Ramadan's Fraud or: The Salafism Is The Message

The EUnuchs' favourite Muslim intellectual, Tariq Ramadan, has arrived to leave his Salafist mark on North America. David Solway decodes some of Ramadan's doublespeak, a "lexicon" which "appears inoffensive at first blush, (but) is the epitome of equivocation," and which in its own way can be as abstruse as the opaquest maunderings of Marshall McLuhan:

This [Muslim] “resistance” [to Western assimilation] is precisely the situation that Tariq Ramadan is attempting to remedy, but in a way that does not augur well for the host societies of the West. Pulpiting the ideal of Muslim social integration and positing a supposed underlying affinity between what are clearly two opposing creeds and cultures, Ramadan intends something very different from what we usually understand by “assimilation” and “accommodation.” Assimilation for Ramadan really works in reverse and means, in effect, the gradual absorption of the West into the social and political construct of Islam. Accommodation seems to imply mutuality but, again, its ultimate aim is somewhat different from what we might expect. Accommodation is what must presently be accorded to the Muslim community, which may in the course of time graciously accommodate us in turn should we convert to the faith or pay the jizzya (poll tax). Ramadan’s discourse sounds at first like he’s using a terminology of reconciliation but it’s all bling and glitz meant to embroider an ulterior purpose, something initially nebulous but no less sinister for all that. Ramadan’s agenda is not to enlighten but to distract.

It's called the old bait-and-switch: flatter the infidel by appealing to to his intelligence and sense of "fairness," then slip in the sharia when he isn't looking.