FEBRUARY 25 — In September 2017, at the height of the #MeToo movement, popular Pakistani-American Muslim preacher Nouman Ali Khan was accused of acting inappropriately towards women.
Despite his moralising over marriage in his lectures, Nouman was accused of grooming female fans for “secret sham marriages” that would lead to sexual relationships. Nouman has since claimed his conversations with the women were consensual, and they were “marriage prospects.”
One month later, three women accused another prominent Muslim academic, French-Swiss professor Tariq Ramadan, of sexual assault and rape.
By this time, it seemed almost inevitable that sexual misconduct among the Muslim elites would surface, one way or another. However, after the women who accused Nouman were much maligned by some in the Muslim community, it was a surprise that these three women had the courage to publicly accuse Tariq afterwards.
The first accuser, secular activist Henda Ayari had in her 2016 book detailed a sexual assault in a Paris hotel by an unnamed man. She later named Tariq.
The second accuser was an unnamed French Muslim convert who accused Tariq of luring her to his hotel room in 2009, before assaulting and raping her. Then a third woman accused him of sending pornographic messages before trying to blackmail her.
By November last year, four other Swiss women claimed that Tariq had molested them when they were teenagers.
Tariq has denied all the allegations, but that same month University of Oxford announced that Tariq had taken a leave of absence.
On January 31, he was arrested by French police and charged with two counts of rape. He has been under their custody since.
While Nouman’s case did not receive much attention in Malaysia, Tariq received huge support from part of the Muslim community here.
He is, of course, a prominent and influential thinker and widely respected in the more liberal and progressive circles. I myself had the honour of covering him a couple of times, where he had spoken up in support of pluralism and defended non-Muslims whom he said are treated as “second-class citizens.”
He had also urged a focus on justice rather than the implementation of Shariah law, and reminded Muslims that they have bigger enemies within the community rather than judging others when it comes to “jihad”, or divine struggle.
But there is also another reason why Tariq is respected among Muslims. He is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is seen as the father of Islamic revivalism and Islamism — whose template has shaped the formation of Muslim activism in Malaysia.
So it does not come as a surprise that many Muslim men here support Tariq after he was accused of rape.
Progressive group Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF), which has hosted Tariq here many times, has publicly supported the #FreeTariqRamadan campaign and his defenders, the Committee to Support Tariq Ramadan. IRF’s Facebook page constantly posts updates in defence of Tariq.
“The same accusations are part of an ongoing campaign that has attempted to demonise him ever since the beginning of his involvement as an intellectual and an activist in the early 1990s,” IRF founder Dr Farouk Musa was quoted saying in Free Malaysia Today (FMT).
“Personally I spoke to Prof Tariq a couple of weeks ago over the phone. And I sensed confidence in his voice,” he said, in a separate report by Berita Daily.
PKR’s religious bureau chief Muhammad Nur Manuty had cried character assassination and slander against Tariq, and went as far as claiming an Islamophobia conspiracy in the West that is threatening peace among Muslims.
De facto Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had also released a brief statement expressing his disgust over what he called “malicious allegations and unjust treatment” of Tariq. It is unknown if Pakatan Harapan endorses this view.
Influential Muslim youth group ABIM, of which Anwar was once among its leaders, similarly supported Tariq.
It cannot be disputed that Tariq has been treated harshly by the French justice system. It is fair to demand that Tariq be accorded proper treatment befitting his status. He should not be presumed guilty until he is sentenced. There is no question about this.
However, it is also undeniable that in their defence of Tariq, his supporters are essentially throwing women under the bus.
Notably absent in all their discourse was recognising the pain of sexual assault and rape victims, and admitting that Muslims in positions of power are indeed capable of inflicting physical and mental hurt.
Instead, we have seen total demonisation of the women who accused Tariq, and by extension, women victims who wish to come forward and accuse their attackers who have friends in high places.
In both reports by FMT and Berita Daily, Dr Farouk had scoffed at feminists who asked him to distance himself from Tariq: “I find it rather disturbing when some feminist leaders who came to see me asking me to distance myself from Tariq. It seems that these feminists forgot about the legal maxim of being innocent until proven guilty.”
In an op-ed published by IRF, prominent academic Chandra Muzaffar further vilifies the women accusers, putting suspicion over their claim by linking them with so-called Islamophobes and calling their accusations “utterly baseless.”
Like others, Chandra had also claimed a conspiracy to bring Tariq down, and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims.
Tariq’s well-being is important. But perhaps more important than Tariq’s reputation is empowering women — especially Malaysian, and especially Muslim women — to speak up against sexual abuse and gender-based violence.
Already, rape is massively under-reported, and amid this rampant “rape culture”, women and victims are often blamed for crimes against them.
With responses such as these from male leaders in the NGO, academic and political circles, it is not hard to imagine that women and victims of sexual assault would just choose to shut up about their ordeal.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
