Malise Ruthven on In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad and three other books by Tariq Ramadan, in the New York Review of Books:
Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss-born academic and a prolific writer on Islam who has achieved fame—and notoriety —on both sides of the Atlantic for his engagement with the issues that concern the millions of Muslims now living in Western countries. In France, especially, he has been depicted as an Islamist wolf in sheep’s clothing. Strip off the wool, say his critics, and you will find a hard-line fundamentalist hostile to the values of freedom and democracy he claims to espouse. Two causes célèbres have been, first, the fierce polemics arising from Ramadan’s claim that leading French intellectuals including Bernard-Henri Levy, Daniel Gluckstein, and Bernard Kouchner put their commitments to Israel before their humanitarian concern for Palestinians; and, second, the famous encounter with Nicolas Sarkozy in 2003, before six million French television viewers, when Ramadan at first refused to condemn outright the penalty of stoning for adulterers, but called for a “moratorium” while the Muslim world engaged in “debating” this issue along with other harsh punishments. He went on to say that “we should stop” the practice. But this has not satisfied his critics.
More here.
