IFFY IRFY

Controversial Muslim identity Tariq Ramadan will be allowed to visit Australia because, as Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs Laurie Ferguson puts it, he "has an important contribution to make to the community's understanding of Islam.". Sydney Muslim writer/lawyer Irfan Yusuf admits he doesn't really know much about Ramadan other than the little he's read but thinks him a swell guy:

You’d think this is exactly the kind of Muslim intellectual we need more of.

Ibn Warraq, of Why I Am Not a Muslim fame, checks out Caroline Fourest's book on Ramadan and isn't impressed:

Fourest has rendered an invaluable service. She demonstrates with great skill that Ramadan is a dangerous radical who, far from modernizing Islam, is in fact attempting to Islamize modernity. Of undoubted ability and charisma, but with no respect for or allegiance to Western values of liberty, Ramadan is poisoning the minds of young Muslims in the West. He spreads his message through personal appearances and with the sale of tens of thousands of cassettes through Tawhid, an Islamist publishing house with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Under Ramadan’s influence, Islamist youths develop a hatred for Western values and dream of creating a totalitarian Islamic theocracy, not only in the heart of Europe, but eventually the entire globe, until, in the words of al-Banna, “the Islamic banner . . . waves supreme over the human race.”

Irfy might want to add Fourest's Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan to his reading list. Nah, like they say, ignorance is bliss.