Tariq Ramadan
Tariq Ramadan
Tariq Ramadanis a Swiss academic, philosopher and writer. He is the professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at St Antony's College, Oxford and also teaches at the Oxford Faculty of Theology. He is a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies, the Université Mundiapolisand several other universities around world. He is also a senior research fellow at Doshisha University. He is the director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics, based in...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth26 August 1962
CountrySwitzerland
Teach the heart not to give way to proud emotions and arrogant thinking; bring the mind to heart-soothing solutions that make it possible to control oneself gently and wisely.
I think that political parties are fuelling this fear in order to create divisions. The more we bring up fear, the more we neglect real political issues. Political debate in France is crumbling since every single issue is brought to Islam now.
What we also need to have a discussion on the philosophy of art: so we must ask what is it that we want in the first place? Is it just about saying and doing whatever you want, or is it about something more? We should let the artist be free, but we must also question how exactly he deals with freedom. Is it arts for elevation or arts for destruction? Is there dignity in the process?
If you look at how we are destroying and disrespecting Creation it is obvious that is something is not clear in our understanding. We overemphasize rules but we don't understand the objective.
Our democratic societies are in danger. In allowing ourselves to be infiltrated by fear, to be blinded by the passion of identity, we are entertaining the most serious illusions about our freedom.
History is replete with ideologies of freedom, justice, liberation of the downtrodden and the exploited, that have been turned against the very people they had mobilised, or that have reproduced the same logic of exclusion and terror toward those whom they claimed to set free.
We must delve deep into history the better to engage a true dialogue of civilisations. Fear of the present can impose upon the past its own biased vision.
Nature is telling us that if you don't respect the environment then you are living with artificial needs and a consumerism that is destroying the very conditions we need to survive.
Always walking along despite the dangers and adversities, despite the injustices and horrors, trusting in God so as not to despair of men and events.
No civilisation can claim to have a monopoly on universal values and no one can claim to be always faithful to his own values.
Criticizing to destroy is easy, thinking in order to build is much more difficult to achieve
The collective psychology is something very close to being sacred - we can do it but we don't do it. We should understand that the Holocaust in the European conscience is reaching a point which is very close to what is sacred for people in the Southern countries, whether they are Muslims or not. Because of that we need to try to have intellectual empathy.
Behind every great man is not a woman, she is beside him, she is with him, not behind him
To be more precise, it's ethics and liberation, and as a consequence there is an ethics of liberation.