Posted on 01/25/2006 5:25:22 PM PST by Pikamax
Suit Backing Muslim Scholar Challenges Part of Patriot Act By JULIA PRESTON
Citing the case of a prominent Swiss Muslim scholar who has been barred from the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit today seeking to strike down a clause of the USA Patriot Act that bans foreigners who endorse terrorist activity from traveling to this country.
The suit was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on behalf of the scholar, Tariq Ramadan, and three national organizations of academics or writers who have invited him to speak to their members. The groups, including the American Academy of Religion, the largest American organization of scholars of religion, say Mr. Ramadan has never expressed support for terrorism, and they argue that the Patriot Act clause has been applied to stifle political and academic debate in the United States.
Mr. Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, has been denied a United States visa since July 2004, when he was on the verge of moving with his family to Indiana to take up a tenured professor's position at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. In a telephone interview on Tuesday from his office in Britain, Mr. Ramadan said he has never been given a formal explanation why his visa was revoked, after he had traveled frequently to the United States for many years.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Musta been that phone call to AL Qaida, Mr Ramadan.
J.F.C just whose side are these traitors on?
"Suit Backing Muslim Scholar Challenges Part of Patriot Act By JULIA PRESTON"
Are you sure it wasn't a Berka backing Muslim scholar?
Mr. Ramadan said he has never been given a formal explanation why his visa was revoked, after he had traveled frequently to the United States for many years.
That's so 9-10 !
It's about time that the ACLU was outlawed in this Country by a majority Vote!
It's long past time to defund the ACLU. This is too damn much.
"...strike down a clause of the USA Patriot Act that bans foreigners who endorse terrorist activity from traveling to this country. "
We should add one that bans foreigners who endorse the ACLU activity from traveling to this country.
Guess it is the ACLU who is really backing open borders, not businesses nor a certain party wanting more voters.
Don't you all just love that phrase: "Muslim scholar".
What does that mean? A Koranic scholar? A book of murder and retribution against all that is not Islam.
Being knowledgeable about the Koran and Muslim faith is about the same as being up on Mein Kampf and Nazism.
His Father started the Muslim Brotherhood.
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2043
Printer-friendly version Email this article to a friend
Why Revoke Tariq Ramadan's U.S. Visa?
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 27, 2004
It's not every day that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security revokes a visa issued to a Swiss-national scholar scheduled to teach at one of America's premier universities. But this has just happened, and it's a good thing too.
The Swiss scholar is Tariq Ramadan. He is Islamist royalty – his maternal grandfather, Hasan al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood, probably the single most powerful Islamist institution of the twentieth century, in Egypt in 1928. Tariq is a Swiss citizen because his father, Sa‘id Ramadan, also a leading Islamist, fled from Egypt in 1954 following a crackdown on the brotherhood. Sa‘id reached Geneva in 1958, where Tariq was born in 1962.
Thanks to his pedigree and his talents, Tariq has emerged as a significant force in his own right. Symbolic of this, Time magazine in April named him one of the world's top hundred scientists and thinkers. And so, when Notre Dame University went looking for a Henry R. Luce professor of religion, conflict and peacebuilding, it unsurprisingly settled on Mr. Ramadan.
Its offer was made and accepted by the beginning of 2004; a work visa followed in February. Mr. Ramadan bought a house, found schools for his four children, and dispatched his personal effects to South Bend, Indiana. He was supposed to start teaching a few days ago.
But on July 28, just nine days before the Ramadans were to leave for America, Mr. Ramadan was informed that the Department of Homeland Security had revoked his work visa. A DHS spokesman, Russ Knocke, later explained this had been done in accord with a law that denies entry to aliens who have used a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity." The revocation, Mr. Knocke added, was based on "public safety or national security interests."
Of course, Mr. Ramadan dismisses the revocation as "unjustified" and due to "political pressure." He even blames me for the DHS decision.
What's up? The DHS knows much more than I do, but it is not talking. A review of the press, however, gives an idea of what the problem is. Here are some reasons why Mr. Ramadan might have been kept out:
* He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam."
* Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris.
* Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999.
* Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan.
* Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11.
* He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement.
And here are other reasons, dug up by Jean-Charles Brisard, a former French intelligence officer doing work for some of the 9/11 families, as reported in Le Parisien:
* Intelligence agencies suspect that Mr. Ramadan (along with his brother Hani) coordinated a meeting at the Hôtel Penta in Geneva for Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy head of Al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, now in a Minnesota prison.
* Mr. Ramadan's address appears in a register of Al Taqwa Bank, an organization the State Department accuses of supporting Islamist terrorism.
Then there is the intriguing possibility, reported by Olivier Guitta, that Osama bin Laden studied with Tariq's father in Geneva, suggesting that the future terrorist and the future scholar might have known each other.
Ramadan denies all ties to terrorism, but the pattern is clear. As Lee Smith writes in The American Prospect, he is a cold-blooded Islamist whose "cry of death to the West is a quieter and gentler jihad, but it's still jihad."
These reasons explain why Americans should thank DHS for keeping Tariq Ramadan out of America.
But the story is not over: the State Department has in effect encouraged Ramadan to reapply for a different type of visa, making the recent developments probably just round one of a drawn-out match.
________
For more on Ramadan's visa revocation, see the excellent articles on him by Fouad Ajami and Stephen Schwartz.
In addition, I have written follow-up weblog entries about Ramadan at "Tariq Ramadan, the Chicago Tribune, and Me," "Tariq Ramadan Exposed," and "Tariq Ramadan Gives Up."
________
Which side are you on, Times?
I don't want a murdering terrorist supporter in MY country. If the maggots down at the aCLU "win" this suit, Congress needs to pass a law prohibiting maggots who want to kill Americans from ever entering this country. The government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from maggots like these. Especially the aCLU.
no, no, no,
not the freedom-fighters for the enemy.
ACLU - astute clueless losers unity.
what a fine piece of work.
(heavy sarcasm)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.