Thank you.  Thank you for the invitation, and, as we don’t have much time, let me go straight to some of the main points supporting this motion “Europe is failing its Muslims.”   Let me start by saying that we are living in a difficult situation.  If you listen to what is said in the European […]

  I had the opportunity to sit for a conversation with the Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan at the end of the 2009 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal.  Ramadan is a public intellectual who has been a figure of both much praise and much condemnation, occasioned by controversial statements and positions that […]

Tariq Ramadan just got purged from not only his position as “integration advisor” to the city of Rotterdam but also his visiting professorship at Erasmus University. — Ed. An Open Letter to My Detractors in the Netherlands Tuesday 18 August 2009 Once again I have come under attack in the Netherlands.  Last May and June, […]

Listening to the feelings expressed by Muslims around the world, one perceives an emotion of anger and revolt mixed with a deep sense of helplessness.  The current massacres are but a confirmation of the well known: the “international community” does not really care about the Palestinians, and it is as if the state of Israel, […]

It is difficult to be critical of Israel without having one’s words misinterpreted, twisted, their meaning inverted.  A controversy centering on the Turin Book Fair is raging in Italy, amid conflicting claims and counter-claims.  French Journalist Pierre Assouline in a recent blog entry further distorted the terms of the debate. The facts are these: The […]

Mr. Geert Wilders will launch very soon a short movie, about which nobody knows anything, where it is said that he is going to unveil the true negative essence of Islam, the unhealthy character of the Prophet, or maybe the Qur’an’s insanities.  Whatever is the content, one understands it is a pure provocation!  Silence would […]