Tariq Ramadan arrived in the United States yesterday, his first visit since 2004, when the Bush administration revoked his visa using a provision from the Patriot Act. When he arrived at Newark International Report, there remained “one last hurdle,” according to The New York Times: “a closed-door session with three immigration agents, one after the other, who asked him where he planned to go, whom he planned to meet and what he planned to discuss.”
Tonight at 7 p.m. he’ll discuss secularism, Islam, and democracy with Dalia Mogahed, George Packer, Joan Wallach Scott, and Jacob Weisberg at Cooper Union in New York. Tickets are no longer on sale online, but there may be some available at the door. For those who can’t make it or can’t get in, the event will be shown online here.
Showing posts with label Tariq Ramadan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tariq Ramadan. Show all posts
19.3.10
Sherman Alexie, Toni Morrison, Richard Price, Patti Smith, Salman Rushdie, Roddy Doyle, Melvin Van Peebles...
...as you may have heard, those are just a few of the participants in this year’s PEN World Voices Festival. My favorite reply to the newly unveiled lineup comes from Mark Sarvas: “the organizers appear to have outdone themselves,” he says, adding, “it’s enough to tempt me into thinking about a trip east to cover this one for all my loyal readers.” I hope we see him soon.Much more in this space over the next few weeks, of course; in the meantime, a few notes before the weekend:
* As noted earlier this week in The New York Times, PEN and the ACLU are teaming up with Slate to sponsor a conversation with Tariq Ramadan and others, held at Cooper Union in New York on April 8. This will be the first U.S. appearance for Ramadan since he was barred from entering the country by the Bush administration.
* Yousef Al-Mohaimeed’s novel Munira’s Bottle was written up recently in Arab News (via The Literary Saloon). The novel was excerpted in PEN America 9, earning the magazine its first Pushcart Prize. Here’s what Annie Proulx has to say about the book:
Munira’s Bottle is a rich and skillfully crafted story of a dysfunctional Saudi Arabian family. One of its strengths lies in its edgy characters: Munira, a sultry, self-centered, sexually repressed woman; Ibn Al-Dahhal, the bold imposter who deceives and betrays her; and Muhammad, her perpetually angry and righteous brother, a catalyst who forces the events. Western readers will welcome it for its opening door into Arab lives and minds.(You can read a conversation about “Books that Changed My Life” featuring both Proulx and Al-Mohaimeed in PEN America 10.)
* Tomorrow we’ll find out how much Robert Pinsky liked Tomasz Rozycki’s piece about “Scorched Maps,” a finalist for The Quark. Among the other finalists is PEN America contributor Amitava Kumar.
* There’s no online announcement yet, but PEN America has received its first Utne Independent Press Award nomination, in the category of international coverage. More on that soon.
26.1.10
Footnote to Zamora, news on Ramadan, reckoning with torture
One of the villains in “Public Demons,” the essay by José Rubén Zamora excerpted in PEN America 10: Fear Itself and reprinted in The Utne Reader, was indicted in U.S. federal court on money-laundering charges yesterday. Alfonso Portillo was the president of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004. “The day Portillo came to my house,” Zamora writes, “he offered me $600,000 not to send my family out of the country because this—in his words—would affect his image.” The military had just violently raided Zamora’s house, terrorizing his family, after Zamora published unflattering things about the government and the military.
In other legal news, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed orders effectively ending the exclusion of Tariq Ramadan from the United States last week, which should resolve a lawsuit filed by PEN together with the ACLU, the American Association of University Professors, and the American Academy of Religions. (Ramadan is pictured right, appearing via video at the PEN World Voices festival during his exclusion.)
In 2004 Ramadan was prevented from accepting a tenured position at the University of Notre Dame when the Department of Homeland Security refused his visa application. He had been to the U.S. many times before; in 2002 he participated in a conference hosted by former president (and PEN America contributor!) Bill Clinton called “Islam and America in a Global World.” The refusal of Ramadan’s re-entry into the United States was an example of “ideological exclusion,” a Cold War practice that was revived after 9/11.
And speaking of post-9/11 policies: On March 3, PEN and the ACLU will hold another “Reckoning with Torture” event, this time in Washington, D.C. The event we held in New York in October was attended by seven hundred people and presented, I think, a moving and powerful account of what has taken place in the name of the United States over the last eight years (video here).
By the way, PEN’s Freedom to Write director, Larry Siems, is writing an account of U.S. torture policy post-9/11 for the ACLU, and he’s presenting the work online as he writes it, posting his thoughts as he goes (like this take on John Yoo’s recent Daily Show appearance) and getting feedback from experts. Check out The Torture Report.
In other legal news, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed orders effectively ending the exclusion of Tariq Ramadan from the United States last week, which should resolve a lawsuit filed by PEN together with the ACLU, the American Association of University Professors, and the American Academy of Religions. (Ramadan is pictured right, appearing via video at the PEN World Voices festival during his exclusion.)
In 2004 Ramadan was prevented from accepting a tenured position at the University of Notre Dame when the Department of Homeland Security refused his visa application. He had been to the U.S. many times before; in 2002 he participated in a conference hosted by former president (and PEN America contributor!) Bill Clinton called “Islam and America in a Global World.” The refusal of Ramadan’s re-entry into the United States was an example of “ideological exclusion,” a Cold War practice that was revived after 9/11.
And speaking of post-9/11 policies: On March 3, PEN and the ACLU will hold another “Reckoning with Torture” event, this time in Washington, D.C. The event we held in New York in October was attended by seven hundred people and presented, I think, a moving and powerful account of what has taken place in the name of the United States over the last eight years (video here).
By the way, PEN’s Freedom to Write director, Larry Siems, is writing an account of U.S. torture policy post-9/11 for the ACLU, and he’s presenting the work online as he writes it, posting his thoughts as he goes (like this take on John Yoo’s recent Daily Show appearance) and getting feedback from experts. Check out The Torture Report.
29.7.09
Maziar Bahari and the situation in Iran; plus, Tariq Ramadan news
Earlier this month, PEN American Center and PEN Canada sent an open letter signed by over 100 of the world’s most prominent writers -- among them Wole Soyinka, Margaret Atwood, Orhan Pamuk, Don DeLillo, Ma Jian, Umberto Eco, and Nadine Gordimer -- calling for the release of Canadian-Iranian journalist and playwright Maziar Bahari, who has been held incommunicado in Tehran since June 21, 2009.
The letter expresses concern that Bahari’s detention reflects a wider crackdown on freedom of expression in Iran. “His continued detention casts serious doubt on Iran’s commitment to a free exchange of information and ideas and to international guarantees of freedom of the press,” the letter reads. “We urge you to release Mr. Bahari, and all others detained in connection with their post-election reporting in Iran, immediately and without condition.”
PEN has now compiled a resource page devoted to the goings-on in Iran; it includes, among many other things, the video below of the July 18 conversation featuring Shaul Bakhash, Roger Cohen, Haleh Esfandiari, and Karim Sadjadpour:
You should also check out, if you haven’t already, the online translation slam devoted to a political slogan which has been taken up by protesters in response to an insult levied at them by president Ahmadinejad -- a slogan that is based in part on a poem by Rumi.
In happier news, a United States appeals court reversed an earlier decision excluding the Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan from the United States. PEN is hopeful that the Obama administration will now act quickly to issue Ramadan a visa and permit him to visit the United States. In 2004, government officials cited a provision of the Patriot Act that bars entry to those who “endorse or espouse terrorism” as the reason for the cancelling Ramadan's visa. PEN and the ACLU went to court to challenge the cancellation, believing that Ramadan, an outspoken critic of U.S. policies in the Middle East, was being denied entry to the United States under post-9/11 policies that amounted to ideological exclusion.
The letter expresses concern that Bahari’s detention reflects a wider crackdown on freedom of expression in Iran. “His continued detention casts serious doubt on Iran’s commitment to a free exchange of information and ideas and to international guarantees of freedom of the press,” the letter reads. “We urge you to release Mr. Bahari, and all others detained in connection with their post-election reporting in Iran, immediately and without condition.”
PEN has now compiled a resource page devoted to the goings-on in Iran; it includes, among many other things, the video below of the July 18 conversation featuring Shaul Bakhash, Roger Cohen, Haleh Esfandiari, and Karim Sadjadpour:
You should also check out, if you haven’t already, the online translation slam devoted to a political slogan which has been taken up by protesters in response to an insult levied at them by president Ahmadinejad -- a slogan that is based in part on a poem by Rumi.
In happier news, a United States appeals court reversed an earlier decision excluding the Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan from the United States. PEN is hopeful that the Obama administration will now act quickly to issue Ramadan a visa and permit him to visit the United States. In 2004, government officials cited a provision of the Patriot Act that bars entry to those who “endorse or espouse terrorism” as the reason for the cancelling Ramadan's visa. PEN and the ACLU went to court to challenge the cancellation, believing that Ramadan, an outspoken critic of U.S. policies in the Middle East, was being denied entry to the United States under post-9/11 policies that amounted to ideological exclusion.
23.3.09
World Voices, ideological exclusion, and other news from PEN
On Wednesday, the program for this year's World Voices festival, Evolution/Revolution, will be unveiled. Stay tuned. (And save the dates: April 27 - May 3.)On Tuesday, an Appeals Court will hear a challenge to the exclusion of Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan from the U.S. Ramadan was invited by PEN to the 2006 World Voices festival, but was not allowed in the country (picture to the right shows the 10-minute video he sent in his place). PEN has joined 59 other organizations in sending a letter to members of the Obama administration urging an end to the practice of refusing visas to foreign writers, intellectuals, and activists based on their ideas and political views.
The letter (PDF) calls on Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to abandon ideological exclusion, which was prevalent during the Cold War and which was revived by the Bush administration after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. That practice, in the opinion of PEN, violates the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens to engage with a full range of information and ideas. The letter notes the damage done to America’s reputation during the Cold War by excluding such writers as Gabriel García Marquez, Mahmoud Darwish, Pablo Neruda, and (as mentioned before on this blog) Doris Lessing.
Lastly, the online translation slam that's part of PEN.org's annual translation feature has generated some nice commentary (scroll down; and thank you, Chad Post, for helping to spread the word). Inspired by live translation slams that have been big hits at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival and also at PEN World Voices, the online translation slam juxtaposes two “competing” translations of a single work. For the inaugural installment, translators test their linguistic and literary mettle on 暮色, a poem by Chinese writer Xi Chuan. Check it out.
Update: Some more details about Ramadan, courtesy of PEN's Freedom to Write director, Larry Siems: Ramadan was able to travel freely to the United States up until 2003, the last time at the invitation of Bill Clinton. He was on his way to accept a tenured professorship at Notre Dame when he learned his visa had been cancelled. The government first said he'd been excluded under a Patriot Act provision denying entry to those who "endorse or espouse terrorism." The government has since withdrawn that claim and offered a series of other explanations.
11.11.08
Day of the Imprisoned Writer: 11/15
In the past year, the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN has monitored the cases of more than 1,000 writers and journalists in 90 countries, 200 of whom are serving long prison sentences, and the rest of whom have been detained, summoned to court, threatened, harassed or attacked.
Since November 15, 2007, 31 of these writers have been killed, many clearly for practicing their professions, others in murkier circumstances.
Each November 15, PEN marks the Day of the Imprisoned Writer by calling attention to writers around the world suffering persecution for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
This year, PEN is focusing on five writers from five different regions of the world. PEN invites its members and friends around the world to send appeals on their behalf. Go here to read more about what you can do.
This year's Day of the Imprisoned Writer will focus on five priority cases:
Azerbaijan: Eynullah Fatullayev
Journalist serving an eight-and-a-half-year prison term for his political commentary and investigations into the murder of a fellow journalist.
China: Tsering Woeser
Tibetan writer and poet who writes in Chinese and has suffered repeated and sustained harassment for her writings on Tibet since 2004.
Iran: Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand
Journalist and Kurdish rights activist serving an 11-year prison sentence.
Peru: Melissa Rocío Patiño Hinostroza
A student and poet currently on trial for alleged links to a terrorist organization, despite a lack of evidence.
Zimbabwe: Writers, Cast and Crew of The Crocodile of Zambezi
A play that has been banned and led to actors and crew being beaten, and the playwrights threatened.
In other Freedom to Write news, Larry Siems has an excellent post about Tariq Ramadan and his ideological exclusion from the US over at the ACLU blog.
Thursday update: PEN USA is sponsoring a candlelight vigil in Los Angeles to commemorate the day and raise awareness about these and other persecuted writers.
Since November 15, 2007, 31 of these writers have been killed, many clearly for practicing their professions, others in murkier circumstances.
Each November 15, PEN marks the Day of the Imprisoned Writer by calling attention to writers around the world suffering persecution for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
This year, PEN is focusing on five writers from five different regions of the world. PEN invites its members and friends around the world to send appeals on their behalf. Go here to read more about what you can do.
This year's Day of the Imprisoned Writer will focus on five priority cases:
Azerbaijan: Eynullah Fatullayev
Journalist serving an eight-and-a-half-year prison term for his political commentary and investigations into the murder of a fellow journalist.China: Tsering Woeser
Tibetan writer and poet who writes in Chinese and has suffered repeated and sustained harassment for her writings on Tibet since 2004.Iran: Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand
Journalist and Kurdish rights activist serving an 11-year prison sentence.Peru: Melissa Rocío Patiño Hinostroza
A student and poet currently on trial for alleged links to a terrorist organization, despite a lack of evidence.Zimbabwe: Writers, Cast and Crew of The Crocodile of Zambezi
A play that has been banned and led to actors and crew being beaten, and the playwrights threatened.In other Freedom to Write news, Larry Siems has an excellent post about Tariq Ramadan and his ideological exclusion from the US over at the ACLU blog.
Thursday update: PEN USA is sponsoring a candlelight vigil in Los Angeles to commemorate the day and raise awareness about these and other persecuted writers.
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