Banned scholar appointed to government taskforce
Reports indicate that a controversial Muslim scholar, who has been banned from entering the United States and France, has been given a position on a government taskforce.
The Guardian reports today that professor Tariq Ramadan has been given a position on a 13-man working group on tackling extremism, whose members are being chosen by the Home Office.
The group is set to report to the prime minister and home secretary and by the end of September with proposals to try and prevent British Muslims turning to violence.
The Home Office has neither confirmed nor denied that Professor Ramadan would be part of the working group.
“We have not yet agreed the final makeup of the working groups,” a spokesman told politics.co.uk, adding that they are still talking to potential members.
Professor Ramadan has already faced controversy in the UK, when given a speaking engagement shortly after the July 7th London bombings.
The Sun called for the government to bar him from attending the academic conference, and ran a front-page splash describing him as an “Islamic militant”. However, the paper later also described him as a “hero of young Muslims”.
The professor, who was this week appointed to Oxford university’s St Anthony’s College, rejects his tag as militant and has urged Muslims to condemn the attacks on London “with the strongest energy”.
His reported appointment to the government taskforce has been hailed in some quarters and been met with confusion in others.
One MP has been quoted as saying his possible inclusion in the working group would send out “all the right messages” that the government genuinely seeking answers.
While the Jewish Community Security Trust – a group that monitors alleged Muslim extremists, said the possible appointments was “a strange choice”.
A spokesman described him to the Guardian as “at the soft end of the Islamist extreme spectrum”.
