Middle Eastern hatreds poison left-wing political life

By CATHERINE FIELD Herald correspondent

PARIS - Once they squabbled over who was pro-Soviet and who was not. Now, French leftwingers are split just as deeply by a new wedge: Islam.

One of the biggest leftwing conferences in years, the European Social Forum (ESF), gathering tens of thousands of people, ended in bitter discord at the weekend over a speaking invitation to a leading Muslim intellectual accused by Jewish groups of anti-Semitism.

Several political parties boycotted his appearance, which was loudly applauded by an audience of a thousand. Some political leaders attended reluctantly; others rose to his defence, saying the accusations were bogus.

The man concerned is Tariq Ramadan, 41, a Swiss-born, Swiss and Egyptian-educated preacher who is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of a fundamentalist group in Egypt, the Muslim Brothers.

Before the row, Ramadan's name and face were almost unknown among Europe's majority. But he is well known to Muslims, especially to the alienated youth in France's decrepit suburban housing estates.

An aide says cassettes of his speeches have sold in the hundreds of thousands and he fulfils scores of speaking engagements each year at mosques and other gatherings of the faithful.

Unlike many of the firebrand Islamists who have come to the West's attention since the September 11 terror attacks, Ramadan is widely considered a moderate, who calls for an open Islam that respects Europe's secular society.

The storm ignited last month when Ramadan accused France's Jewish intellectuals of having a "sectarian attitude" - of siding with Israel out of religious loyalty, thus stifling debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He named some of the high-profile Jewish writers in the French media, such as Andre Glucksmann, Bernard-Henri Levy, Alexandre Adler and Alain Finkielkraut, all of whom hail from the Jewish humanist tradition but have also spoken out in favour of Israel in its policy towards the Palestinians.

France's well-organised Jewish movement reacted with fury, tarring Ramadan with anti-Semitism.

"Jean-Marie Le Pen [the far-right politician] was convicted for handing out a list of the names of Jewish journalists at his Red, White and Blue Festival in 1985," says Yonathan Arfi, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France.

"The parallel is obvious. You cannot categorise people according to their religious origin. Tariq Ramadan is a dangerous man, because he is stirring up racial hatred."

The Socialist Party joined the criticism, along with some senior members of the Green Party and an anti-racist group, LICRA. But the rest of the Greens, the French Communist Party and a Trotskyite party, the Revolutionary Communist League, and another anti-racist movement, MRAP (Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples), defended Ramadan, saying the charges were nonsense or that he should at least be allowed the right to speak.

"We believe that the accusations against Tariq Ramadan are unfounded," said Pierre Khalfa, member of the ESF's organisational secretariat. "Obviously, if we had the slightest belief that he could be anti-Semitic, we would not have invited him to speak.

"We can disagree with him on many things. His view of the world is very much determined by religion. It's not the same as mine. I am secular and an atheist and I am against any kind of sectarianism. But sectarianism and racism are not the same thing."

The controversy has given Ramadan a huge burst of publicity. The national TV channel France 2 has signed him to take part in a live, 90-minute debate with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. And the centre-left daily Le Monde has given him prominent space to air his views.

"It's time to clear the air and to question dangerous taboos," Ramadan said in the contested article, which was posted on a Muslim website, oumma.com.

"Today, there are Jewish as well as Muslim intellectuals who are pushing members of their community to line up against others, people who are enclosed in their intellectual, ethnic or religious ghetto. In France, you can't use the term 'Jewish intellectual' without exposing yourself to suspicions of anti-Semitism."

Meanwhile, racism accusations of a different kind are being levelled against Claude Imbert, editor of the centrist weekly Le Point, after he admitted he was "slightly Islamophobic" - that he viewed the Muslim religion as conservative and backwards-looking.

MRAP described his comments as "extremely dangerous and all the more unacceptable because they encourage a worrying and unacceptable trivialisation of Islamophobia, behind which hides hatred of the Arab-Muslim population."

It demanded that Imbert stand down from the High Council for Integration, a 20-member body that advises the Government on immigration-related issues.

The debate reflects the tensions in France that have been stoked by the conflicts in the Middle East. One of the big issues is whether the state should make concessions to the country's five million Muslims, many of whom remain attached to conservative religious traditions, such as the wearing of headscarves by teenage girls.