France plays Les Misérables against Tariq Ramadan

You have probably heard. Tariq Ramadan, one of the most important names who put forward and fervently defend the idea of a European Islam, has been in detention in France since February over a rape accusation against him. He is a thinker with whom we have at times disagreed, because of his views on European Islam, Islamic modernism and Turkey, which we find partly orientalist. But he truly is a thinker, and even when we disagree, a name whose ideas always make one think, trigger new ideas, and are able to stir both the Islamic world and the European intellectual-political world concerned with Islam.

It is very painful that he finds himself accused of such a shameful act. Of course, no one can have the privilege of committing any crime because of a quality attained in certain fields. Nor is it right to say that people of certain qualities will never commit crimes. However, once you manage to get past the effect of the perception operation that succeeded in carrying out an extrajudicial execution, and dig a little into the Tariq Ramadan matter, an entirely different scene confronts you.

It appears completely clear and plain that the case is a total conspiracy against Tariq Ramadan, with no purpose other than to discredit him on contrived grounds.

The accusation that got Ramadan thrown into prison rests on the statement of an Indian woman who was formerly an extreme Salafi and is now, having freed herself of those ties, an advocate of secularism of the same extremity. She said that the perpetrator of a harassment incident she had recounted in her book, whom she had given under another name, was Tariq Ramadan, last November. A week later another woman, this time, lodged a complaint on the ground that she had been raped by the same person in 2011.

There are two statements, on one of which 9 years have passed and on the other 7 years. Leaving aside the legal impossibility of proving, from today, such a case after so much time has passed, it is not something seen that anyone in France has been arrested for such a situation. Tariq Ramadan has been in detention for over 4 months, and he is also not being given the right of defense, through a discrimination not applied to any other prisoner.

Ramadan is not the first person in France to face such an accusation. Moreover, there are striking examples from very respectable names. For instance, the French Minister of Finance Gérard Darmanin and the Minister of Environment Nicolas Hulot are two typical cases. Both have been accused of raping more than one woman, but both continue to be tried without detention, without even being deemed to need to leave their ministerial posts.

What distinguishes Tariq Ramadan from these? What leads to restrictions even on his meeting with his lawyers, to his isolation?

If you say risk of flight, Ramadan came to France himself to give testimony, knowing full well of this accusation. If obstruction of evidence is to be put forward as a ground, what evidence of an event alleged to have taken place 9 years ago can Ramadan destroy at this point?

Indeed, France's attitude toward Ramadan did not begin with this incident. There is no one who does not know that, long before these accusations were attributed to him, Ramadan, with his ideas, held a position that challenged the prevailing ideological, Islamophobic prejudices in France. Because he criticizes very harshly the Islamophobic thought and policies that the ruling oligarchy in France displays toward Arab and Muslim circles, conference events were canceled at many universities, and serious "demonizing" perception operations were being carried out against him. None of these operations, until now, struck below the belt in this way.

What is actually strange is that, contrary to the expectation that the idea of European Islam he supports would be met with goodwill by Europeans, perhaps precisely because of this idea he is seen as more dangerous than even radical Islamists. Ramadan puts forward the idea that Muslims' cultural codes are extremely suitable for living in peace with those of other religions. He argues that Muslims living in Europe must fulfill the responsibilities as well as all the citizenship rights required by being European, and must individuate by integrating with European society.

In the face of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, although Ramadan described this attack as terror and condemned it strongly, he was subjected to a hail of criticism by French intellectual and political circles because he refused to use the slogan "Je suis Charlie." The measures taken by French universities and think-tank circles to keep him from speaking suffice, and more than suffice, to show what kind of fascistic bigotry lies within France, which prides itself on being the cradle of freedom of thought.

The rape accusations against Ramadan come precisely at the most intense point of such a hostile atmosphere about him, solely because of his thoughts and political stances. Even so, it would have been expected that French law, which drew great lessons in the philosophy of law from what happened to Victor Hugo's Les Misérables' Jean Valjean, would assess this atmosphere in Ramadan's favor given the contrived evidence at hand.

Yet for over 4 months Ramadan has been treated as if he were the chief culprit of all the rape crimes in the world. Peter Auburn, a former writer of the Daily Telegraph published in England, has written a piece on his blog criticizing the treatment given to him. He says: While Jean Valjean of Les Misérables was serving the sentence he received for the charge of the bread theft he committed when hungry, he became a lamp illuminating both French legal thought and its conscience.

Yet Ramadan, in a perhaps more innocent state than Jean Valjean, far from dispelling the Islamophobic hatred that haunts France, is turning into a victim that this greedy hatred is trying to devour with appetite.

The Tariq Ramadan case, which shows the dangerous dimensions Islamophobia has reached, must warn not only France but all of Europe, if they do not want it to go to a more dangerous point.

First of all, the "right to defend himself," of which he has been deprived for over 4 months, must be granted to Ramadan as soon as possible. Otherwise France will fall to the point of playing Les Misérables wholesale.