© unknownTariq Ramadan
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Joining us now from Berlin is Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University.
Tariq Ramadan, thanks for being there.
TARIQ RAMADAN, CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC STUDIES, OXFORD UNI: Thank you for your invitation.
TONY JONES: What was your first reaction to the news that Osama bin Laden had finally been tracked down and killed?
TARIQ RAMADAN: You know, once again, just a week after what happened, I was in New York, and I condemn what happened. I think that this is completely against the Islamic value - and I said it: it's anti-Islamic.
But I wasn't happy. I wouldn't - I will never be happy that we are killing someone. And my first reaction was just simply to think about being - him being arrested and brought to justice. And this is - afterward I heard what the president, Barack Obama, was saying, that they wanted to bring him to justice. And then all these different versions and just very bizarre and weird that we don't get a straightforward version of what happened.
And look at what is happening now in the Muslim majority countries, is that all the people are asking questions. It's very strange and that we drop his body in the sea, against all the Islamic rituals and we are told the Islamic rituals and principles are respected.
At the end of the day, the way it has been done and all these versions and all this political statements that we have gives the impression that it's very much used as a PR exercise, putting the president Barack Obama in a situation where he is strong and he is showing how much he is protecting the country, because he has been criticised on that side by the neo-con and the Tea Party, saying that he's not good for the job in Iraq, in Afghanistan and even for security reason.
On the other side, is not at all helping a clear dialogue with the Muslim majority countries and the perception that the Muslims - it's not really an event in the Muslim majority countries, it's just a random event, it's - you know, the great, great, great majority of the Muslims were not at all following and supporting Osama bin Laden's rhetoric. But the way it's perceived is: it's much more a Western issue.
TONY JONES: Well, the White House - we'll come to that in a minute: the reaction in the Islamic world. The White House officials are making no apologies at all. They're saying the operation was lawful, it was justified as an act of national self-defence. Do you reject that?
TARIQ RAMADAN: Of course. It cannot be perceived like this. Look, in the very same day when it happened, we had three different statements from the Pakistani governments and three different statements from the American governments about: did they know, yes or no, that something was happened? How come is it possible?
We still have questions, and when we have questions it doesn't mean that we are buying, you know, the conspiracy theories, about saying he has not been killed. Oh, no! I'm not saying this. I'm just saying how come we were told that first it was a firefight and then we are told he was not armed, that he was in the family, that they killed a woman and then we are told the woman has not been killed, now we listen to what the Pakistani are saying, it's completely different. We have so many versions. This is one.
The second is if it was possible to arrest him and to bring him to justice, this is what we would have liked, because first, we can't be happy when we are killing execution like this.
And this is what we were told as well, that the whole of the operation was in fact a killing operation and not to arrest him, as we were told first. So I think that lawful is disputable. Clear: it's completely unclear, and at the end of the day, the perception is, and with just your last program now, the clip that we had on what is happening in New York, it's as if now it's a celebration to show the unity and the patriotism in the States.
I think that, as much as I was against anything that was coming from violent extremism and what was done by Al Qaeda throughout the world - and as the president Barack Obama said: they killed much more Muslims than Westerners around the word, I was against this. But the way it's done, the way it's presented, the way now it's just presented, and in fact used within the States as something which has to do with domestic policy and helping the president to get people's support, I think that's not the right way.
TONY JONES: I understand the point you're making, but let's talk about the principle of whether it's legitimate to actually kill an enemy that's been responsible for such egregious acts of terror as the September 11 attacks, which were also defined as acts of war. Is it not reasonable for a country as a matter of self-defence to seek out and to destroy the perpetrators of a crime, an act of war like that?
TARIQ RAMADAN: No, but you have rules. Even the Nazi, the way they were brought to justice - you have to bring people to justice. So if, for example, between August till today in May, all these months of knowing that he was there and preparing all thing, the first was to go for trying to arrest him, not to kill him.
So, you kill someone when you have no other choice, not the way it was said to us. First, he was armed, and then we know that he wasn't. And we killed - first it was called that even he took a woman as a - you know, a shield for him to be protected and this was wrong. I think that if you have the choice, if you can avoid killing people and killing even the worst of human beings, you have to bring people to justice.
We need to listen to them. They have the right to be trialled, and then, we also have the right to listen to what they have to say, and then they are going to be judged and they have to be judged. We can't just kill people like this.
And remember what happened with Saddam Hussein.
TONY JONES: Well that is an interesting question. If I could just interrupt you there for a moment. That's an interesting question because if bin Laden had been killed in an aeroplane, if he'd been shot down by US jet fighters or if he'd been killed by a missile fired from a drone while he was driving down the street, you probably wouldn't have the same reaction.
Is it the fact that it was US military personnel, a hit squad sent in to kill him, that's motivating your annoyance here more than that? Because had he been killed in one of those other ways, you probably wouldn't be quibbling.
TARIQ RAMADAN: No. If you have the choice and you can avoid killing the people - by the way, how many people, or maybe innocent people around him, were killed? If you have the choice and you can just locate someone and try to avoid killing him, you avoid killing him and you bring people to justice.
And what is said now is all these versions - once again, what we have in the Muslim majority countries is all this conspiracy theory - he was not killed and they didn't want to listen to him because he might have say things that were against the Americans who supported him years ago. I think that you have to avoid all this.
And now, this discussion within the Bush administration that, "Can we or should we show the pictures?," are just strange. It's very bizarre to have this kind of discussion. If - and the only images that we got is the president Barack Obama watching closely about what was happening, as the president knowing exactly in the secret of his cabinet what is going on there. I think that seven months to prepare something like this, and this is what we get out of it. Is it not strange for you? It's strange for me.
TONY JONES: No, look, I agree with you that there are many strange elements.
TARIQ RAMADAN: If the Americans would like to avoid ...
TONY JONES: There are many strange elements to this. But are you suggesting you would have rather seen the pictures, you would have rather these gruesome pictures be released to the public, with the potential that they'd be used as propaganda tools by Al Qaeda?
TARIQ RAMADAN: No, I think that, you know, to see the pictures is not - now, it might be that they have to do something for the people to know that it was bin Laden. Something should be done. I'm not for showing the pictures in this way. This is not - this is not good.
And what the president Barack Obama is saying, "It's not us," I accept that. It's not the American values, but it's not the American values to go for summary execution like this. It's not. It's not right. It's not the right way to do things.
And once again, there is clearly a misunderstanding between the Pakistani government and the American government because what we got from the beginning is just unbelievable, unbelievable. If the American administration wanted to send a confused message to the Muslims around the world and to all the citizens and just to create, you know, discussions and suspicions, they wouldn't have done it in another way.
TONY JONES: You talked earlier about the conspiracy theories which have driven - have been driven throughout the Muslim world by people who say September 11 didn't really happen or it didn't happen in the way that - it didn't happen in the way that everyone in the United States and the West generally accepts that it did.
Do you accept the evidence that Osama bin Laden, at the top of the chain of command of Al Qaeda, ordered the September 11 massacre in New York, and in point of fact many other terror attacks around the world as well?
TARIQ RAMADAN: Yes. I accept that. I don't have a - you know, between the conspiracy theory on one side and everything it should be clear on the other side, in between still there are lots of questions. There was no independent, you know, inquiry about what happened, and still now there are questions to be raised. And the first questions that we have is about what happened two days ago. So I think that ...
TONY JONES: No, can I just interrupt you there. We'll just stick with September 11 for the moment because are you saying there are still questions about what happened there? Because you were quite equivocal about this 10 years ago when you were first asked about it. You said, "Perhaps bin Laden is a useful bugbear, like Saddam Hussein." What did you mean by that?
TARIQ RAMADAN: No, the first reaction that you are talking about is the week after, when we, for example, heard that with all what happened, we find two passports almost completely clean and with nothing, and I think, "OK, what's that?" I had questions, yes, with silly people leaving a car in a car park with things in Arabic when we all know that the pilots are reading things in English.
I think that these are questions that have to be asked, and it doesn't mean that we are saying that bin Laden is not behind and Al Qaeda is not behind. And if you are a serious citizen, you have the right to ask, and this is what I did also in the UK after 7/7, asking: we need an independent inquiry, we need to know what happened, we need transparency on all these things, because the way afterward it was used by the Bush administration is to go to kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan who were not supporting bin Laden and not supporting the Taliban and they paid a price. And this innocent people would ...
TONY JONES: Well, but you would have to admit that that was where Al Qaeda - but you know that Al Qaeda, the name Al Qaeda means "the base". The base was in Afghanistan. That's where they were, that's where the September 11 attacks were plotted and it was done so in ...
TARIQ RAMADAN: We don't know. Who knows about that? Who knows about that? Who knows about that?
TONY JONES: You don't know about that; is that what you're saying?
TARIQ RAMADAN: We were told - no, nobody knows - even the Americans. And I met people from the State Department and I met people from security services and intelligence, even in Europe. They said they were and we don't know where they are. So, after this, it's just you can't kill Afghani civilians because you think that someone is hiding in Afghanistan. You can't do that.
Even more if 10 years ago, 10 years before you were supporting him, you need just to value the blood of the people. I'm sorry to tell you, and we have to listen to this. More Muslims have been killed ...
TONY JONES: I'm sorry to be interrupting you because we ...
TARIQ RAMADAN: No, no, more Muslims have been killed by the violent extremists, killing innocent Muslims in Muslim majority countries. But we also have to be very clear on what was done afterwards, and I think that it's clear that what was done in Afghanistan and then in Iraq is not justifiable. It's not, in any way it is justified.
TONY JONES: I'm sorry, we're nearly out of time, but we should also make it clear that bin Laden himself was nearly tracked down in Afghanistan in the caves of Tora Bora. He went from there, evidently, to Pakistan where they finally caught him. So he obviously was in Afghanistan.
TARIQ RAMADAN: You are just - you are adding, you are adding, you are adding hypothesis to hypothesis because we were told from the very beginning, "We don't know where he was."
TONY JONES: OK.
TARIQ RAMADAN: And how can you explain yourself today that he was not so far from Islamabad for five years and the Americans and the Pakistani people not knowing about it. These are questions - we are legitimate to ask these questions and to say, "Look, at the end of the day, ..."
TONY JONES: They are certainly - they are certainly legitimate questions.
TARIQ RAMADAN: "... if you can't protect the life of a suspect, you need to bring him to justice and to ask him." I think that this is the simple things. And now if you want to listen to the Muslims around the world, they are against and they were never, never buying bin Laden's rhetoric. The great majority of the Muslims are supporting what is happening now ...
TONY JONES: OK.
TARIQ RAMADAN: ... in what we call the Arab Spring, is revolution for justice, dignity, democracy and freedom. These are the Muslims and the great, great, great majority of the Muslims. But the great majority of the Muslims as well are asking the American administration to stick to its values, and when you value the justice, you bring people to justice, you don't go for killing people in such a way.
TONY JONES: Tariq Ramadan, we thank you for coming to join us. I'm afraid we are out of time. We could talk about this for a lot longer, clearly, but we'll have to come back and finish this conversation another time. Thank you.
TARIQ RAMADAN: Thanks.
Top US Government Insider: Bin Laden Died In 2001, 9/11 A False Flag
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations Steve R. Pieczenik says he is prepared to tell a federal grand jury the name of a top general who told him directly 9/11 was a false flag attack
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