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Anti-war Muslim scholar says U.S. ban lifted

20 January 2010 19:25 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Ayaz Abdulla â€“ APA. Tariq Ramadan, a leading European Muslim critic of the Iraq war, said on Wednesday a ban on him entering the United States had been lifted, signalling what he called a new willingness to permit critical debate. APA reports quoting Euronews.
U.S. civil liberties campaigners have championed the case of Ramadan, barred from the United States due to alleged terrorism ties, as part of a larger pattern of scholars and writers being excluded due to unwarranted or unspecified U.S. national security grounds.
The United States has revoked Ramadanâ€™s visa several times since 2004. Government lawyers have said he was barred because he gave 1,670 Swiss francs, then worth $1,336 (820 pounds), to a Swiss-based charity, the Association de Secours Palestinian, or ASP, from 1998 to 2002.
Washington listed ASP as a banned group in 2003, saying it supported terrorism and had contributed funds to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
In a statement, Ramadan said the reasons given for his exclusion from the United States â€œwere nothing more than a pretence to prohibit me from speaking critically about American government policy on American soil.â€
â€œThe decision brings to an end a dark period in American politics that saw security considerations invoked to block critical debate through a policy of exclusion and baseless allegation.â€
â€œUnder the Bush administration, academics and intellectuals were frequently excluded on the false pretext of security. Todayâ€™s decision reflects the Obama administrationâ€™s willingness to reopen the United States to the rest of the world, and to permit critical debate.â€
Ramadan, an Oxford University professor, has said he was unaware of any connections between the charity and terrorism.
He is the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, an Islamist thinker and activist who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood, which opposed secular and Western ideas.