Tariq Ramadan Could Face Charges in the U.S.

by Hugh Fitzgerald

For Tariq Ramadan, the news gets worse and worse. First, there were the charges against him in France, where two Muslim women, Henda Ayari and a woman known only by an alias, “Christelle,” both accused him of extreme sexual violence and rape. He now sits in a French prison, waiting trial, his sudden claim about having multiple sclerosis having been deemed insufficient to allow him to await trial without being held in custody. And there are two more Muslim women in Paris who have made claims against him but not yet come forward publicly, for fear of what his followers might do. It is not an idle threat. Henda Ayari, who was the first to accuse Ramadan, has received thousands of death threats from Ramadan’s most fanatical supporters, and is now under 24-hour guard — possibly for years to come.

After France, new accusations against him appeared in the Journal de Geneve, in Switzerland, where four women claimed that when they were his pupils at a high school in Geneva, and between the ages of 14 and 18, he had tried to sexually molest them, and in all but one case succeeded. No doubt the Swiss authorities are still investigating these accusations, and will wait their turn to charge him, as they surely will, once the judges in Paris have reached their decision.

And now comes the latest news: while the peripatetic lecturer was in the United States, spreading his message of “moderation” from coast to gullible coast, and being lionized as a great Muslim intellectual, delivering his Deep Thoughts on Islamic morality and ethics, he also managed to find the time to dally, in his own fashion, with at least one Muslim victim, who now has found a brave Muslim lawyer, Rabia Chaudry, to help her, and though the charges have not yet been yet made public, they surely have to do with sexual violence, possibly including rape.

Rape-accused Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan could now face charges in the United States after American attorney Rabia Chaudry said she had referred an alleged victim to a federal prosecutor this week.

Ramadan is currently being held in a French prison since February 2 on charges that he raped two women in Paris and Lyon.

Chaudry confirmed to Al Arabiya English that she had referred “a Muslim victim” to the prosecutor, declining to comment on the matter further or explaining exactly what the US victim had accused Ramadan of.”

The attorney had written in a Facebook post, however, that she was “guessing there will be more [victims]” to come forward.”

Chaudry is clearly not going to be intimidated by threats from Ramadan’s supporters. She briskly dismisses the claims of his supporters, stating that “this is not a vast international conspiracy” (i.e., a “Zionist plot,” or a “plot by islamophobes.”

And she pithily explains how unlikely it is that Ramadan could be wrongfully convicted, noting the similarity of the charges against him, by at least nine women, in three different countries, with possibly more to follow: “This is also not how people are wrongfully convicted. Wrongfully convicted people are not accused of multiple similar crimes in different countries. In fact, they usually have completely clean records other than one accusation that ends up being false.”

Ramadan has been imprisoned at the Fleury-Mérogis prison, south of Paris, as authorities investigate the rape charges. He could be held in long-term custody while the probe continues.

The Swiss academic, who is a grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, found fame after writing numerous books on Islam and the integration of Muslims in Europe.

He traveled frequently to give talks around the world and was also a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at the University of Oxford.

Commenting on the French judicial proceedings, Chaudry wrote:

“I don’t know much about the French legal system other than it seems to have a lower evidentiary threshold than the US. The standard is not beyond a reasonable doubt. The standard is an intimate  conviction, i.e. jurors’ impressions based on the evidence [sic]. I also don’t know if that[sic] there is a plea process but if there is one it might be better for him than a trial in which the witnesses confront him and testify – imagine a jury reacting to that.”

“I know this is hard on our community, but it does not serve us to bury our heads in the sand. He will likely serve time in prison, and it will likely be a just result,” she added.

A Muslim Daniella, come to judgment. She’s a brave woman.

Ramadan and his lawyers and followers have tried everything. They tried to silence Henda Ayari with death threats. She now has 24-hour security. They tried to depict her as a publicity hound, intent on accusing Ramadan in order to sell more copies of her book (I Chose Freedom), in which she claims Tariq Ramadan appears as the monstrous character “Zoubeyr.” Nobody seems to have bought this, and for good reason. Who in their right mind would seek publicity if it meant thousands of death threats and the need for round-the-clock security? His lawyers have savaged “Christelle,” trying without success to punch holes in her testimony, while his followers suggest that she and Ayari might be part of a plot  against Ramadan. But the absurd charge of a “Zionist plot” never did gain traction, given all the evidence against him, and given, too, that Ramadan’s accusers in France were Muslims (as is his latest accuser, in the United States).

Finally, the last desperate attempt to spring Ramadan — the sudden claim of multiple sclerosis, an illness never before mentioned by Ramadan, which his lawyers insisted was “not compatible” with imprisonment — led the French court to order a thorough medical examination, and the doctors who conducted that examination concluded that his state of health was indeed “compatible with his continued remaining in prison.” Ramadan remains in prison, until his trial — it could be months, even as much as a year, away.

And meanwhile, the wheels of justice elsewhere  — in Switzerland, and then, quite possibly, in the United States and (do you doubt it?) in the United Kingdom too (how many Oxford girls were brought to bed after having been smitten by the smoldering looks of the Grand Panjandrum of Islamic Thought?) — grind exceeding slow, but, alas for Tariq Ramadan, “the great Muslim intellectual” of hallmark-card sentiments and ithyphallic impulses, they do grind.

First published in Jihad Watch.