What I believe
Tariq Ramadan (2010)
In the 1990s, Ramadan was hailed as the Renaissance Man of Islam. He had made multiple trips to Malaysia to promote his brand of liberal Islam. He was trying to rebrand the religion to give it a good name. On the years, however, his good name has taken a beating of late. He has been accused of 'double speak', quoting many of his speeches that do not reflect his very nature of his rhetorics. On the one hand, he talks about a benign European form of Islam to the West. While, when he is with another crowd, he is agreeable to archaic practices of the religion like stoning. At one time, his visa to the US was revoked after allegedly found to be funding Hamas, the terrorist wing of Muslim Brotherhood.
It must be hard for him to tear himself of the shadow of his grandfather, Hassan Al-Banna, who was hailed as the founder of Muslim Brotherhood, the pivotal organisation in the history of Islamic fundamentalism. The media has not been kind to him. They accuse him of putting up a front while, in the background, he continues the legacy of his grandfather and his anti-Western stance.
I was loaned this book by a wellwisher (
Thanks, TMG) who must have been smitten by this suave modern looking Swiss scholar and his multilingual smooth talk.
This book is just another which mirrors all that he has articulated in his interviews over the years. We are all quite familiar with his famed background and his scholarly achievements He also tells about his travels to various parts of the world to understand and teach the
Muslimins about the changing face of the religion. He claims to try to bridge the divide between Muslims in the developed countries and their counterparts in the developing ones by explaining the true teachings of the faith in coherent narratives. He tries to tell them to share their universe and practise harmonious co-existence.
Ramadan explains that there need not be a demarcation between the Western and Islamic civilisations. It is entirely plausible for a Muslim to profess his religion in the Western world without any conflict of interest. He further reiterates that he can be faithful to his nation and Islam at the same time. I think herein lies the problem. Questions like these need not arise in the first place. Nation, the place you live is different from your religious duty to your soul or your after-life. Equating both of these and putting your allegiance to a foreign alien force may naturally raise suspicion to your loyalty to the country. It is like your kid calling the neighbour father!
The problem with the world today, with Islam, is that everybody says that the Islam that we see and are exposed to on the media is not depicting the real essence of the faith. There are interests by its enemies to put it in a bad light. That is the problem. Every professor of the belief thinks his way is the way, the correct and the only way.
Ramadan, echoing many of the scholars before him, is quite vehement that Islam has no problem with its women. Its women, do not have any problems, toeing the line set by the elders in the religion.
On the topic of homosexuality, Ramadan, as a Muslim, does not condone the practice but still respects them as individuals, nevertheless.
Many liberal Islamic thinkers including Fatah Tarek do not think highly of Ramadan whom he accuses of being a snakes-oil salesman who tries the destroy the fibre of society like a termite from within. He further thinks that he is just trying to continue the unfinished businesses of his grandfather, Al-Banna and his father, Said Ramadan to introduce archaic laws to the modern world!
And Then There Were None (1945)
The story starts with eight visitors reaching a secluded island bungalow for the weekend in the middle of nowhere at the invitation of a certain Mr and Mrs U N Owen. The peculiar thing is that the hosts do not show up. Two temporary servants serve them. These ten people are left with the company of each other and communication to the mainland was cut off. All ten visitors, at one time of their lives, were privy or responsible for somebody's death. A judge had sentenced an innocent man to death. A doctor had operated a patient under the influence of alcohol to cause his demise. A lady had tormented her sibling to hang herself and so on.
