Hani Ramadan, the brother of prominent Muslim Brotherhood figure Tariq Ramadan, will receive about $230,000 in damages as a result of being fired from a Swiss school for remarks he made defending stoning as an Islamic punishment in an article for a French newspaper. According to the report:
The sum is the equivalent of two years’ salary for the teacher who was sacked in November 2004 after defending the stoning of men and women guilty of adultery. His opinion piece was published in the fall of 2002 by Le Monde, the Paris-based newspaper, causing a storm of controversy. The canton ruled that Ramadan had violated his professional principles in making public such views. Ramadan, who has since worked as director of Geneva’s Islamic center, subsequently contested the decision to fire him. An appeal commission of the education department sided with Ramadan, annulling the termination to the embarrassment of cantonal decision-makers. The canton opted to pay the maximum indemnity to guarantee “peace” over the issue, Laurent Moutinot, cantonal president, told a press conference. The government has also agreed to pay Ramadan’s legal fees, which have amounted to SFr90,000 in the affair. In all, the canton has paid more than SFr1 million to deal with the conflict.
According to Islam Online:
Ramadan, who is also the head of the Geneva Islamic Center, had defended the stoning punishment for adulterous men and women in an article published by French daily Le Monde late 2002. He wrote that the stoning punishment is meant to help curb the moral degradation in societies and put the what he saw as divine curse (AIDS/HIV) under control. Ramadan said ‘“ in his article – God has initiated the stoning punishment for His love of mankind, because AIDS came out of nothing but from promiscuousness.
The Islamic center was founded by the Ramadan brothers father Said Ramadan, himself the son-in-law of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hani Ramadan is also a member of the board of the Swiss member of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), the Muslim Brotherhood umbrella organization for Europe.