ACLU attacks DHS for Excluding Jihad Scholar

"The U.S. government is withholding documents that could show whether immigration laws have been used to bar foreign scholars from entering the country for ideological reasons, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday," the AP reports. "The ACLU, the American Association of University Professors and the PEN American Center planned to file a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday seeking release of the documents . . . The ACLU said it believed the statute was used to revoke the visa of leading Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan in August 2004 days before he was to begin teaching at the University of Notre Dame, in Notre Dame, Ind." At the time Ramadan's visa was revoked, Daniel Pipes posted an extensive list of reasons why he wasn't simply an innocent Muslim scholar.

• He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam."
• Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris.
• Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999.
• Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan.
• Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11.
• He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement.

"Ramadan denies all ties to terrorism, but the pattern is clear. As Lee Smith writes in The American Prospect, he is a cold-blooded Islamist whose 'cry of death to the West is a quieter and gentler jihad, but it's still jihad,'" notes Pipes.