Civil liberties group challenges US visa ban for Muslim intellectual

Ramadan, one of the world`s leading scholars on Islam, was forced to turn down a tenured position at the Univertity of Notre Dame when the US government revoked his visa in late 2004 on the basis of the so-called "ideological exclusion" provision of the Patriot Act.

Washington later dropped its claim, unable to prove that Ramadan had endorsed terrorism.

But it banned the academic in September 2006 on grounds he made donations between 1998 and 2002 to a Swiss-based charity that provides aid to Palestinians. The charity was included in a US list of terrorist organizations in 2003.

"The government is barring Professor Ramadan not because of his actions but because of his ideas," ACLU`s National Security Project Director Jameel Jaffer was qupted by AFP as telling the court in New York.