The Independent Newspaper Serving Notre Dame

More than th ree years after p ro m in e n t M uslim sc h o la r T a riq R am ad an w as b a r re d from entering the United States to take up a tenured teaching position at Notre Dame, a feder­ al judge in New York has ruled that the government had legiti­ m a te r e a s o n s to deny Ram adan’s visa. The judge, Paul A. Grotty of the F ed e ra l D istric t C ourt in M anhattan, dismissed a lawsuit in D e c e m b e r filed by the Am erican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that claimed the govern­ m ent used an unconstitutional p o r t io n of the P atrio t Act to deny Ramadan a w o rk v isa in Ju ly 2004, when he attem pt­ ed to en ter th e U nited States from his home in S w itz e r la n d , T he New York Times reported in December. The ACLU su it c la im ed the Ramadan portion of the Patriot Act deny­ ing visa to people who “endorse or espouse te r ro r is t ac tiv ity” was unconstitutional. Grotty ru led the governm ent had revoked R a m a d a n ’s v isa because the scholar had, over the course of four years, given $1,336 to a Swiss charity later designated as a terrorist group, the Times reported. He did not address the Patriot Act’s consti­ tutionality. Ramadan has publicly argued he was unaw are of any terrorist ties and had m ade c o n tr ib u ­ tions solely as h u m a n ita r ia n aid. “In its letter, the U.S. Embassy claims that I ‘reasonably should have known’ tha t the charities in question provided money to Hamas,” Ramadan said in a let­ te r p u b lish e d in The W ash in g to n P ost in O ctober 2006. “But my donations were m ade between December 1998 and July 2002, and the United S ta te s d id n o t b la c k lis t th e c h a r i t ie s u n til 2 0 0 3 . How sh o u ld I r e a s o n a b ly have known of their activities before th e U.S. g o v e rn m e n t i ts e lf knew ?”