Trying to Bridge A Great Divide

Tariq Ramadan has the measured delivery of an academic, which is no more than you would expect from a man who used to be a high school principal and wrote his doctoral thesis on Nietzsche. But as the leading Islamic thinker among Europe's second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants, the Geneva-based university lecturer also inspires a good deal of mistrust--from both Arab Muslims for his Western sensibility and Westerners for his controversial Islamic roots. Ramadan, 38, is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder, in 1928, of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic revival movement that spread from Egypt throughout the Arab world, criticizing...

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