, because it was not at all the way I had pictured it. For the first time, I realized that I was not in fact an Egyptian. Around age 23 or 24 I realized that I would be staying in Europe.

Do you think of yourself as Swiss?

Now I don't have only one identity. I have what I call a multiple identity. Muslim by religion, I am Swiss by nationality and connected to the Swiss political and civic reality. But I also am Egyptian by heritage, and I have taken my children to visit Egypt so they can have memories of it and feel the same connection. At the same time I'm a universalist by principle. And this isn't just a philosophical projection, it's deep inside me that I am nurturing this multiple identity.

Your wife is Swiss?

She is French by her father and Swiss by her mother. I was a dose friend of her brother when we were very young. Then she came to Islam, and we married after she converted.

Whenever your name comes up, the first thing people say is that your grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (and arguably the father of modern Islamism). What influence has he had on your life and thought?

I was always hearing about him at home, from both of my parents. He was the father of my mother, but the spiritual teacher of my father. He met my father when he was 14 and educated him, and they were very close. Hassan al-Banna was a Sufi, and he impressed my father by the quality of his faith and his devotion.

So my perception of Hassan al-Banna was from the beginning mainly positive. The first time I went to Egypt I met people who had known him, and my positive perception was confirmed, for he had done things that were important for the country. He resisted colonization, and he was responsible for establishing 2,000 schools, 1,500 social institutions and more than 80 small-business enterprises.

Then I returned to Europe and heard opinions that demonized my grandfather. People claimed that he was a fundamentalist and that everything he did was wrong, especially at the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979, when I was still a teenager. I worked on his Risalatut, the text he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s, and began to have not only a personal connection with him but also an intellectual understanding of his thought. I read his memoirs and articles, and when I wrote a Ph.D. thesis on reformist Islamic thinkers, I included 200 pages on my grandfather and his work.