William Fisher

NEW YORK, Apr 28 2005 (IPS) — A Muslim scholar who was issued and then denied a visa to teach in the United States because of alleged ties to terrorists has called for an immediate moratorium on corporal and capital punishment and dialogue aimed at creating less repressive Muslim societies.

Other scholars of Islam gave the idea a mixed welcome.

Islamic Shariah law mandates penalties ranging from whipping to death by stoning, according to Muslim fundamentalists.

Writing Tuesday in the French newspaper Le Monde, Tariq Ramadan said that in Western societies, ”the infliction of corporal punishments, stoning, execution in the name of a religious standard that would impose itself on an entire society, cannot be accepted.”

But in the Islamic world, ”certain governments attempt to legitimize their Islamic character by the application of these repressive practices,” Ramadan wrote.

”The application of Shariah,” he added, ”by repressive powers that attack women, the poor, and their political opposition in a legal near-void in which summary executions of accused persons – whose human dignity is not respected, accused persons without defense, without a lawyer – is increasing. Contemporary Muslim conscience cannot accept these denials of justice.”

”Whole swathes of Muslim populations, from Nigeria to Malaysia, regularly demand the strict application of Shariah,” Ramadan said, adding that most Muslim scholars ”avoid expressing themselves clearly on the question, most often so as not to lose their credibility with these populations.”

Muslims scholars appeared divided on the wisdom of Ramadan’s proposal.

Omid Safi, chair of Islamic studies at the American Academy of Religion at Colgate University, said he believes debate about Shariah ”is not only possible but essential.”

”This kind of intra-Muslim conversation may be attractive to the West but it is not for the benefit of the West that it should happen,” Safi told IPS. ”It is for the benefit of Islam, and for all of us simply as human beings. The fundamental debate professor Ramadan is urging will find its subject matter within the core of Islam itself.”

Safi also chairs the Progressive Muslim Union of North America (PMU), a relatively new, small but growing movement within Islam. The group describes its mission as seeking a ”socially and politically active Islamic identity that remains committed to ideals of social justice, pluralism, and gender equality.”

Scott Lucas, assistant professor of Islamic studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona, agreed that dialogue between Western-educated Muslim professors and traditional Muslim scholars is necessary. But he wondered whether the moratorium on hudud (the limits ordained by Allah, including the punishment for crimes) undermines such a dialogue since it implies that the traditional Muslim scholars’ understanding of Islamic law is contradictory to Islamic principles.

”A more fruitful approach for progressive Muslims might be to focus on more specific case studies of Islamic law rather than over-generalised comments about whole swathes of Muslim populations that tend not to be overly precise and are often perceived of as derogatory by the scholars in those regions,” Lucas told IPS.

Ramadan appeared to have anticipated such questions. ”Isn’t it possible,” he wrote, ”to stipulate non-negotiable universal values (the integrity of the human person, equality under the law, rejection of degrading treatment, etc.), while recognizing and acknowledging the diversity and specificity of standards (religious and cultural), the histories that can lead to their expression and demand?”

”The unilateral condemnations that we hear in the West will not help things evolve,” according to Ramadan. ”For the moment, we’re living through exactly the opposite phenomenon: Muslim populations convince themselves of the Islamic character of these practices by virtue of Western rejection. The less Western it is, the more Islamic it is.”

He concluded: ”We have to emerge from this perversion, and Western governments and individuals have a major responsibility to allow the Muslim world to engage in this debate.”

In August 2004, U. S. authorities revoked the visa they had issued Ramadan to teach Islamic philosophy and ethics at Notre Dame University in Indiana. He received a visa from the State Department and was scheduled to start his classes in late August. But just days before he was set to travel, his visa was revoked without explanation at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security.

Ramadan, who teaches Islamic studies and philosophy at Fribourg University in Switzerland, was barred under a section of the USA Patriot Act, which denies entry to foreigners who have used a ”position of prominence…to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.”

Even so, Time magazine has described him as one of the 100 most likely innovators of the 21st century.

Ramadan is not the first to be denied a visa to the U.S. in recent months. But it is unusual for a visa to be issued and then rescinded. The State Department has declined to comment on the reasons for the reversal of its decision.

Scott Appleby, director of the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame, issued a statement defending Ramadan, calling him ”a strong but moderate voice in a world plagued by extremism. He addresses issues that evoke strong feelings because they touch the heart of personal and communal identity. We have known from the start that he is controversial. But controversy cannot and should not be avoided in a place that examines the challenges to international peace.”