Tariq Ramadan and Cultural Jihad

Amil Imani

On July 27, 2011, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, in Richardson, Texas, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Dallas chapter, featured Dr. Tariq Ramadan, a highly controversial Islamic scholar, for their annual fundraising to Support Religious Freedom & Sharia Awareness.

ICNA, an offshoot of the Muslim Students' Association (MSA), was founded by Muslim immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, and its members are mostly South Asian descent, primarily Pakistanis, Bengalis and Indians. Among many of its goals, "shall be to seek the pleasure of Allah through the struggle of Iqamat-ud-Deen [establishment of the Islamic system of life] as spelled out in the Quran and the Sunnah of [Muhammad]." Steven Emerson and the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) have documented the fact that ICNA is a militant Islamic fundamentalist organization, and supports terrorism. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused ICNA of inviting extremist and anti-Semitic speakers to its conferences that serve as platforms for extremist views. ICNA has also put up huge billboards, festooning major highways, such as the one along Highway 101 and Tully Road in San Jose, California, with crafty messages. Bold letters on the billboard proclaim: Islam You Deserve to Know. A toll-free number, 1-877-WhyIslam and website, WhyIslam.org beckon the public to get the real scoop about the “religion of peace” with its ceaseless violent record from its inception to this day.

Dr. Ramadan’s presence could have gone relatively unnoticed in the Dallas Metroplex, except for the man’s lengthy record of subversive campaigns and activities. Tariq was banned from the United States for six-years (a visa restriction lifted last January by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton).

Why is he welcomed again in this country? Has he mended his ways? Not a chance. Secretary Clinton, for whatever reasons, has decided to let the man come and carry on with his dangerous work.

Tariq Ramadan is a faithful flag bearer to the violent Islamic order of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded by his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna. Tariq’s U.S. visa was originally revoked due to his connections to Islamic terrorism. A devoted champion of the religion of peace that he is, Ramadan is uncompromisingly committed to the elimination of the State of Israel, and not necessarily by peaceful means. This religion of peace that Ramadan and his ilk promote, rides at the tip of the sword. Peace, in Islamist’s terms offers no room for negotiations or live and let live.

The tumultuous road to get into the event aside, the star performer, Ramadan, at the meeting, lived up to the expectation of the rabid rank-and-file Islamist by exhorting the faithful to carry out their duty of what I call “Soft Jihad,” and others term it “Cultural Jihad,” in the United States. Soft Jihad is practiced where the sword jihad is not advisable, where Muslims are not strong enough to unsheathe their sword, where the true nature of Islam is exposed and when the general public would likely stamp them out.

A critical tool of soft jihad, Ramadan outlined, involves penetrations of the American educational system, by use of means such as Da’wa-a religious duty of each Muslim to convert non-Muslims in order to strengthen the Islamic Ummah.

Freedom of belief is a treasured feature of enlightened societies where different views clash in the marketplace of free ideas and vie for acceptability without resort to deception, dissimulation or violence. Ideas and beliefs sink or survive on merit as judged by the public.

In Islam, that is not the case. To Muslims, there is no need for various ideas and beliefs to contest on merit. Muhammad has brought the perfect belief system directly from Allah. A flawless belief that is the best and good for eternity. To Muslims, people are like children. They are incapable of deciding these weighty matters and they should accept the faith of Allah like a patient should take a medicine prescribed by an infallible physician, no matter how unpalatable the medicine may be.

Sugarcoating of Islam is, therefore, universally practiced, these self-described doctors of Islamic religion. They keep ranting about the importance of accepting things on faith, denigrate reason, dangle carrots and sticks, and demand unconditional surrender in return for guaranteed bliss and salvation. The masses toe the line, support the clergy’s lavish parasitic lifestyle and the charade continues. It works like a charm. Use the Jihad of the Sword when it can and use the Soft Jihad until the sword can be unsheathed to finish the job. And don’t forget, the end justifies any and all means, Ramadan and company keep on preaching to the hordes.

Islam is the most successful fraud in the history of humanity and it is a great success. Millions of mullahs and imams keep the fraud going and over a billion and a half of the faithful pay for it. They pay in funds, labor and even life, for the IOUs issued to them by the likes of Ramadan who glide through life without breaking a sweat for earning their daily bread.

Ramadan and his co-lice, should be given credit, not only for their part in this well-acted play, but also for demanding their flock to play; namely, deception, dissimulation, a laundered version of Islam, and even outright lies.

Ramadan, for instance, never presents the naked face of Islam. He never speaks of the Islam that thrives on hate, throws acid in the face of women who fail to don the hijab or girls going to school; flogging people for sporting non-Islamic haircuts, stoning to death, violators of sexual norms and other forms of Islamic brutalities such as Honor Killing. He never talks about institutionalized pedophilia in Islam. The fact that Muhammad “married” a six year old and consummated the marriage when Ayesha was only nine, when he himself was pushing sixty.

Confronted with this repulsive behavior of the founder of their perfect religion, a few exercise the defense mechanism of denial and say it did not happen, dismissing their own most trusted historical record. Some say that it wasn’t exactly marriage. It was a politically expedient act, an act of the perfect emissary of Allah. Then we have numerous instances of the same child molestation happening in the Islamic world ever since the example set by Muhammad. Marriage of pre-pubescent girls to older men. Just the other day Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, issued a fatwa proclaiming that there is no minimum age for marriage, and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.”

This is only one of numerous shameful and barbaric provisions of the Islamic Sharia that Ramadan and other Soft Jihadists want to transplant to America. Islam is a great deal for the savage sexually driven male while a true bondage for women who seek their right to equality with men.

To this day, the state of Saudi Arabia, the custodian of the twin holy cities of Islam and purportedly a shining example of an Islamic society, forbids women from driving automobiles. And now this is the cult that Ramadan and company want to import to America and impose it on all of us, as they have successfully done to parts of Europe.

Misogynist practices aside, Islam Sharia provisions make any civilized human recoil with horror.

He defends Islam with the same mantra of “We against Them,” “We the righteous against the heathens,” “We the servants submissive of the Great Allah against the rebellious enemies of Allah.” To Islam, a non-Muslim is a combatant against Allah and he is fair game to be subjugated and killed. Ramadan conveniently sidesteps this and other features of this discriminatory cult.

Tariq Ramadan claims Muhammad was the most perfect man, the kind of saintly man that each and every Muslim should adulate and aspire to follow. On the top of his list is the desire to lead their lives in such a way that would please Allah, if they can.

Ramadan speaks of Muhammad’s perseverance in preaching to the Meccans’ his dogma that seemed more like a confused verbiage of a hallucinatory man that revelation from the one and only super-god Allah. Ramadan asked the Muslim community to spread the word of Islam in America, even if they face stiff resistance as the Prophet Muhammad faced stiff resistance in Mecca, at first. Muhammad, during his Mecca years, was ridiculed for his confused sayings by his own tribe of Quraish. He was called “shaeron majnoon”—crazed poet.

The death of his first wife and wealthy employer Khadija left Muhammad even more vulnerable to the ridicule and harassment of the Meccans. He fled from Mecca for Medina and in the relative safety of that city with a large tolerant Jewish community, Muhammad found more people willing to join his clique.

Once in Medina, Muhammad hit on a most powerful formula for success. He justified everything by claiming that Allah wants it this way. And Allah was nothing to trifle with. He held the key to the most magnificent paradise as well as to a dreadful hell. The duty of every good Muslim became unquestioning obedience to everything that Muhammad said and wished. Muhammad became Allah’s gatekeeper to paradise and hell.

Muhammad’s formula worked magic with the Bedouins of Arabia who thrived on robbery and killing. His religion spread like a pandemic disease in no time at all.

As Muhammad gathered more and more followers, he turned on the Jewish community of Medina, killed the men, plundered their belongings, and captured their women and children as slaves. That was the birth of Soft Jihad. Be meek and deceptive first, until you gather enough power then unsheathe the sword. It worked then and it is working today.

And here we are in the 21st -century facing the onslaught of the Islamists and a “cultural jihadist” like Tariq Ramadan. Tariq Ramadan and other Islamic apologists cover a wide spectrum. Ramadan said, “Enshallah, our future in the West is going to be positive. We are not here by accident. We are here to reassess the essence of our religion.” He blamed Tea Party activists and conservatives for giving Islam a bad name. You don’t need the Tea Party, Ramadan, to give Islam a bad name. Islam is its own bad name and mired in bad deeds.

It is repugnant, yet understandable that Ramadan goes around and sings the praises of Islam in low and high notes and every other note that he can disguise and improvise. He makes a very good living at it. What is baffling is some very high-ranking non-Muslims, for whatever reason, helped launder Islam and present it as what it really is not. Former President George W. Bush, for one, did a great disservice on several occasions by exonerating Islam from the crimes of radical Muslims by attributing the horrific violence committed under the banner of Islam to a small band of extremists. The President’s assertion was either based on ignorance of the facts about Islam or his attempt at political correctness. In any event, truth was sacrificed and the public continued to cling to the false notion that Islam is a peaceful religion. People who dare to disclose the true nature of Islam run the risk of being castigated as bigots and hate-mongers. Some businesses are subjected to boycotts and individuals are sued.

Ramadan should know better, and he most certainly does: the so-called small band of Islamic extremists is the true face of Islam.

Hence, it is a fact that Islam is misrepresented, as Ramadan likes to claim. It is misrepresented by people like himself as well as by non-Muslim individuals and institutions who are generously rewarded by the modern day Islamic conquerors. This time around Muslims are using the immense petrodollar they extract from oil-addicted non-Muslims. The sword is temporarily replaced by just as deadly a weapon—the petrodollar. Before long, the Muslims aim to add a more deadly modern version of the sword—the Islamic bomb.

Lastly and most dangerously, Islam has a powerful unwitting ally in the masses of good-hearted gullible Americans who bend over backwards protecting the long cherished principle of religious freedom. And it is this magnificent provision of our society that makes Hillary Clinton reissue a visa to likes of Ramadan to come and exploit the benign provisions of a benevolent system for establishing Islamic enslavement.

"Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction," said Ronald Reagan. We do well to remember that.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Amil Imani is an Iranian-American writer, poet, satirist, novelist, essayist, literary translator, public speaker and political analyst who has been writing and speaking out about the danger of radical Islam both in America and internationally. He has become a formidable voice in the United States against the danger of global jihad and Islamization of America. He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com. Imani is the author of the riveting book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and the upcoming thriller Operation Persian Gulf.