Tariq Ramadan Quotes
Freedom of expression is not absolute. Countries have laws that define the framework for exercising this right and which, for instance, condemn racist language.
Ramadan, Tariq. What I Believe. Oxford UP, 2009.
In WWI Congress had passed a law that prohibited anyone from undermining or interfering with the war effort. The defendants had passed out anti-war literature to young men heading for military service. The court then overlooked the First Amendment and came up with a strange logic where the “clear and present danger” was the test of whether the First Amendment would apply. The anti war pamphleteers went to jail. Today, we look back on this and find it very surprising but this is yet another example of erosion of freedom and civil liberties when the nation is at war. By the 1950s, the Supreme Court had reversed itself and the First Amendment was restored to its original intent.
Striking down a law making cross burning a crime:
The Masses was a left wing publication which the then Post Office officials decided were “dangerous”. Later, the Supreme Court would hold that there could not be this degree of political censorship by Post Office officials.
This is a typical statement of human rights policy by many countries. Essentially, some controlling authority states that rights are guaranteed except when it is “dangerous” or contrary to the country’s “best interest”. Of course then anything the authorities want to censor is classified so that it is an exception. To be a right, it must be guaranteed even when hateful, insulting and/or dangerous.
Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss Muslim academic, philosopher, and writer. He was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at St Antony's College, Oxford and the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, but as of 2018 is taking an agreed leave of absence. He is a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and the Université Mundiapolis in Morocco. He is also a senior research fellow at Doshisha University in Japan. He is the director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), based in Doha. He is a member of the UK Foreign Office Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief. He was elected by Time magazine in 2000 as one of the seven religious innovators of the 21st century and in 2004 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and by Foreign Policy readers (2005, 2006, 2008–2010, 2012–2015) as one of the top 100 most influential thinkers in the world and Global Thinkers. Ramadan describes himself as a "Salafi reformist".
