European Social Movements and Muslim Participation: Another World, but with Whom? by Timothy Pierce is an interesting work as it is once of the few works on the World Social Forum that covers the interactions between the Muslim Brotherhood, the various components of the Global Justice Movement, and the Green and Socialist Workers Party.
Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was actively involved in organizing the French ummaand as such was accused by French leftists of trying to import anti-Semitism into the “movement of movements”. His response, on page 63 adn 64, resulted in what became known as the “Ramadan Affair”:
“A month before the European Social Forum in Paris, Tariq Ramadan published an article (which had been refused by the editors of Le Monde and Libération) in which he accused certain intellectuals and public figures in France of developing positions that were based not on universal principles of equality and justice but rather on their Jewish origins…
The journalist Claude Askolovitch described the internal tensions within ATTAC relating to the figure of Tariq Ramadan and how Muslim groups had spent several months preparing for the ESF.
Muslim participation in the GJM was caricatured as opportunistic political ‘entryism’ rather than something they sincerely believed in.16 Until this point, most people involved with the alter- globalisation movement in France were unaware of the participation of Muslims. Suddenly the issue became national news and other articles concerning Ramadan’s text soon followed in the main daily newspapers. This happened to coincide with the news that two French schoolgirls (Lila and Alma Lévy) were being expelled from school for refusing to take off their headscarves, the event that ignited the 2003–2004 head- scarf affair which led to the ban on religious symbols in schools. Tariq Ramadan also became implicated in this controversy as newspapers reported that the girls had converted to Islam after listening to his recordings.”