The volume by the director of the association Reset Dialogues on Civilizations was recently presented in Milan, Rome and Naples, at meetings which important intellectuals (including Ramadan himself) participated in, and which generated heated debates, also thanks to the presence of representatives of the Italian Muslim community in the audience. The first meeting took place at the end of October in Rome, and saw Giuliano Amato and Giuliano Ferrara come face to face. The former, Minister of the Interior in the Prodi government, praised Fürstenberg’s book, which “goes to the heart of the matter very delicately and without being at all one-sided, offering precious help in getting to know this figure, away from the myth and hostility which manages to provoke in both fields”. Of particular importance were the words of Ferrara, director of the newspaper “Il Foglio”.

In recent years Ferrara, at times branded as the main Italian “neo-con”, was part of that group of intellectuals, who in the wake of the thinking of the vice-director of the Corriera della Sera, Magdi Allam, they have not gone easy on Tariq Ramadan, accused on more than one occasion of anti-Semitism and collusion to terrorism, although it is not clear on what grounds. Nevertheless, for some time now Ferrara seems to have changed his mind on his Oxford professor and on his dialogue with moderate Islam. He invited Ramadan to appear on his television programme, and he warmly welcomed the letter which 138 Muslim “sages” wrote to Benedict XVI (unlike Magdi Allam). In this way, it is hardly surprising that even Ferrara, though he has some reservations about TR, defines Fürstenberg’s book as “a voyage inside an age-old problem, written with a strong sense of the author in the first person, who listens to, observes, and attends the assemblies which Ramadan participates in, and explains the intellectual opinions with a very rich documentation”.

The debate continues in Milan, where various experts on Islam and the Arab world spoke in front of the very same Ramadan. Such as Paolo Branca, professor of Arabic language and literature at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, according to whom “the book allows us to finally to open a more serious path of reflection on TR”: “There are some delicate questions about this character – Branca added – but what he writes in his books is in no way a threat”. According to Lilli Gruber, the Euro MP and author of “Daughters of Islam”, “TR is a real motor of change, who knows everything about us, whereas we know nothing about him”: “This book is courageous because a daily newspaper like the Corriera della Sera defines him as a character who preaches hatred, violence and death”. Ramadan, in return, reiterated that “it is possible to be completely Muslim and completely European”: “The European culture is not less Muslim than the Egyptian culture – he explained – In Egypt, in my culture of origin, many things are contrary to my ethics, and I know that many things in the European culture are instead very close to my ethics”. “I would like to thank Nina for this book – Ramadan added – not because it is a generous book as far as I am concerned, but because I am by now in the position to thank the people who try to be objective, to read me”.

In the end, even in Naples the speakers have tried to tell of the thousand subtleties of this character. Massimo Galluppi, professor of History and International Relations at the Orientale Unviersity of Naples, has expressed doubt on the role of women in Ramadan’s thinking. Galluppi did not even deny that in TR there was a shadow of reticence on the legitimacy of the state of Israel, recalling the interview to Foreign Policy, when TR simply said that “Israel exists”: “A correct response – was Galluppi’s response – but slightly cold”. Whereas on the accusation that TR uses a double language (one for Westerners, and one for radical Muslims), the intellectual cut it short: “Double language is a common practice in democracies, and there is nothing wrong with this”. The liveliness of the debates is a merit of the quality of the book, which shuns integralist and prejudiced visions, and which actually closely and carefully observes the evolution of the controversial figure represented by Tariq Ramadan. But the merit of heightened interested (also demonstrated by reviews in the Repubblica, Sole 24 ore, Mattino, Unità and Europa), is also due to the charisma of the main character of the book, and especially in him becoming the emblem of a certain type of Islam. It is for this reason that he has been at the heart of a heated international debate, in which Timothy Garton Ash and Ian Buruma have defended him, while Ayaan Hirsi and Paul Berman have accused him of being ambiguous.

The association ResetDoc and its site www.resetdoc.org have followed this debate from the beginning and seen it evolve. They have succeeded in recounting the debate attentively and fairly, which has been praised by various international newspapers and sites, as shown by the numerous quotes in the German Die Zeit, in the American Dissent, in the Swiss Neue Züercher Zeitung and www.signandsight.com, an online German journal in English, which was among the main promoters of the discussion. A European controversy, because Tariq Ramadan is European and teaches at Oxford, but who has also had an essential echo in the other half of the Western, America. The same America who denied a visa to the very same Ramadan (who had been given a chair at the University of Notre Dame); the same America who is trying to understand the Muslim world through a compass, after the horror of 9/11 and the catastrophic war in Iraq.

It will come as no surprise then to hear of the attention the American press paid to Ramadan over the course of the last year. As previously mentioned, Garton Ash defended him in the New York Review of Books, as did Ian Buruma in the New York Times; whereas he was attacked by Paul Berman in The New Republic, among others. The last episode of the quarrel was recorded in the New York Times, with a heated correspondence between Buruma and Berman. One talks of Ramadan to speak about moderate Islam, about Iraq and Iran (more precisely, of the idea of neo-con Norman Podhoretz, advisor to the Republican Rudy Giuliani, to bomb Iran). The U.S.A., Europe, Iraq, Iran. All radiating out like a magnetic force from Ramadan. It is a sure bet that the debate in which he is the main character will not end here.

Translation by Sonia Ter Hovanessian