Agence France-Presse (AFP) has sent out a curious report on a recent behind-closed-doors debate in Paris between the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and the daughter of French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
The report of the event, hosted by a private debating forum in Paris, is notable not just for the awful unpalatibility of both participants. Oddest is that the AFP describes the event as a 'left-right clash.'
Tariq Ramadan is perhaps the world's best-known apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood, an advocate of a mere 'moratorium' on stoning and someone whose activities have on various occasions seen him denied entry into Paris and America.
Calling the Ramadan - Le Pen debate a 'left-right clash' does rather beg the question of what AFP would consider a right-right debate. Put baldly, the AFP has fallen into the most common failure of Europeans when confronting reactionary, anti-progressive or pseudo-progressive Islamic voices. It presumes that anybody with a European background with reactionary views must be right-wing, whilst anyone with a Muslim background espousing similar views must hail from the left.
There is nothing 'left-wing' about Ramadan, and the presumption that he is some kind of voice of the oppressed not only fails to fit his personal history, it fatally misreads contemporary reality.
