Doha - The Center of Reformist Islam? Considering Radical Reform in the Qatar Context: Tariq Ramadan and the Research Center for Islamic Legislation & Ethics (CILE)

This chapter is concerned with Tariq Ramadan and the new project detailed in his recent 2009 work, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation. Taking Andrew F. March‟s reading of Radical Reform as the point of departure, this chapter aims to offer a different context for reading Ramadan's work. It does so by exploring the beginnings of this project's implementation at Ramadan's newly established Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics in Doha, Qatar. Building on David L. Johnston‟s preceding essay in this volume, the chapter will argue that, for all Radical Reform's innovativity, there is a marked continuity between its main theses and the reformist approach of Yusuf al-Qaradawi and his own School, itself located in Doha. It will be argued that this is because Radical Reform's final project is not to be realized by Ramadan himself, but by the Islamic scholarly establishment, the ʿulamāʾ (sg., ʿālim). This represents a truly ambitious project.