Free Republic

Polls show that more than 70% of the French... expect that France will become a country under submission to Islam. Last month, between April 18-21, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France [UOIF], the French branch of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (presided over by Yusuf al Qaradawi) held its thirty-first annual conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris. As usual, jihadist and anti-Semitic books, which are banned in French bookstores but tolerated there, were offered in several booths.As usual also, speakers were invited to deliver fiery speeches. In 2012, the keynote speaker was supposed to be...

GENEVA, January 2 (IslamOnline.net) – No sooner had Swiss Muslims launched campaigns to clear stereotypes and enter into dialogues to reach out to the non-Muslim citizens during 2004 than right-wing media and newspapers threw a spanner in the earnest works. Swiss Muslims, however, remained determined to ride out the storm and demonstrate to the public that they were an integral part of society. The right-wing, in a nutshell, failed to break their staunch stamina. Day in and day out, headlines like “The Islamic Terror is Coming, “Country Vs. Radicalism”, “Islamists Living With Us,” “Hijab in Parliament” and “Swiss Funds for...

Is Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss born Muslim professor whose grandfather founded the Egyptian Brotherhood, a “moderate” or a “radical”? According to SwissInfo, His elder brother, Hani, director of Geneva’s Islamic centre, was fired from his public teaching job after he told a French newspaper that stoning a woman for adultery was acceptable.Ramadan has so far only called for a moratorium on stoning. Now this is perfect. Ramadan, in calling for a moratorium on stoning, would appear to some people (including Notre Dame which hired him) as a “moderate” Muslim. But of course he hasn’t renounced stoning as such. How could...

Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, by Caroline Fourest; foreword by Denis MacShane (Encounter Books, 262 pp., $23.95) In the 1990s, Western liberals, alarmed at the presence of Islamic fundamentalists in their midst, turned in desperation to Muslims whom they dubbed “reformers” or “modernizers.” They hoped that these figures would have a moderating influence on disaffected Muslim youths who refused to integrate into Western society. One such “reformer” is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born academic. Ramadan has won the confidence of many in the West, including the British government, which asked him to serve on its task force for...