A prominent Swiss-based Islamic scholar on Tuesday gave up plans to teach at a leading U.S. university after waiting in vain for a visa and accused the Bush administration of trying to silence him.
Tariq Ramadan, an intellectual influential among Muslims throughout Europe, said he had sent a letter of resignation this week to University of Notre Dame in Indiana, where he had been due to take up a tenured post as professor of religion.
Ramadan was issued a U.S. visa last May, but it was revoked in August -- days before he was to move to the United States -- after the Department of Homeland Security changed its position.
Notre Dame, a Catholic university, said then it was "deeply disappointed and concerned," but was optimistic the issue would be resolved and Ramadan would be allowed to take up his post.
Ramadan, the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the first modern Islamic radical group, the Muslim Brotherhood, has condemned the use of violence in the name of Islam, but is a controversial figure even in Europe.
The visa withdrawal triggered protests in intellectual circles, and Ramadan said the U.S. authorities had encouraged him to re-apply. He had heard nothing since being interviewed in October at the U.S. embassy in Berne, he told Reuters.
"I sent a letter of resignation... This has been extremely difficult for my family," said Ramadan, speaking in Geneva where he has lived in limbo with his wife and four children since their furniture was sent to South Bend, site of the university.
"The U.S. administration does not want my voice heard. I consider this an attack on academic freedom," added the 42-year-old, who has a doctorate from the University of Geneva.
NO DECISION IN VIEW
The decision to abandon the post was taken after a University of Notre Dame official was told by a State Department contact that no decision on the visa was in view, Ramadan said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that reviewing the visa application involved "questions that needed to be asked and answered."
He gave no further details, but added that U.S. authorities would take no further action on the visa as the reason for it -- the teaching job in the United States -- no longer existed.
Ramadan had been named head of the program in religion, conflict and peace-building at the Joan Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. It was set up by the billionaire widow of Ray Kroc, founder of the fast-food chain McDonald's.
Ramadan was also named professor in Islamic studies in the university's classics department.
"We are disappointed," said the Institute's director R. Scott Appleby. "Faculty and students at Notre Dame and at other U.S. universities were looking forward to engaging him productively on a variety of issues central to our times."
Critics in France -- home to some five million Muslims and where Ramadan is particularly well known -- have portrayed him as two-faced, preaching a moderate Islam in French but a fundamentalist, radical Islam in Arabic.
On Tuesday he said his aim was to build bridges. "I am a voice for dialogue, for reconciling universes."
In revoking the visa, the U.S. authorities cited the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law adopted by Congress in October 2001.
In a statement on his resignation, Ramadan urged the U.S. administration to make public its findings so that he could be "absolutely cleared of false and humiliating accusations."
He also thanked Notre Dame and dozens of American organizations for their support.
"They are the dignity of the United States, carrying high the banner of pluralism and democratic debate while the U.S. administration unfortunately seems to show more signs each day of slipping toward a closed and worrying unilateralism."