L’autre En Nous

Tariq Ramadan, at age 48 and with 26 books (in many languages) to his account, is one of the most prolific authors worldwide. His publications deal mainly with political Islam and Muslim history or theology, but the book under review is quite special. It competently deals with philosophy, comparative religion, neuro-science and brain research, psychology, psychoanalysis and mysticism. The author sees it as a ‘voyage and initiation on the road to the heart’ (p. 9). “Heart”, apart from spirituality, is indeed a concept used profusely by this “alchemist of the verb” (self-description). It is defined as a faculty to ‘feel and understand the truth’, apart from reasoning and revelation (pp. 48, 55, 259). Is beauty not truth? (p. 181) Mysticism, i.e. delight in profound paradoxes and fusion with God’s will through the love of God, is indeed the author’s solution (p. 93).

Throughout, it remains unclear whether the author is Muslim in the ordinary sense, for he depreciates orthodox Muslims as being colonized by a reductive, exclusivist, and even narcissistic dogmatism (pp. 41, 76, 273). He even seems to tolerate the possibility of cyclical time including rebirth (pp. 15, 28). For Ramadan nobody possesses the entire truth (p. 61). ‘Somebody firmly convinced of something arrogantly reaches beyond the limits of his humanity’ (p. 180). Consequently, since ‘everyone has to choose his truth’, one has to accept the existence of several truths (p. 33).