First They Came for the Muslims

Last month the U.S. government canceled a visa that it had granted to Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar in Switzerland. The visa, which had been approved in March and would have allowed him to accept a tenured professorship at the University of Notre Dame, was revoked at the request of the Homeland Security Department. No explanation has been given, but a department spokesman cited “public-safety or national-security risks” as the usual reasons for such an action. Tariq Ramadan, 42, is a professor of Islamic studies and philosophy at the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland. He will respond to questions and…

I was watching CNN last night and came across a Lou Dobbs interview with Fouad Ajami, Director, Middle East Studies Program, John Hopkins University. Dr. Ajami made a lot of sense to me. To get a sense of where he is coming from, here is a list of articles by or about Dr. Ajami: Iraq and the Arabs Future Rude Arab Awakening What the Arab World Is Watching [critique of Al-Jezeera] Lebanon Star [critique of Ajami’s attack on Al-Jezerra] During the interview, in which he was speaking about the Abu Ghuraib scandal and the brutal beheading of Nick Berg, Ajami…