A man with a vision

The canadian ministry of foreign affairsNamed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most important thinkers of the 21st century, Tariq Ramadan occupies a unique place among leading Islamic thinkers. Representing a new generation of Islamic reformers, the Swiss scholar calls on Western Muslims to embrace Western culture rather than reject it.Intercultures magazine

Would you describe yourself as a Muslim scholar? Or a Swiss scholar?

You know, I am described as a Muslim scholar by others, but I am a Swiss scholar. It’s strange because we don’t define people as Christian scholars or Jewish scholars. The point is that I am a Swiss scholar educated in these two fields at the same time. And this is very important for me to build bridges. But also important to me is to be linked and connected to the grassroots. So I’m also working within Muslim communities, mainly in the West, but also in Africa. I’m a member of the executive council of the Colloque international des Musulmans de l’espace francophone and last July, we met in Niamey to speak about the situation of women and how to promote a better understanding. This is very important for us because we are connecting all African Muslims with the Western Muslims and we even had people coming from Canada. So I’m also an activist in the way I want to be connected to the community because I believe attitudes are not going to change unless we are working from within.

What motivates you to be an activist? Is it your upbringing, the influence of your father and grandfather? Or is it the combination of your European culture and your Islamic roots?

Of course the story of my own family is important; they were political exiles with my father moving to Switzerland. My mother also gave us this sense of being involved but also something that was really important – you know the first book my mother gave me was a book of French poetry. So this personal history influenced me for sure. So all this started when I was very young. In my late teens, I began working with solidarity movements, travelling to Africa and then with Christian grassroots communities in South America, Africa and with the Tibetans in India. As the Islamic issue became more important in the West, I felt it necessary to give something and to promote something which was new: the possibility of being Muslim and at the same time, a Westerner.

Does culture affect the practice or interpretation of religion?

Yes, but it is very important to have within the religious field something which can be defined as the realm of universal values and universal practices. For example in Islamic civilization you will find that Islam is one as a religion; people believe in exactly the same way whether they’re in South America, North America, Africa or in Asia. When you look at American Islamic culture or African Islamic culture, you will find that the set of values are the same but the system, the collective psychology, the collective memory and the ways of life are different. Intellectually-speaking, it is crucial when dealing with religious values to deconstruct the way various cultures speak about religious practices in order to combat, if necessary, with these religious practices and to try to find a new way to integrate them in a new culture. This is why I’m telling Muslims, for example: « Do not ask Canada to remain, for example, Moroccan Muslims or Turkish Muslims. You have to come back to the heart of your religious values, the universality of them, and in a manner of speaking, dress these values with your new culture. » The point is that one cannot go without the other; we have to distinguish the two in order to find a way to integrate the new culture in the name of our universal values.

The Centre works primarily with outbound Canadians. We try to help them be more effective interculturally. How would you advise Canadians going to live and work internationally, say perhaps to an Islamic country?

I really think that cultural empathy is very important but I really think there is also something that is else. Intellectually it’s exactly the same attitude but I think it is more important, and that is the ability to de-centre yourself.

What do you mean by de-centre?

At an emotional level it’s the word empathy but intellectually there is much more to it. To understand others, you have to enter their realm of universality. For example, in a Muslim majority country, they feel that what they believe is universal. Out of this universality they build a perception of the world, a perception of themselves and of their own ethics, which should be understood from their viewpoint. This is what I mean by de-centre yourself. It doesn’t mean that you are forgetting your own values or your own beliefs; quite the opposite by the way. To de-centre intellectually means never forgetting your own center. Culturally-speaking or religiously-speaking, what is needed is this understanding of how people are building their perception of the world and their perception of their own society. Why? Because at one point we will find – and this is the way we have to work together – it’s much more about intersection than about integration. When you deal with Muslims in their country it’s really important to try to find a way to understand their own logic and their own intrinsic dynamics in order to understand from their values, which very often are the same as common values, how they are building their own model. In my opinion, values could be universal but models are conjectural or historical.

You have advised Muslim youth in Europe about the need to participate and integrate into their society, and that this is a shared responsibility. Would your message be the same to young Canadian Muslims?

I have been visiting Canada for the last ten years and I can see an improvement or an evolution in the Muslim Canadian mind, the way they look at society. But I think that they have to be really cautious because they have to go beyond this patchwork of communities living together but not connecting with each other. So my advice is to tell them that this Canadian culture is theirs, embrace it and integrate the social system, the political system and the cultural landscape. You have to integrate it into your own self-perception, the perception of your own identity. This is necessary to go beyond what I call the minority complex. Don’t put yourself in the system as part of a minority because it’s a trap. That is true also for the Canadian majority; tolerance of minorities is a good first step but in the long run it is not going to help them really integrate into society on all levels. So the point for me is to say: « Look at yourselves as being Canadian citizens and forget about being a minority because there is no minority citizenship. » It is very important to promote that idea and to go beyond cultural tolerance.

You don’t like the term « tolerance » do you?

No, I prefer respect. I use the concept of respect because you can tolerate someone without knowing him but you cannot respect someone without knowing him because respect is based on mutual knowledge. This mutual knowledge is very important and I really think that Canada is a dynamic society but at the same time if we accept and stick to this patchwork of communities it could be very fragile. At one point, if something did happen, this mentality of « Us versus Them » could reappear and I think this could be dangerous. So it is necessary to go beyond tolerance and toward what I call a pro-active partnership.

What are the universal values of Islam and where do you think they intersect with Western values?

An example would be the oneness of God. This is a value out of which comes justice and equality. Within the Islamic world you have something that is equality between men and women. I don’t think we can generalize and say that all Muslims think that men are superior to the women. I really believe that there is a tradition from within the Islamic world promoting this universal equality between genders and also between human beings. We have a very old tradition of human brotherhood, and not only Muslim brotherhood based on the Muslim belonging, but something which relates to all human beings. So there are some things here that we have to promote; we have justice and we have freedom.

And how would you define freedom?

The two main freedoms we have in Western constitutions are freedom of conscience and freedom of worship. These are also part of the Islamic tradition even though currently, we don’t see them implemented in many Muslim countries.

When it gets to a practical level, which takes priority: the law of the land or Islamic rules and laws? For example, a province in Canada (Ontario) has authorized the use of sharia law in civil arbitrations, if both parties consent.

I was asked many times about that and I have said that you have to find your way as a Muslim Canadian citizen within the law, within the constitution. First of all, don’t come with something that is not necessary and to call it sharia court is wrong. It’s not a parallel system but something much more like mediation. If this is the case then it’s good because within the law you can have a space for dealing with cultures and religions. But it’s not new law; you don’t need new laws. We have a problem with some of the Islamic interpretations and readings which always speak of Islamic laws as things which are separate and specific. My point is that when a constitution and laws created by human beings are promoting justice and protecting you and your freedoms, they are Islamic per-say. It’s not because it is not coming from a Muslim mind or from a specific perception of Islamic law that it can’t be applied. This would be a very narrow understanding of what Islam has to promote. You cannot just take a verse from the Qur’an and say this is Islamic law; you have to use your mind. When you live in Canada and you see that these values are protected by law and constitution, this means that you have to protect this constitution and that this constitution is yours. You are bound by the constitution and this is what we have to tell Muslims. This is your constitution and your constitution gives you sufficient latitude to find your way. Everything is not imposed on you, and you are free to find your way within the limits of this constitution.

Are we currently experiencing a clash of civilizations as described by Huntington?

No, of course not. But I have travelled to many Islamic majority countries and to many Western countries, and the fact is that we are all obsessed by denying the fact that there is a clash of civilizations. I am against the theory; I don’t think that this is a reality but we are so obsessed by denying it that we are not building what we should be building: bridges and partnerships. We are so preoccupied with disproving the Us vs. Them theory that we become very suspicious of each other. If we are not cautious with this whole process it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Tariq Ramadan, thank you very much for this interview

You are very welcome.

Source : Intercultures Magazine