The controversial Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan is making waves in the European press by calling on “all people of conscience” to boycott Italy’s largest book fair for honoring the state of Israel.
This year, the Turin Book Fair, a festival of readings and signings (May 8th to 12th), has chosen to honor Israel on its 60th anniversary of statehood. The Israeli novelists David Grossman, Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and Etgar Keret are on the program.
But that didn’t sit well with Ramadan, a professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford and at Erasmus University in the Netherlands and a highly contested figure who has been profiled here, criticized here and here, and who wrote about the Koran for the Book Review here.
In an interview on Feb. 1 with the Italian news agency ADN Kronos, Ramadan called on “all people of conscience” to boycott the Turin fair. “From now on we cannot recognize the legitimacy of celebrating the state of Israel, which leaves death and desolation in its wake.” The issue, he said, “is not an Islamic or Arab question, but a matter of world conscience.” (Ramadan also called for a boycott of the Paris Book Fair, to be held from March 14 to 19, because it too will honor Israel.)
After the ensuing media storm, Ramadan clarified his remarks on his own Web site, saying the boycott campaign was “intended as criticism of the ‘guest of honor.’ It is not an attempt to prevent Israeli authors from attending or from expressing themselves. It does not refuse to engage them in debate.”
In Italy’s leading daily, Corriere della Sera, the Turin festival’s public organizers and main private sponsor stood by their decision to honor Israel. The mayor of Turin, Sergio Chiamparino, said that to deny the Israeli people “the right of free expression” would be to take “a fundamentalist line, which unfortunately is invading Europe and corrupting many people, especially on the left.”