In today's issue of the Terrorists' Friend, Naima Bouteldja, ' a French journalist and researcher for the Transnational Institute', writes that:

Portraying Muslim scholars such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and even Tariq Ramadan as extremists is absurd

According to Ms Bouteldja,

Caught in the spotlight are some of the very thinkers Muslims and non-Muslims need to hear. First there was Yusuf al-Qaradawi, widely regarded as a moderate and one of the most respected scholars in the Muslim world.

...And then there's Tariq Ramadan...The attacks on Ramadan are not motivated by fear of religious extremism - this is no rabble-rousing cleric with a perverted take on Islam - but by the cultural imperialism that grips France's republican white majority and the influence of Ramadan's challenge to it among France's 5 million Muslims, especially the youth...[H]e has challenged the dominant French assimilationist model, rooted across the political spectrum, that to be truly French, Muslims must abandon the right to their own identity. Ramadan follows in the footsteps of revolutionary thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X in attacking notions of the west's superiority and its seemingly immutable values. He turns the paradigm on its head and establishes the universal values of Islam within the framework of western societies.

If Ms Bouteldja's judgements are correct, the situation is clearly worse than many of us feared. I have regarded al-Qaradawi's repellent views justifying murder and wife-beating as extremist. Apparently not. She says the cleric is 'a moderate and one of the most respected scholars in the Muslim world'. If his is a moderate stance, the clash of civilisations looks inevitable, as nothing in his published statements on such matters is compatible with western liberal democracy.