Crescent International
Wednesday July 11, 2018
When the media reported that Dr. Tariq Ramadan had “admitted to having a relationship” with one of his accusers, many Muslims that had hitherto defended him against the French state’s blatant Islamophobia got confused.
Corporate media that habitually attack influential Muslims should not automatically be trusted. Even if the reports of Dr. Ramadan’s admissions are true, this is not what the case is about.
He has been accused of rape and imprisoned as if those accusations have been proven in a court of law. This is simply not the case.
Also, a relationship does not automatically mean it is Islamically illicit. Entering into a marital contract is a very simple process in Islam, as the religion of the Fitra does not over burden people’s natural urges.
It is still too early to draw any conclusions about Dr. Ramadan’s kafkaesque treatment by militant French secularism.
Muslims ought to realize that our community and the Islamic movement in general are large. The movement is made up of imperfect individuals that can and do make mistakes.
This is not to suggest that we should normalize haram behavior in any way. Nevertheless, erasing all the good someone has done for slipping up, even if the slip up is big is non-Islamic and is not the Sunna of the last Prophet of God.
The Quran tells us in ayah 12 of Surah 49, “O you who have made a firm commitment to Allah, avoid most guesswork [about one another]—for behold, some of [such] guesswork is [in itself] a sin; and do not spy upon one another, and neither allow yourselves to speak ill of one another behind your backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? You would detest it. And be conscious of Allah. Verily, Allah is an accceptor of repentance, a dispenser of grace!”
Islam’s philosophy of sin is a powerful mechanism of personal and communal purification process. As recently pointed out by Dr. Shadee el Masry; “as for Islam’s ‘Doctrine of Sin’ it begins firstly with something I don’t think exists in any other religion. That is, to commit sins is built into our system as human beings, and to get forgiven is one of the purposes of our creation: ‘By the One who controls my soul, if you did not sin, Allah would have done away with you and brought a creation that sinned, so they could repent and He could forgive them.’ This is in Sahih Muslim.” On a communal level we must learn how to forgive people.
Many people abandon Islam because the community completely ostracizes them due to their faults, thus depriving them of the opportunity to reform or continue contributing to society.
Imagine if every accountant or mechanic got fired for making a mistake. The overall well being of the company would suffer due to high turnover. That accountant or mechanic would be deprived of contributing their skills if they were to be made outcastes by their colleagues.
Why should the Muslim Ummah deprive itself of competent cadre by not practicing elementary mercy towards our own members? We daily beg the mercy of Allah (SWT) and hope for its being granted.
The Zionist and Islamophobic forces will continue to defame and undermine influential Muslims.
They will continue to dig up dirt on influential Muslims with the goal and hope that the Muslim community itself will “lynch” them.
Some of the dirt may be true or partly true. This does not mean that we as a community must turn ourselves into their sledgehammer against our own.
Dr. Ramadan’s case can be utilized as a learning process for our community to learn how to overlook people’s faults the way Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) used to do.
Thank you for highlighting the French regime’s witch-hunt of Dr. Tariq Ramadan. There is no proof of his wrongdoing yet he has been held i...
For nearly a decade, the militant-secularist French ruling caste has demonized a prominent Islamic academic, Dr. Tariq Ramadan for his princ...
Unable to match his intellectual skills, the French have launched a scandalous campaign to tarnish Dr Tariq Ramadan’s image. He has been f...
To be a European Muslim by Tariq Ramadan. Pub: The Islamic Foundation, Leicester, UK, 1999. Pp: 272. Pbk: £5.95.
