We recently discussed the arrest of a Northwestern professor and Oxford official in a murder in Chicago. Now a prominent Oxford professor of contemporary Islamic studies has been arrested in France after two women accused him of brutal sexual assaults. Tariq Ramadan, 55, is a Swiss academic who is also the grandson of Hassan al-Banna (founder of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement). He denies the charges stemming from alleged rapes in two separate hotel rooms. One of the rapes is charged as a sexual assault on a vulnerable person because the woman was disabled. Both rapes allegedly occurred during academic conferences.
Ramadan is a regular commentator and guest on French television and used his high-profile image to allegedly lure the disabled woman to his room, saying that too many people had recognized him and were staring at a Hilton bar in Lyon in 2009. The woman was a 45-year-old convert to Islam and said that he suggested that they go to his room instead. She alleges that he immediately attacked and raped her. She said that he took the stairs to the room while she took the elevator due to her crutches. The French edition of Vanity Fair magazine, reported that the women described “blows to the face and body, forced sodomy, rape with an object and various humiliations, including being dragged by the hair to the bathtub and urinated on”. Notably, she gave police a description of small scar on his groin.
The second woman is Henda Ayari, 41, who leads an Islamic feminist group called Les Libératrices. She said that Ramadan raped her in a hotel room in Paris in 2012 — an attack that she described in her 2016 book, I Chose to be Free. However, she hid the name of the alleged attacker and only came forward in the wake of the Weinstein story and the start of the “me too” movement.
The Guardian reports that Ramadan is married with four children and refused to sign an official summary of the accounts. He is on leave as a senior research fellow of St Antony’s College but continues to head the Islamic Institute for Ethical Training in France.
Well he’s in France, the land of the Roman Polanski protectors. No one’s expecting justice right? The only place he’d be safer is in a sanctuary state like California.
Only in America can Ku Klux Klan sympathizers and misogynist cretins comment freely on the internet regarding an alleged rape; all the while their “strongman” incompetently endeavors to curtail those rights.
Didn’t Bill Clinton go to Oxford?
All that this dirt bag need do is go to Switzerland, which has a penchant for not extraditing criminals seeking sanctuary within its borders. France won’t be able to get its hands on him, which, in terms of French justice, wouldn’t be viewed as such a grave problem. Remember, France, itself, acts in precisely the same manner, choosing to harbor criminals, from around the globe, on its soil, refusing to extradite criminals from its shores. The only decent things, emanating from that place, are its variety of cheeses, perfumes, fashions, literature and wines. Beyond that, you’re stuck with stinky, rude people, who don’t shower on a regular basis or bother to maintain a modicum of basic hygiene. They are cowards, who would be speaking German and eating bratwurst, if the rest of the free world didn’t save their a$$es decades ago. Not much has changed.
Guilty !! The downward swing of the sword awaits him.
Let’s see. The woman was a 45-year-old convert to Islam. Tariq Ramadan suggested that they go up to his room. Ramadan took the stairs, while the woman, who was disabled, took the elevator because she needed to use crutches. Once in the his room, Ramadan proceeded to strike blows to her face and body, engaged in forced sodomy, raped her with an object and subjected her to other various humiliations, including dragging her by the hair to the bathtub and urinating on her.
Turley’s story of romance Islamic style, while all well and good, however, fails to answer the most important question. Did the woman continue to remain a member of the Islamic cult? Or did she want to try something less “extreme”–let’s say, Christianity? Buddhism? Judaism? Atheism? Or did Ramadan’s actions only inspire her to get even deeper into Islam?
These are real important issues of this case, not the legal ones. Psychologists have long held that ignorance can be educated, crazy can be medicated, but there’s no cure for stupid. If there ever was a test to disprove the thesis that “there’s no cure for stupid,” this case is it. I suspect, however, that rather than gaining some insight, and abandoning Islam forever, she chose to remain in her trap, demonstrating that the thesis remains ironclad truth.
I suspect that the recent convert didn’t realize that this was going to be a part of her initiation into the cult. If she continues to stay within the cult, where such behavior is condoned and encouraged according to the cult’s beliefs, it’s a safe bet to assume that she enjoyed the episode and wants more.
He has a sign on his desk at work which says: Rape Em If Ya Gottem.
Let’s see, Comey is teaching a course on Ethics and we know he lied three times on a FISA application. This guy is head of an Ethical Training center. Maybe we should be teaching morals instead of ethics.
The article does not say if the first victim reported the attack immediately, or if she waited.
Women must come forward immediately, when their injuries can be documented and DNA evidence collected. There are many emotional reasons why some do not. And they have my sympathy. But allowing evidence to be collected at the time spares them from the he-said-she-said problem later. It is not just their word, but evidence. Hopefully both of these women have saved some sorts of evidence – photographs of their bruises, something to help them tell their story.
The attack sounds horrifying, and I cannot understand how he could have gone free in 2009 unless it was not reported. I grieve for victims of sexual assault who do not report their attackers. They have their reasons. And I grieve for what those who do report it go through in court, and having everyone know what happened.
The description of the scar can prove she was with him intimately, but she will need to prove the allegations. There has to be some way to determine who is telling the truth. Hopefully there is. Otherwise, all she can accomplish is to warn other women from being alone with him. He is not guilty because he is a Muslim man, and she is not telling the truth because she is a woman.
I hope they thoroughly investigate these allegations, and that justice is served.
It pains me to say this, but parents need to not only raise their boys right, but they also need to teach their girls when they are teenagers what to do if something terrible happens.
Women should be celebrating the election of Donald Trump, in that it was the precipitating event for the “me too” movement. Plenty of celebrity rapes have been in the media prior to 2017; Bill Cosby, Strauss-Kahn, football players, musicians, actors…. Few have resulted in prosecution, let alone conviction, and none have survived at any length in the media.
Then comes Donald Trump, his foul mouthed interview beside a party bus, his election as president, and the next celebrity rape sets off a firestorm of rape reports which light up the media and ignite women across the nation to pile on, not just against that one man but against dozens of others. Why did this flood never happen after any of the previous media-reported events? Why, for instance, did it not happen after the Bill Cosby reporting? Because Donald Trump had not yet been elected and the media was not yet hungry for that kind of firestorm.
You think the media cares about women? They do not. They care about excitement, and Donald Trump hatred is exciting. The media has made mistreatment of women a Trump trademark, and they are using the “me too” movement to sell themselves.
Bill H – I totally agree with you. “Me too” is just a trend to make $$. Dave Chappelle does a hilarious skit about showing up for a script reading in the wee hours and asking the director to hurry up because he’s late for a wardrobe fitting. The women who went along with this made a conscious trade off.
re: Strauss-Kahn – I always thought that was political – he had been known as a womanizer for years – but it wasn’t until he was IMF head and started talking about going off the dollar that he was outed.
Strauss-Kahn??? Oh, way back in 2011 I did an article on him!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
great song Squeek – I still think that DSK was framed (later charges dropped) because of his comments about going off the dollar. This was in 2011 – same year Obama/HRC had Gaddafi taken out because HE wanted to introduce a gold-backed currency called the dinar.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/12/22/what-really-happened-dominique-strauss-kahn/
Thank you, Autumn! And if I may say this, without ego, I think I really am an under-rated comic and creative genius. Because that song is really good! I had others. Maybe I will be like Van Gogh, and I will only be appreciated in 2095, when some AI Bot discovers my work on the net archives, and then I will be famous. And probably dead. FWIW, the “real me” is going to try to get some poetry published, sooo wish me luck!
And yes, the whole DSK story seemed fishy to me at the time. I would not be surprised is DSK was up to other stuff that got him crosswise with TPTB. I also think, being a major cocksman, that he may have learned something he should not have, and needed to have his reputation tarnished ASAP.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
PS: Have you ever used an electric percolator??? If so, do you have to use those little paper filters, or can you just put the coffee in the metal thingie with the holes in it??? Because I have ordered one, but it is going to beat the paper filters here.
Yes, you certainly are talented. There are 3 kinds of artists IMO – established, emerging and submerged. You are not fully submerged obviously, but certainly a wider audience would appreciate your stuff. Just have to submit it to the right venue. Any ideas where you might send your stuff?
I use a French press – have never used a percolator. French press is great for yerba mate as well as coffee.
I mostly use a French press, too. I use my auto drip machine to make hot water for it, and my hot tea, and hot chocolate. Sometimes for coffee. But I wanted to try something new, so I ordered the perc!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Years ago my preference was a Farberware percolator decades ago. When it ceased to function its replacement wasn’t as good nor were any of the replacements that followed. With time I got lazy so now I use Nespresso (Vertuoline) which makes a good cup of coffee quickly and without having to clean up. With a milk foamer, I can make some of the variant beverages as well. For those drinks, I used to use a commercial Olympia expresso maker, but that required effort so it sits in the back of the closet soon to be an antique.
Squeeky – no filter needed. Dump the ground coffee into the basket and “perc” away.
Thanks Modern Miner, and Allan and PaulCS!!!
It will be here tomorrow, so I will be very perky!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
FWIW, I also bought one from the 1920’s and whenever it gets here, I am going to sit outside at one of the patio tables, and plug it in to the outside plug, and drink my coffee as if I were at a little bistro on the Champs-Élysées. I hear the French did this way back when during what was called The Coffee Society days of the 1920s.
Maybe play some Django Reinhart stuff like this on my Kindle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBaUm7VDsi0
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – wash everything first.
Squeeky: Aren’t you much too old to still be a “Girl”? Don’t you want to be a full-fledged woman – ever? And how long do you think you can stay just a cute little girl? “Fess up: how old are you?
My gravatar says that I am 31, but I am really 33. I will be 34 in few months. I guess I need to update it.
As a twist, like it says in the Bob Dylan song,”I am sooo much younger now, I was older than that then.” Because “Squeeky Fromm” was much older than me when she first hit the net, but “she” was based on the real me, who really is called “Squeeky”. And then, when I found out about “Squeeky Fromm Girl Reporter”, I moved into the “entity” with the originator, and we coexisted for a year or two. Then, it was just me, and it has been just me since maybe 2012 or so. I forget the exact date.
Sooo, is that confusing or what???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
So, at age 33, you still do not want to grow up and become a woman. The cute act grows tiresome after a girl becomes a woman – at about age 20 I would say. Why don’t you choose another nom de guerre?
That is true. I do not wish to grow up in my online persona. I don’t even grow up all that much in my real life, because I don’t date and I don’t want to get married and have kids. I am very spoiled, and enjoy going to bed when I want, and getting up when I want, etc. The difference between me and others who do the same thing, is that I know that what I am doing is not the best way to live, and certainly not one that most people should, or could emulate. But I am a happy person, and enjoy my life. I have time to read, to listen to music, and play guitar, and enjoy my friends and my various critters.
I also do adult things, like vote, pay my taxes, keep insurance on my car, and do a good/great job for my employers. As far as my name, I like it! I truly am “Squeeky”, and why should I choose some other name???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – we are only as old as we think we are (although the AZ DMV has a different idea). You can self-identify as any age or no age. Personally, I am at least 25 years younger than my chronological date, but it is amorphous. 😉
I figure I am one those Jungian puella aeternus chicks, about whom much has been written. I regularly self-examine to see if I am falling into the Darkness, which I don’t think I have yet. Anyway, it is a fascinating concept, and if you are interested, here is a blurb:
I am waiting for the analysis that says, “people tend to get on a puella aeternus’s last frigging nerve”, but as of yet, I have not. I think there is a lot more of this stuff out there for men and women than we think. We probably need to return to Rites of Passage to move young American Adults out of this phase. Except for me, because I am happy where I am! 🙂
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
PS: When you were younger and used an electric percolator, did you use those paper filters? And if you didn’t did your coffee still taste OK???
Squeeky – I use a Keurig now, but I drank college coffee for years. That was like drinking battery acid, although it was high on caffeine. I have a perc, a French press, and two Keurigs. Some of the best coffee I have had is drip grind. I mainline coffee so I used to judge food places on how good their coffee was, not anymore. I have had so much coffee that it is great, good, okay, drinkable, etc. now.
Very complicated, it seems. I previously thought you were a simple, guileless thing.
RDKay
Moi??? Eau Contraire! as the French say.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Bill
The sad reality of it all is that Trump will, somehow, stake a claim on the ‘outing’ of sexual abusers, harassers, etc. He has already inferred that it was his presence that got the women out to march. The really sad reality of it all is that there are so many Trump supporters that will not only go along with this perverse reasoning but enhance it as well. Let the tweets out.
Isaac,,.
– The accusations against Trump may have motivated some of the women to march, so if Trump claimed that he inspired women to participate, maybe he’s right.😏
Tom
In a left handed, perverse manner, yes. Now if he can only work that magic and inspire enough Americans to vote his disgusting, lying, megalomaniac a** down the road in 2020, that would be justice, karma, just deserts, etc.
The right wing immediately connects this animal with the left. All reasonable people believe that this mutt, if he is guilty, should be wrapped in a wet goat skin and sewn shut, left in the desert, where the sun will shrink the wet hide and reduce him to what he really is, less than nothing. There are enough extremists like this animal and those that immediately connect him with their opponents, in this blog, primarily, the left, but sometimes the right, but more often than not, the left.
So, Allan, birds of a feather, of a different color? The fuel that feeds either fire is the same, unbridled angst, frustration, hatred, etc.
Not his fault. If these women had covered themselves from head to toe in black sheets he may have been able to control himself.
Well, Poor Old Tariq deserves an Irish Poem!
The Chic of Araby???
An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
There once was a dude named, Tariq!
Who had his own take on pique-nique!*
He’d lure chicks upstairs,
With his erudite airs,
Then surprise them, and get on his freak!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
* Okay, this is a very sophisticated word play. Pique-nique is the root phrase from French (and Arabic) for picnic. But the words have a separate meaning. Pique of course means stimulating an interest. Nique is a word which means “to have sex”, to put it mildly. Think the “F” word here.
Like your wordplay.
Will the leftists approve of his actions since they march behind Linda Sansour who believes in Sharia Law and genital mutilation?
Squeeky – very cute. 😉
Thank you and Allan! Pique-nique made my day!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
1748 (in Chesterfield’s “Letters”), but rare before c. 1800 as an English institution; originally a fashionable pot-luck social affair, not necessarily out of doors; from French piquenique (1690s), perhaps a reduplication of piquer “to pick, peck,” from Old French (see pike (n.2) ), or the second element may be nique “worthless thing,” from a Germanic source. Figurative sense of “something easy” is from 1886. Picnic table recorded from 1926, originally a folding table.
Picnic is originally a French word, picque-nique, which first appeared at the end of the seventeenth century. It later spread to Germany and other countries, but didn’t become widely known in English until after 1800. It referred to a fashionable type of social entertainment in which each person who attended brought a share of the food.
The first part may be from the French piquer, from which we get pick. The nique part may just have been a reiteration (as in English words like hoity-toity), but could have echoed an obsolete word meaning “a trifle” (so the term could have meant something like “each pick a bit”). The association with an outdoor meal didn’t appear in English until about the middle of the nineteenth century.
George, you ever been to France in the summer? That´s all you will see near popular tourist attractions at midday – Frenchies everywhere eating their picnics lunches. They have quite elaborate equipment – folding tables and chairs and cloth table cloths and metal cutlery and wine, salads, baguette etc.
Or, see this:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niquer#French
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Maybe Tariq was hoping for a Super Freak…
“He is on leave as a senior research fellow of St Antony’s College but continues to head the Islamic Institute for Ethical Training in France.”
Huh??? William and Mary College has a French campus??? Zoot alors!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl reporter
“He is on leave as a senior research fellow of St Antony’s College but continues to head the Islamic Institute for Ethical Training in France.”
**************************
You don’t get more taqiya than that. Grease up the skids on the Dr. Guillotine’s masterpiece!