Saïd Ramadan

Saïd Ramadan (Arab: سعيدرمضان), born on April 12th, 1926 with Shibin el-Kom in the delta of the Nile, dead on August 4th, 1995 with Geneva, was a panislamist, son-in-law and spiritual heir to the founder of the Muslim brothers Hassan El-Banna and itself founder of the Palestinian branch of the movement. He is the father of Hani and Tariq Ramadan.

The Forties and Fifties

He hears Hassan El Banna for the first time at 14 years in a conference with Tanta and rejoins the Muslim brothers whereas he is still schoolboy. El Banna distinguishes it quickly and chooses it as personal secretary and editor of his islamist weekly magazine Al Shihab . It will make him marry his Waffa oldest daughter. The couple will have five boys (Aymen, Bilal, Yasser, Hani and Tariq) and a girl (Arwa).

It is sent in Palestine and founds the branch of Jerusalem Muslim brothers in October 1945. In Jordan, he preaches with mosque Al-Husseini of Amman attended by the king Abdallah. This last is impressed and thus the organization of El Banna obtain a license of activity in 1946. This same year, it completes in Egypt at the University of Cairo its studies of Islamic right. In May 1948, it sets out again with volunteers for Palestine to help Abdel-Kader Al-Husseini, nephew of Amin Al-Husseini to fight against the Jews. Abdallah appoints it chief of the military court of Jerusalem, but he resigns after two months. He will always keep, seems he, a Jordanian passport granted at that time. Nevertheless, according to a document of the German information, this passport would have been delivered via the USA at the time of the Cold war, when an alliance with the Muslim brothers was considered to be desirable.

The establishment of Israel proving to be inescapable, Palestine is temporarily forsaken and it is sent in 1948 to the Pakistan which made Islam the base of its national identity and thus seems a promising ground for the projects of the Muslim brothers. It represents the organization with the world Islamic conference of Karachi. It deploys much activity and is made appreciate, binding in particular knowledge with Abdul Ala Mawdudi. It has a speaking time in the Arab program of Radio operator Pakistan. Raising the jinnah, he will play during the Fifties the part of a kind of cultural ambassador of Pakistan in the Arab countries. He receives a diplomatic passport which he will use when its Egyptian nationality is revoked

December 8th, 1948, after the assassination of Egyptian the Prime Minister by the Muslim brothers, the movement is declared illegal. Hassan El Banna is assassinated in her turn by government officials on February 12th, 1949. Although it does not take its official succession, Saïd Ramadan becomes its spiritual successor. It turns over to Egypt in 1950, the round of applause against the Muslim brothers having been raised, and publishes there in part of 1952 the monthly magazine Al-Muslimun where it presents, inter alia, the ideas of Abdul Ala Mawdudi. Thus it makes the connaissnce Sayyid Qutb which it encourages to write Jalons on the road of Islam (1964).

In beginning of the year 50, the United States is interested in the Muslim brothers like potential allies against Nasser and the establishment of Communist regimes in the Middle East. , diplomat posts some in Jordan, meets it. In 1953, it takes part in a conference on the Islamic culture with Princeton, Co-sponsored by the Bibliothèque of the Congress, which serves as a pretext for a contact cave the US government and the islamist ones.

In 1954, during repression according to the pseudo-attack against Nasser, the Muslim brothers are again dissolved. Saïd Ramadan is stopped but slackened after four months of detention thanks to the intervention of the Général Naguib. Expelled nevertheless, it goes with Sayyid Qutb to Jerusalem for a new world Islamic conference of which it is elected general secretary, but Glubb Pasha banishes it of Jerusalem. It settles then with Damas where it starts again in 1956 Al Muslimun . The Syrian laws obliging it to resort to a local writer, it chooses Mustafa Siba' I. Between 1956 and 1958, it to and from enters Jordan, the Syria, the Lebanon and the Saudi Arabia, being activated to give dash to the Muslim brothers and to persuade the Prince Fayçal to help it to establish Islamic centers in Europe. It is indeed clear that Pakistan is not able to carry out the hopes placed in him, namely to become the base of world Islamization.

Swiss exile

Saïd Ramadan is fixed at Geneva in August 1958 and goes this same year to Germany where it contacts the founders of the future Islamic Center of Munich (IDG). In 1959, it obtains a doctorate of right (jurisprudence of the Charia) of the Université of Cologne. According to Gerhard Kegel, its reader, “It was suitable and intelligent, if not a little bit fanatic. ”. He takes again Al-Muslimun whose publication stopped in Egypt and Syria for political reasons. He will continue the publication until 1967 of it, when the Saoudis cease their subsidies.

Continuing its ideal panislamic, it plans to create a chain of Islamic centers in the principal capitals of Europe, which would be independent of any governmental interference. The first takes form with Munich. It acts at the beginning of a project for construction of a mosque bound for former defectors of the Red Army resulting from the Moslem republics of the USSR, whose initiative returns to a German become after war a free lance of the information. Conflicts having made flee the recipients of origin, the committee finds itself controlled by Saïd Ramadan and Ghaleb Himmat, of Syrian origin, which were implied in the project. The committee for the establishment of a mosque will become the Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland (IGD). Unfortunately for S. Ramadan, it is made évincer by its partner gradually of it and officially the direction in 1968 gives up some. It concentrates on the Islamic Center of Geneva which it founded in 1961 with the assistance of Muhammad Natsir, Muhammad Assad, Muhammad Hamidullah, Zafar Ahmad Al-Ansâri and Abu Al-Hassan have' - Nadawiet. Munich and Geneva will be the first European bases of the Muslim brothers. A center is also established with London in 1964 with the assistance of Riad Al Droubie, Ja' far Sheikh Idris and T. Hassan. According to the IGC, these centers would have been financed until 1971 by the world Islamic Ligue that Saïd Ramadan contributes to found with Mecque in 1962.

August 30th, 1965, Nasser shows officially the Muslim brothers to have reconstituted their organization and to foment a coup d'etat. Their leader, Sayyib Qutb, are stopped, considered and hung on August 29th, 1966. Saïd Ramadan is also with the number of the defendants. Condemned by Contumacious to three 25 years sorrows, it loses its Egyptian nationality. It will not make any attempt to recover it, even late in its life when the attitude of the Egyptian government is softened a little; it will not take either Swiss nationality and will be considered by the authorities of its home country as being of “Pakistani origin” under the terms of the diplomatic passport of this country which it holds (but it would have entered to Switzerland in 1958 with a Jordanian passport). In Geneva, it is a time threatened of kidnapping by Egyptian agents.

Thereafter, it is devoted to the inspiration of the panislamism through the writing It collaborates in the establishment of the European Islamic Council in London in 1973.

He dies on August 4th, 1995. Its first wish of burial, Médine, is not accepted by the Saoudi authorities. The second, the cemetery Imam Shafi' I of the Cairo at Hassan El Banna is finally exaucé on August 9th. The presidents Mubarak and Arafat and the King Hussein forward of the telegrams of condolence.

Others

He maintained a correspondence with Malcolm X which he accommodated twice at Geneva and summer the mentor of Dawud Salahuddin which assassinated in 1980 the Iranian opponent Ali Akbar Tabatabai with Bethesda, Maryland. It was even suspected of having sheltered it in Geneva on the way of its escape towards the Iran. It was also suspected of being the author of the Projet, a plan of Islamization of Europe gone back to 1982 discovered in 2001 by the Swiss information in the residence of Youssef Moustafa Nada.

Publications

Monthly Al Muslimun
Islamic Law, Its Scope and Equity (Macmillan, London 1961).

His/her Aymen oldest son, considered neurosurgeon, deal with the publications of his father and writes the forewords of them.

References and notes

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