Edgar Morin is one of the greatest living French intellectuals but could he be the accomplice of a sexual criminal? For in 2014 and early October 2017 he published two books of conversations with the Muslim intellectual and Oxford University professor Tariq Ramadan, who has since been accused of rape and sexual assault. Isn't the inanity and abject nature of such a conclusion obvious? Yet that is exactly the claim that Mediapart, its publishing editor Edwy Plenel, other media (including Les Inrockuptibles and Bondy Blog), journalists such as Frédéric Taddéi and intellectuals such as Pascal Boniface have had to endure for several days.
So here we are, the targets of a sickening campaign that has brought together the online 'fascosphere', a collection of journalists and rent-a-quote commentators, sections of the shattered socialist Left and the extreme right. This charming collection is led by former prime minister Manuel Valls who on Sunday, November 5th produced some unworthy statements on the subject. We're under no illusions; over and above this imbecilic and defamatory campaign that seeks to portray us as perpetual accomplices to a suspected sexual criminal, this is a political movement that is trying to resurrect itself.
Under the cover of defending secularism, the fight against terrorism and, now, defending women, these crusaders of discrimination and stigmatisation of Muslims, these angry reactionaries, are reviving their old witch-hunt. Donald Trump has crossed the Atlantic. Adopting his model, these provocateurs are hunting in a pack, with their own Fox News-style journalists, their own trite conflations, their own 'fake news' and their own abusive Tweets.
At the very time that France's state of emergency is being enshrined in everyday law, these latter-day McCarthyites, who have swapped anti-communism for Islamophobia, want to create a new crime. It is a crime of opinion, of intellectual “complicity”, according to Manuel Valls. This involves being accomplices to “Ramadanism” or its “useful idiots”, to use the words of Rénaud Dély, editorial director of the magazine Marianne, who has made anti-Muslim coarseness his stock in trade.
Here, as an initial response, were the comments made by Edwy Plenel on BFM TV on Sunday November 5th, who among other things said that if the claims against Tariq Ramadan turned out to be true it was “unforgivable”:
To go back to the story: Tariq Ramadan faces two official allegations of rape and sexual assault, the first made on October 20th, 2017, and the second a week later on October 27th. On the basis of the first allegation the prosecution authorities opened a preliminary investigation into alleged “rape, sexual assault, violence and death threats”, and are examining the second allegation. Since then statements from other women have been made claiming similar violence was used against them.
Then, on November 5th, in an investigation by the Swiss newspaper La Tribune de Genève, four women spoke anonymously about being harassed, with some of them saying they had sexual relations with Tariq Ramadan while they were underage and while he was their teacher in Geneva. Tariq Ramadan's line of defence has not just been pathetic but vile, denouncing a political plot – a “Zionist plot” according to many of his supporters, which has given them a free rein for their anti-Semitic ravings.
Mediapart reported on this and informed readers of the Ramadan scandal, the formal complaints made against him (see story here) and of the growing number of accusations. We are continuing our investigation into these suspected events following our usual rules of operation and faced with the normal hurdles that we find in this kind of research: the need to protect sources, the difficulty that women have in testifying, and the need to cross-check the statements that are made to verify their truth. Finally, the Ramadan affair forms part of wider coverage that we are devoting to the earthquake caused by the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Our complete dossier on the subject can be found here.
A desire to put the issues of violence against women, everyday sexism and permanent discrimination at the forefront of public debate lies at the very heart of Mediapart's editorial commitments.
That was what we did over the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, which provoked some irate comments from politicians and rent-a-quote commentators (the same ones who are today getting worked up over our “complicity”!) who denounced this sudden “tyranny of transparency”. That was in March 2011 and Manuel Valls said he thought that the images of former socialist minister Strauss-Kahn, who had been charged with attempted rape, coming out in handcuffs from the police station in Harlem were of an “intolerable cruelty”. Meanwhile Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the future first secretary of the Socialist Party and another Strauss-Kahn loyalist, complained about what he called “global humiliation”.
In May 2016 Manuel Valls, who had in the meantime become prime minister under President François Hollande, remained equally unmoved by the plight of women when Mediapart and France Inter radio station revealed several accounts suggesting possible aggression and sexual harassment by green Member of Parliament Denis Baupin. He said not a word when three women lodged formal complaints against the Parliamentarian (see Mediapart's coverage here). And nor did he react when it was revealed that one of his ministers, Jean-Michel Baylet, had in 2002 been the object of a formal complaint for violence, made by his former Parliamentary worker.
Nor did our recent investigation into the sexism and harassment of MP Jean Lassalle provoke the anger or even concern of our modern-day crusaders. Was that because these incidents involved a form of 'lewdness' that is so very French that it has become tolerated, even if this routine sexism and harassment forms the daily lot of women? In the same way Mediapart's Machoscope, which we have published since 2012 and which chronicles the casual sexism that exists in political life, has never led to expressions of concern or even any interest on the part of these noble souls.
The New Inquisition
Since at least 2003, when Tariq Ramadan was at the peak of his influence, a section of the Left allied to the Right and the extreme right has been leading a merciless war against the Muslim intellectual. The principle is quite simple: to censor him in advance. The aim was for him not to be seen, for his words to go unread, for no one to debate him, and for all his public pronouncements to be dismissed as being part of a systematic doublespeak and cunning rhetoric that was aimed at hiding one crucial element: the existence of a radical political Islam which was paving the way for terrorism, Salafism, the Muslim Brotherhood...
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Because he twice crossed Tariq Ramadan's path and debated with him at the invitation of a Muslim association in 2015, Edwy Plenel and Mediapart have been accused of being the “useful idiots of the bearded fundamentalists”, the new harbingers of an Islamist agenda. Hence the use of the term “Islamo-Leftist”, that empty concept waved around by people such as writer and journalist Caroline Fourest, journalist Renaud Dély, writer Pascal Bruckner, essayist and journalist Élisabeth Lévy, philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, Manuel Valls – him again – and the lost remains of the collapsed Socialist Party such as Laurent Bouvet and Gilles Clavreul who have taken refuge in the Le Printemps Républicain, a movement based on identity politics hiding behind the flag of secularism.
It is indeed true that Mediapart prefers to have knowledge of, question, debate with and investigate those with disturbing views – in short, to do our job as journalists – rather than issue excommunications in the name of the Republic. Especially when it concerns Tariq Ramadan, who has a major intellectual influence among Muslims seeking new ways to practice their religion. That was why in April 2016 we published a very long investigation by Mathieu Magnaudeix in five articles (see the English version here).
This investigation laid bare Ramadan's ideological machine, his relative isolation, the departure of a number of those close to him, his links with Qatar and his loss of influence. The intellectual was himself so unhappy with the series that he issued some 'right of reply' videos, attacking what he called “numerous well-known clichés”. Our modern-day crusaders want to forget all that in order to produce a new conflation: that if we investigated him, we therefore learnt about the crimes committed by this person (who nonetheless benefits from the presumption of innocence) and that we kept quiet! This grotesque argument is even put forward on the right-wing website Atlantico by its opportunist writer Hugues Serraf.
Wouldn't it have been better to question Caroline Fouest, who on her blog explains that in 2009 she was given information by four women, and who described in Marianne how a “request for religious advice” from Tariq Ramadan turned “almost systematically into a compulsive sexual relationship, sometimes consensual, often violent and very humiliating, before ending in threats”? Who, being in possession of such 'information', did not investigate or raise the alarm?
What can we say, too, of Bernard Godard, a renowned expert on Islam who worked at the Ministry of the Interior until 2014, and who told the weekly magazine L'Obs that, indeed, Tariq Ramadan had “many mistresses, that he visited sites, that some girls were brought to the hotel at the end of his conferences, that they were invited to undress, that some resisted and that he could become violent and aggressive … But I never heard talk of rapes. I'm stunned”. If he had heard of violence and aggression, why didn't this civil servant follow the terms of Article 40 of the French criminal code, which obliges public servants to report possible crimes to the prosecution authorities?
Defending women and victims is of little importance to our defamers. The sexual crimes allegedly committed by the intellectual are instead being used as part of a political manoeuvre to awaken anti-Muslim hysteria, to discredit all thinking that proclaims itself to be different, to ban all balanced research on this subject. The journalist Claude Askolovitch, who has used the term 'Islamo-Leftist' in his arguments, has since stated that he wants to distance himself from the “sort of stigmatising witch-hunt which we are seeing today, Islamophobia from a left-wing bourgeoisie which chimes with that of right-wing [advocates of] identity politics”.
Having been eliminated politically in the presidential and Parliamentary elections earlier this year, this New Inquisition faction has in the last few weeks been seeking to return to the centre of public debate. Manuel Valls, some socialists who have gone off the rails, a Right which has in part been reinvigorated by hard-line right-winger Laurent Wauquiez, and a divided far right want to reignite the flame of identity politics. Given the government's silence on the issue, the Ramadan affair could provide them with such an opportunity. As a candidate, Emmanuel Macron was able to marginalise these debates. As president he no longer reaches out to France's Muslims. All the ingredients are in place for a new outbreak of hatred and discrimination.
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Update:
On November 8th, after the original publication of this article in French, the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published this (see image right) on the front page.
It depicts Edwy Plenel with the words: “Ramadan affair, Mediapart reveals: 'We didn't know'”. As was stated at the beginning of this article: This ignominious Donald Trump-style campaign, led by former prime minister Manuel Valls, is part of a wider political movement which brings together those elements of the Left who were destroyed at recent elections and the nationalist Right.
We will refrain from making any further comment about this drawing by the cartoonist Coco.
Our readers can meanwhile find here our live broadcast on January 7th, 2015, the day of the attack on Charlie Hebdo's offices. Under the title 'With Charlie Hebdo, against hate and for freedom', it featured representatives from around 20 different media.
Our readers can also consult a blog written by Edwy Plenel entitled: 'Their sad passions, our common causes'.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter