When Hani Ramadan, Tariq Ramadan’s elder brother, claims that fornication and adultery are at the origin of the coronavirus, the public imagines that this is a verbal slip. In fact, the outings of the director of the Islamic Centre of Geneva (CIG) are part of a deliberate long-term strategy

Born in 1959 in Geneva, professor of French from 1981 until his dismissal in 2002, Doctor of Letters and Philosophy from the University of Geneva in 1990 with a thesis entitled “Une critique de l’argument ontologique dans la tradition chrétienne”, Hani Ramadan has a completely different intellectual baggage than his brother Tariq (born in 1962). It was he who succeeded his father, Saïd Ramadan – at the time of his death in 1995 – at the head of the Islamic Centre in Geneva. Although he has neither the physique, charisma nor oratory talents of Tariq, he has seduced a fringe of fundamentalist Muslims, particularly in France, by his rigorous reading of the Koran. Those who have never been fooled by his brother’s “charm”. As the Swiss Stéphane Lathion, co-founder of the Islam Research Group in Switzerland, who knew the family well, points out: “Tariq and Hani Ramadan are each bringing down the ‘herd’ on their own.” The elder comforts the convinced, the other clears virgin land.

When, in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, Hani Ramadan declares that one of the causes of the appearance of new diseases “is the fact that men openly indulge in turpitude, such as fornication and adultery, which triggers new diseases and epidemics”, he makes a mockery of provoking the indignation, consternation, if not hilarity, of Westerners. Moreover, in his eight-minute audio sermon, the director of the CIG drives home the point by assuring that “when the name of God is invoked the worshipper is protected and nothing can harm him (…) This means that if he is exposed, for example, to a harmful or venomous animal, its venom will have no effect”… In short, invocations replace medicines. He also insists on recalling that according to a hadith, the prophet himself would have revealed in his time: “Turpitude does not appear among a people (…) without the spread of epidemics and evils that did not exist among their predecessors”. These words are likely to fully reassure the Salafists, for whom the world must not move since the time of the prophet.

Grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, Hani Ramadan made himself known in France in September 1982 (one year after September 11) by publishing in Le Monde an article entitled “La charia incomprise”, justifying stoning. While the National Education of the canton of Geneva suspended him from his post as a French teacher in a secondary school, Hani Ramadan, far from keeping a low profile, added to this. In an interview he gave me in October 2002, he declared in Le Matin dimanche: “In the Muslim world, forsaking prayer, drinking and fornication are crimes for which the law provides punishments (…) Islamic law is extremely severe on the question of apostasy, which can lead to the death penalty.”

Although he was born in Switzerland and has Swiss nationality, Hani Ramadan explains in his book “La femme en islam”, published in 1991, that it would be preferable for a man to have several wives. The public probably did not understand why Hani Ramadan could claim that fornication and adultery were at the origin of the epidemic, when he knows that his brother Tariq is indicted five times (four times in France and once in Switzerland) for rape. Although he is presumed innocent, Tariq Ramadan has been forced to admit before the examining magistrates a great many extramarital relationships (which he claims were consensual). Investigators also discovered an impressive stock of pornographic photos and videos in his home. It is not known that the five sons and daughter Ramadan (born between 1952 and 1962) were raised by Wafa, the eldest daughter of Hassan al-Banna.

Born on 21 April 1933 in Egypt, domiciled in Geneva since 1958, she has always retained Egyptian nationality. In the 1980s, this woman of character did not hesitate to chase her husband, Said Ramadan, out of the family home when the latter, long a spokesperson for the Brotherhood in the West, was marginalized due to a complicated private life. It was she who instilled in her children a sense of belonging to an almost royal, if not divine, lineage. They learned from her that other Muslims were on earth only to serve them.

As a result, Hani Ramadan, like Tariq and his other brothers (Aymen, Bilal, Yasser) and sister (Arwa), believed that while the common mortals who indulged in fornication and adultery deserved to be stoned to death, they, on the other hand, escaped it because they belonged to the family of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. As a result, Ramadan is scandalized that the justice of men can afford to reproach them. Do they not answer for their actions only before God? Faced with the slightest criticism, Tariq Ramadan immediately changed his appearance. His eyes would pop out of his head, his mouth would twist, and he would utter a string of insults. He wouldn’t admit that he hadn’t received a Nobel Prize!

In spite of the indictments against Tariq Ramadan, the director of the CIG never stopped defending his brother, and condemned to the flames of hell all those who dared to criticize him. On Fridays, at the Islamic Centre in Geneva, he called on the faithful to read his book Duty of Truth. In short, Hassan al-Banna’s grandsons would be fully entitled to sexual slaves!