Satellite Conversations with Tariq Ramadan
Islam-West Relations
Three Satellite Conversations with Tariq Ramadan
April 10-12, 2007
Gaston Hall, Georgetown University
Return to this website for video
Islam and Democracy (Tuesday, April 10)
Muslim Minorities in Western Europe (Wednesday, April 11)
Catholic-Muslim Relations (Thursday, April 12)
Behind the rhetoric of a "Clash of Civilizations" lies the real challenge of Islam-West relations: dialogue in a spirit of truth. Before we can agree or disagree, we have to listen to one another.
Tariq Ramadan, a fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford, is one of the world's leading Muslim intellectuals. A Swiss citizen of Egyptian descent, he advocates a self-confident Islam that both engages and critiques Western ideas and institutions. For Time he is one of 100 “innovators” of the 21st century and “the leading Islamic thinker among Europe ’s second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants.” To his critics Ramadan is a dangerous fundamentalist. » Ramadan's homepage
The Visa Controversy. Since July 2004 Tariq Ramadan has been unable to enter the United States. Shortly before he was to assume a professorship at Notre Dame University, Ramadan's visa was revoked under the "ideological exclusion" provision of the Patriot Act. The visa denial is the subject of an ongoing legal challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the
» background on the Visa controversy
The Scholarly Controversy. Ramadan's views on Islam and the West are controversial within the academy. The Berkley Center has invited three leading American intellectuals to write essays in response to Ramadan -- Sherman Jackson (University of Michigan), Martha Nussbaum (University of Chicago), and George Weigel (Ethics and Public Policy Center). The essays and Ramadan's satellite presentations will be folded into a book with Georgetown University Press.