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
Pray in the night so that you can change the world in the day
We should say to the West: "You have been supporting dictators for too many years. Don't expect the people to introduce democracy over night. It is going to take time." It took time with the French revolution, it took time with the Eastern European revolutions. And it is going to take time there.
Arabic is the language of the Qur'an, but Arab culture is not the culture of Islam.
We should not treat people as they treat us, we should treat them better.
Modesty is the way you deal with beauty not the way you avoid it.
Stand up for your values, be courageous and humble
The West hasn't been naïve, it has been patronizing the South by imposing its own views on what should be done - ironically after having been so close and so supportive of dictators who were not respecting the people.
Compelling a woman to wear a headscarf is against Islam, and compelling her to remove it is against human rights.
Our task is to change the world for the better, not to adapt ourselves to the world.
There is the philosophy embedded in the culture we are living. It is quite clear for example that Arabs have a different culture than Malaysians.
To be courageous is to be a voice for the voiceless
If you do not have boundaries, you do not have a path.
If you know how to live, even death is good news
I wouldn't call it naïve but silly. History does not work like this. If you look at the dynamics of Eastern Europe or even Germany post reunification, you realize that change takes time. No one can deny the fact that we are still not there - I am advocating something which has to go from uprisings to revolutions. It is not coming straight away that it is not going to come but what we have to advocate is that the democratization process is always better than state dictatorship.