A leading Muslim scholar, in the United States for the first time in six years after the Obama administration lifted a travel ban on him, says he will not shy away from criticising the president whose policies finally allowed him to visit.
"I think that people who were expecting him to change everything so quickly were just dreamers," Tariq Ramazan told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. Ramadan, a Swiss citizen of Egyptian origin who was born in Switzerland, has written extensively on Western Muslims and on Islam.
He is president of the thinktank European Muslim Network in Brussels and teaches at Britain's Oxford University. "I think the vision is there. The words are there," he said of President Barack Obama, whom he faulted for not delivering more quickly on his pledge to shut the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected militants and failing to make progress in the Middle East peace process.
"It's when he is reelected that he can be more effective." In 2004, the United States revoked Ramazan's visa. When he applied for a new visa, the application was denied on grounds he had made donations to the Association de Secours Palestinien, or ASP, from 1998 to 2002. The Bush administration listed ASP as a banned group in 2003, saying it supported terrorism and contributed funds to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, an organisation the United States said had ties to terrorism.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lifted the ban on Ramazan in January. "I have been in a peaceful mind for the last six years because I knew my record was clear," Ramazan said. "Now this story is over. The Bush administration is over, so is my case."