As the New York Times reported Friday, a federal appeals court has reversed a lower court ruling that allowed the government to bar Ramadan from entering the United States in 2004. A prominent Muslim scholar, Ramadan was set to take a position as Luce Professor of Religion at the University of Notre Dame when the Bush administration revoked his visa.

In a 2006 complaint filed by the ACLU on behalf of Ramadan and other parties, the plaintiffs argued that “the government’s unlawful actions stifle intellectual exchange about Islam and the Muslim world at a time when robust and unfettered intellectual exchange about these subjects is of extraordinary importance to American citizens and others living in the United States.”

In light of the new developments in the case, we asked: what are the potential implications of the Ramadan case for both academic freedom and public discussions of Islam in the United States?

Our panelists:

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law

Mohammed Bamyeh, Professor of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh

Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History, Columbia University

Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council, University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University and Director of its Institute for Public Knowledge

John L. Esposito, University Professor of Religion and International Affairs, Professor of Islamic Studies and Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Mark Juergensmeyer, Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, and President of the American Academy of Religion

Arvind Rajagopal, Associate Professor of Culture and Communication, New York University

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Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law

I celebrate this reversal of an outrageous and utterly counterproductive denial of visa for Tariq Ramadan for the obvious benefits of academic freedom and free debate for a better-informed American public opinion and policy regarding Islam and Muslims. What is much more significant in my view is the fact that an American court has ruled against the government of the United States to uphold the right of a foreign national to due process of law.

This level of commitment to the rule of law and independence of the judiciary is not only the essential standard the United States must uphold for itself, but is also the best response to the threat of terrorism at the most practical level. Whatever apprehensions some may have had about what Tariq Ramadan or anyone else might say, it is better to have that presented and debated openly and publicly than suppressed. My point is not about the “good example” the United States should set for the rest of the world, but it is about what is necessary for the survival of the United States itself.

I expect there are those who may wonder about, or even resent, the fact that I am celebrating the persistence of such an elementary level of the rule of law in the United States, as if they are saying: this is only to be expected from American courts. To that way of thinking I say: it is such arrogant complacency that brought the United States to the edge of the abyss we are now hopefully recovering from. The only way we can hope to continue enjoying our fundamental rights is never to take any of them for granted.

It may sound counterintuitive, but I say everyday: God bless the ACLU.

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Mohammed Bamyeh, Professor of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh

The case of Tariq Ramadan was a brazen example of the previous administration’s effort to silence all alternative voices when it came to discussing Islam and Muslims in the US. Whatever we may think of Ramadan, he represents an important dimension of modern Islamic thought, one that is capable of dialogue with alternative views and thus of expanding the repertoire of available conceptions of Islam in the public sphere. With this verdict we are making our way, once more, to some expectation that freedom of thought and the broadening of the range of debate, always necessary, are especially so in times of crises.

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Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History, Columbia University

The bar on granting a visa to Tariq Ramadan was, from the outset, blatantly in contradiction of American free speech principles. So there are no grounds for quarreling with the new court ruling. The broader question is whether the ruling will set a precedent for such cases. Mr. Ramadan is not the only Muslim with fresh and debatable ideas. It is essential that the United States government not put itself in the position of determining which ideas merit applause and which are undesirable. The same standards that apply to political or religious expression by American-born citizens should apply to Muslims seeking visas to come to this country. The more vigorous the intellectual debates within the Muslim world, the more likely that solutions may arise to some of our current problems of intercultural discord.

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Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council, University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University and Director of its Institute for Public Knowledge

Tariq Ramadan is a distinguished theologian and scholar of religion. He is an important voice within Islam and also in relations between Muslims and others. Born in Switzerland, Ramadan now teaches at Oxford and is very much a European. So why did the US government repeatedly block his application for a visa?

After 9/11 the Bush administration flailed about trying to find a response to a terrorist threat that would recognize its genuine connection to Islam without becoming anti-Islamic. Clearly they failed, but on the way they tried not just pre-emptive wars but actions against everyone who had given to Islamic charities that according to the US government allowed funds to find their way to “terrorist organizations.” Ramadan gave money to Islamic charities that worked to provide care for Palestinians. The charities gave some funding to Hamas, which is condemned as a terrorist organization for the violent form of its resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestine, but which is also the elected government in Gaza and has long been a provider of medical and other services. Ramadan may or may not have known aid went to Hamas.

There is a knotty local question about how to “constructively engage” Hamas in the pursuit of both peace in the Middle East and humanitarian care for suffering Palestinians. There is a broader question about whether it is helpful to condemn as “terrorist” whole organizations with multiple purposes and projects—Hezbollah is another—rather than condemning specifically terrorist actions as such and working to make sure avenues are open for peaceful social change.

Neither of these questions makes sense of blocking visas for the very wide range of peaceful Muslims who make charitable donations to help Palestinians. This sort of action needlessly makes the US appear to be anti-Islamic. It will be a very good thing if the Obama administration puts a stop to the entire policy—now that a court has made clear that due process still applies in Ramadan’s case.

A longer comment appears on Craig Calhoun’s page at the SSRC.

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John L. Esposito, University Professor of Religion and International Affairs, Professor of Islamic Studies and Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

It’s about time. The Tariq Ramadan decision is a hopeful sign for academics and public intellectuals of an end to the McCarthy-like atmosphere in recent years. Strident voices of the hardcore political and Religious Right in the media and on Islamophobic and other hate websites have dominated our public discussion of Islam and threatened academic freedom in order to intimidate, discredit and silence dissent.

The Appeals Court decision in the Tariq Ramadan visa case will be welcomed by all who believe in academic freedom and civil liberties in America. Like other victims of the Bush legacy, Ramadan and his family have suffered personal, financial and professional costs that are irreparable. For America, the costs of the Bush administration’s eight year abuse of power have been documented brilliantly by David Cole, in his book Less Safe, Less Free. The challenge now to the Obama administration is to pursue the president’s stated intention to return America to the principles and values that make us strong. Will the Justice Department and Homeland Security now review similar cases of abuse of power, of Secret Evidence and the Patriot Act, made in the name of national security, such as that of Professor Sami Al-Arian and many others? It is time!

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Mark Juergensmeyer, Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, and President of the American Academy of Religion

Tariq Ramadan is finally free to travel to America. Not that he would want to, considering that the previous US administration seemed to go out of its way to insult him and the many scholarly institutions and associations that had invited him to speak in the US. Among them was the American Academy of Religion, the largest association of scholars in religious studies in the world, for which I serve as this year’s president. We joined the ACLU suit and are gratified that after five years sensible minds have finally agreed that giving a few dollars to a Palestinian charity did not make the distinguished European scholar a terrorist. But we got tired of waiting for this decision. Because our annual meeting this year will be in Montreal—which at last check is not in US legal territory—we were able to invite him earlier this year to address a plenary session to speak before thousands of religious studies scholars from North America on the general topic of Islam and modernity. Professor Ramadan generously agreed to do so, promising to be with us in Montreal this coming November, and showing that he is not only a great scholar but a forgiving soul. Now that he will be free to speak anywhere in the United States we can only hope that this is a signal that a new era of civil liberties and protection of basic rights has begun to return to the land of the free.

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Arvind Rajagopal, Associate Professor of Culture and Communication, New York University

Most readers of this website will probably applaud the decision of a federal appeals court regarding Tariq Ramadan’s entry to the US, as I do. It is a good thing when the courts check the US government’s failure to provide evidence for its actions, and when they question judgments that sanction such failure. Accused of making donations to an organization with terrorist connections, Ramadan has said to the court in his defense, “I have condemned terrorism at every opportunity,” and his writings, speeches and interviews abundantly confirm it.

Not only was Ramadan expressing his own views, he was also acknowledging the obligation to denounce something that is considered so heinous that it constitutes an exception to American rights to freedom of speech, and justifies reversing customary legal procedure. In Anglo-American law one is innocent until proven guilty, but under the USA Patriot Act, if the suspicion of terrorism alights on anyone, one is guilty until proven innocent. One would have to prove that there is no evidence anywhere in the world connecting one to terrorism, and in an infinite universe, any proof will always be finite and hence inadequate. Therefore one has to rely on the principle of charity, extrapolating from available evidence to allay fears about one’s invisible motives and dispositions, and ask for mercy. This is what Ramadan has to do. He must continue to plead his innocence, and protest the accusations, and he will have to go on doing that in Notre Dame and elsewhere, if he is allowed to enter the US. He is already doing that in Europe of course, so he is no stranger to such treatment, unfortunately.

The US had a similar set of provisions under the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, whereby one was obliged to forswear links to Communism or to any Communist Party (which was usually rendered in the singular, as “the Communist Party” since, like the principle of good, evil too was understood to be fundamentally the same everywhere). Across successive legislation, the necessity to disown and denounce Communism remains in effect and even today, naturalization petitions must include it, although the ideological provisions of the Act were formally repealed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.

One does not need to be a Communist or a terrorist to notice the problem in this procedure. It is enough to categorize someone as one or the other to taint them. The word category derives from the Greek kategorein, to accuse or assert in a public assembly. Once accused, one is trapped within the limits of the category with no escape, and unless aided by the spirit of charity, deliberative reason cannot, strictly speaking, act as remedy. Am I the only one reminded of witch-hunting, where accusation, deliberation, judgment and sentencing could be rolled into one act? So Ramadan is not a terrorist—unless the lower court finds that he still might be. And then what? As long as witch-hunting is still in season, our applause should be muted.

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His recent televised interview on the Arabic satellite network, Al Arabiya, infused new life into that hope—hope that had been waning rapidly in the weeks leading up to the inauguration. Obama’s silence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict troubled many Arab and Muslim Americans because it eerily resembled Bush’s hands-off approach to the region. And to many, his justification that U.S. foreign policy remained in President Bush’s hands until January 20th did not resonate with his aggressive approach to overhauling the economy on the domestic front.

For now, those concerns have been at least somewhat quelled. Barack Obama chose an Arabic satellite network for his first formal televised interview as President of the United States of America—a clear signal that his approach to the Muslim world would not imitate that of the former president’s. He invoked his Muslim heritage, which was completely off-limits during the U.S. presidential campaign by saying, “my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.”

He appointed former senate majority leader George Mitchell (a Lebanese American) as his Middle East envoy and sent him to the region with an unprecedented message: this administration would focus on repairing America’s relations with the Muslim world; this administration would start by listening rather than dictating; this administration would make it clear that Americans are not the enemy.

The significance of this interview and his message cannot be overstated. It goes beyond merely re-infusing hope in the Arab and Muslim American communities. It has the potential to start changing how the 1.2 billion Muslims around the world view the United States. It has the potential to start changing how the international community, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, views America’s seemingly unilateral approach to policies in the Middle East.

It also has the potential to shape stability and harmony here on the domestic front. Yes, President Obama’s policies in the Middle East will likely have real consequences here in the United States. Despite some commentators arguing that the President will need to prioritize his efforts at home rather than abroad, it is becoming increasingly clear that the two are deeply inter-related. U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East have ripple effects around the world, and as we’ve seen over the past 8 years, America’s borders are no longer immune to those waves. The current administration’s approach to the Middle East has the potential to ensure our national security by restoring the civil liberties of all Americans and bringing Muslims into the national dialogue on diplomacy and democracy.

Potential is a great thing, but only when it’s fulfilled. Quite frankly, I think we all have reason to remain hopeful.

For many Muslims, eight years of the Bush administration’s war against global terrorism has looked more like the use of terrorism, WMDs and then the promotion of democracy to legitimate a neo-colonial design to redraw the political map of the Muslim world. Conscious of the popular perception and fear that the U.S. has been fighting a war against Islam and Muslims, President Obama sought to counter soaring anti-Americanism and reassure Muslims that “the Americans are not your enemy.” Signaling a shift from the perception globally of U.S. arrogance and interventionism, Obama declared that while “we sometimes make mistakes,” America is not a colonial power and hoped for a restoration of “the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.”

Obama’s message did strike many of the right chords. He spoke directly to the peoples of the Muslim world, not to its rulers. He communicated a sense of respect, humility and at the same time confidence and conviction. His message was one that emphasized the importance of mutual understanding and respect for the peoples of the Muslim world, declaring “my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people…My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.” Obama also emphasized a new readiness to listen rather than to dictate.

The 2007 Gallup World Poll findings in more than 35 countries, extending from North Africa to Southeast Asia, underscore the importance of Obama’s addressing the sense of powerlessness, humiliation and lack of respect. (See John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think.) When asked in an open ended question what the West could do to improve relations, the most frequent response was respect Islam and Muslims, not consider them inferior. Obama clearly spoke to this concern both in his inaugural and on Al Arabiya: “in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I’ve come to understand is that regardless of your faith—and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers—regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.”

Obama’s message of self-criticism and restraint, diplomacy and peace, partnership not unilateralism, resonates with the vast majority of Muslims who like Americans want peace, not war, security, not instability and terrorism, leadership based on partnership, not unilateralism. But they also want to see a respect that is reflected in even-handedness and justice.

The president is correct in stating that “We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful.” However, in a post-Gaza Middle East, the U.S. cannot signal a new approach to U.S.-Middle East foreign policy that has credibility if, while rightly reinforcing America’s commitment to Israel and condemning terrorist attacks, Obama says nothing critical about Israel’s war in Gaza and its use of violence and terror. Israel did not simply attack terrorists and destroy their infrastructure, but Gaza’s elected government and its society. The unrestrained violence and terror unleashed on the people of Gaza, the destruction of much of Gaza’s infrastructure and institutions (homes, neighborhoods, universities and schools, mosques, police stations, hospitals), and the disproportionate loss of civilian life and casualties (1,300 Palestinians, including at least 700 civilians vs. 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians) threatens to radicalize a generation of Palestinians.

Obama characterized his approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and his advice to George Mitchell as: “So let’s listen. He’s going to be speaking to all the major parties involved.” This “new” policy will require that the U.S. work with all the players: HAMAS, the PNA and Israel. Whatever it may think of HAMAS, a reality-based, pragmatic American foreign policy, must remember and respect the fact that the people of Palestine (in the West Bank as well as Gaza) made their choice in democratic elections in 2006, electing a HAMAS-led government. The Muslim World remembers that subsequently, the U.S. and Israel chose to boycott and blockade Gaza in an effort to undermine and overthrow the democratically elected government.

As the Gallup World Poll found, both the mainstream Muslim majority and a minority of potential extremists want better relations with the West, coexistence not conflict. Most admire America’s basic principles and values of self-determination, freedoms, democracy and human rights. At the same time, Obama and the U.S. face a Muslim world in which many have deep fears and grievances, fear of Western intervention, invasion, and domination, and the belief that the West, in particular the U.S., uses a double standard in its promotion of democracy and human rights.

While many Muslims are critical of the policies and actions of the U.S., Israel and their own governments, the wars in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, authoritarian regimes, lack of freedoms and human rights, the majority also reject extremism and terrorism as a response. To restore America’s global image, moral stature and leadership and further weaken the extremists, the Obama administration must both listen to—not necessarily agree with—and not dictate but also seek to work at non-governmental levels with mainstream Muslim organizations and NGOs in addressing these concerns and injustices.