Tariq Ramadan in Red Pepper. posted by Richard Seymour

It isn't yet available on Red Pepper's website, but an interview with Ramadan by Oscar Reyes of Red Pepper is well worth sampling - if only because he has been so falsely maligned, including by those who should bloody well know better. On the London bombings:

When Tony Blair says that there is no relation between the attacks in London and those in Iraq, he is correct on ethical grounds - you cannot justify what was done in London by what is happening in Iraq. But on politicla grounds there is a connection, of course ... As Muslims, we need to stop being defensive and face up to our responsibilities for Islamic education and understanding. But the government and wider society also have a responsibility to look at the kind of education that we are providing in this society, whether it helps Muslims to understand that they are accepted as fellow citizens.

On moving beyond the 'moderate' versus 'fundamentalist' dichotomy:

It is really important not to accept this simplistic division, where Muslims who are saying what we want them to say are the moderates and all the others are fundamentalists. The Muslim community is as complex as, say, the Christian community and we have different voices ... [Muslims should] take a clear stance on the idea that Islam means 'against the West'. We have people, ideologists, using Islam in that way, and they are playing exactly the game of the neo-cons on the other side ... And it's up to us all, Muslims but also others in the West, to understand that we are fighting two extremisms that are nurturing each other.

On a "silent revolution" among young European Muslims:

In the face of the current reaction in Britain, you can feel that the second and third generations are asserting their identities, being British and Muslims at the same time. They are asking for their rights and not remaining on the margins of society. This shows an acceptance of their citizenship, that this society is their home, that they are no longer in dar al-harb (abode of war). Women are more present, more assertive, more aware of their rights against discrimination too ... We have even seen more Muslims getting involved in the European Social Forum too. And in France, we have had the 'Ecole pour tous' - which brought together non-Muslims and, even within feminist groups, saw them working together in the name of common values ... And this is what I call the "silent revolution".

And on the relationship between the Left and Islam:

Some within these movements understand that they have to study, to know more, to decentre themselves from the culturally dominant ideology. But others are totally misled by their perception that they are politically progressive, and fail to understand that they are culturally still very conservative and even backward sometimes, very imbibed with the ideology of colonisation, that 'we know best'. It's very difficult to deal with such people...

We need people who understand that they have to be serious about diversity. We have to deal with people in the name of our common resistance but we come from specific realities, values and histories.

It doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to conceive of who "such people" are. Anyway, also worth reading is this and this.