Tariq Ramadan Says Muslim Brotherhood Not Al Qaeda

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According the report of an Islamic news website, Muslim Brotherhood figure Tariq Ramadan gave a lecture in Qatar calling for a distinction to be made between Islamist groups such as the Brotherhood and Al Qaeda:

After 9/11 and 7/7, terminologies like radicalism, Islamism and political Islam have been widely used in West. The so called terrorism experts tend to put all “Islamists” in one category…The Muslim Brotherhood is not similar to Al Qaeda and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot be equated with Osama bin Laden, said Ramadan. We hear terms like “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims”, “moderates” and “fundamentalists”. Such terminologies remind us of the colonial attitude — “all the good are with us and all the bad are resisting us.” He felt that such terminologies have posed a major challenge and Muslims are scared to deal with “political Islam”. “Passion and confusion are misleading all of us and we are not doing enough to explain the new trends.”

Such implicit support for the Brotherhood is not surprising from Ramdan who is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. His statements and writings have been extensively analyzed and he has been accused by critics of promoting anti-Semitism and fundamentalism, albeit by subtle means. On the other hand, his supporters promote him as as example of an Islamic reformer who is in the forefront of developing a “Euro Islam.”

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