Muslims replacing Jews as Europe's scapegoat, says academic

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Muslims in Europe have replaced the continent’s Jews of yesteryear as the largest target of discrimination and prejudice, according to a prominent Swiss academic and Islamic expert.

“There are new alliances in Europe against the Muslim presence, and people who were against Judaism are now against the Muslim presence in Europe,” Tariq Ramadan, an Oxford professor and grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, said Friday at a seminar at Istanbul Bilgi University.

“[These discriminatory European attitudes] are not only about Islamism; they are about a power struggle. It is not integrated into people’s minds that Islam is also a Western religion,” Ramadan said, criticizing the attitudes of some Europeans he described as “Islamophobic.”

“People like the head of France’s far-right National Front Party, Marine Le Pen, and Dutch politician Geert Wilders are imposing the politics of fear against Islam and this is very dangerous,” the academic said. He added that what lies beneath the growing anti-Islamism in Europe is the changing demographics of the continent’s Muslim population.

“The more Muslims become European, the more Islam becomes a problem for Europeans,” Ramadan said.

Speaking to a group of journalists in a different meeting, Ramadan also said young people in the Arab world had been undergoing social-media training in the United States, Serbia and the Caucasus over the past two or three years in order to learn how to mobilize the masses during uprisings.

“However, the revolts [of the Arab Spring] were still controlled by the people themselves,” he said, adding that despite some successes, the democratic uprisings against despotic regimes in the region are not yet complete. “These are revolutions that are not completed yet, and maybe there is a chance that they will never be successful.”

Criticism of Obama

Ramadan also criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for not touching on Turkey during his speech Thursday regarding the Middle East.

“I think what Obama did not say is more important than what he said. The United States might have some other interests in the region of which we are not aware,” said Ramadan.

Regarding Obama’s request from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to stabilize and modernize the economies of Tunisia and Egypt, Ramadan said the United States was attempting to make these countries economically dependent even as they secured their political autonomy.

The academic also said the Muslim Brotherhood, which has emerged as one of Egypt’s key political players with the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak, was attempting to implement a modern understanding of Islam.

Source: Hürriyet.
Link: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=tariq-ramadan-8220europeans-who-were-against-judaism-are-now-against-muslim-presence-in-europe8221-2011-05-22.