Radical Islamist Terrorist Supporter Lectures US On American Values

2010 March 23

by Joseph Klein

tags: ACLU, Hamas, News, Politics, Radical Islam, Tariq Ramadan, Terrorism

Newsweek Magazine is running an article in its March 29th issue entitled “Why I Was Banned in the U.S.A.” by Tariq Ramadan. This supporter of terrorist organizations is crowing now because the Obama administration caved to the demands of the ACLU . It reversed the Bush administration’s decision to deny him a visa to enter our country, rather than continue to support the ban against a court challenge brought on Ramadan’s behalf by the ACLU.

Tariq Ramadan claimed in his Newsweek article that he was originally banned from entering the U.S. because:

My offense, it seemed, had been to forcefully criticize America’s support for Israel and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The real reason why the Bush administration banned Tariq Ramadan was because, among other things, of his alleged financial contributions to Palestinian groups designated as fundraising agencies for Hamas by the U.S. Treasury Department. The visa revocation was in accordance with a law which denies entry to foreigners who have used a “position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.”

Here are just a few of the other reasons that were cited for his ban:

In the midst of a series of mid-1990s attacks in Paris perpetrated by the Algerian Islamist terrorist movement, French Interior Minister Jean Louis Debre forbade Ramadan to enter France because of his connections to that movement.

According to Spanish judge Balatasar Garzón, Ramadan had “routine contacts” with Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian believed to be the financial chief of al Qaeda and the financier of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.

Ramadan’s address was found in a register of the Al Taqwa Bank, which is part of a network of financial institutions that the U.S. State Department believes is helping to fund terrorism.

Following the usual victim narrative of radical Muslims, Ramadan writes:

In my case, criticizing America’s Middle East policies cast doubt on my loyalty to Western values and cost me a job.

Then he compares himself to the victims of alleged anti-Communist witch-hunters duirng the Cold War:

It’s not the first time America has tried to shield itself from dissenting opinions. During the Cold War, dozens of overseas artists, activists, and intellectuals—including British novelist Doris Lessing, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez—were denied visas because of their left-leaning ideas. Today, though, the American concept of the “other” has taken on a relatively new and specific form: the Muslim.

Next month, Ramadan will be in New York City to participate in a panel discussion about Muslims. I’m sure that we will hear more about how Muslims just like him are unfairly singled out because of their opinions.

We do not need lectures from radical Islamist terrorist advocates about the First Amendment. There were more than enough legitimate reasons to bar a foreign radical Islamic supporter of terrorist organizations like Tariq Ramadan from entering our country. Shame on the Obama administration for giving in to the ACLU once again. And shame on Newsweek for running Tariq Ramadan’s propaganda piece without any counterbalancing facts.