Tariq Ramadan

He is the son of Said Ramadan and Wafa al-Banna, who was the eldest daughter of Hassan al Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Gamal al-Banna, the liberal Muslim reformer, was his great-uncle.

His father was a prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and was exiled by Gamal Abdel Nasser from Egypt to Switzerland, where Ramadan was born.

Tariq Ramadan holds an M.A. in French literature and a Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Geneva.

He also wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche, titled Nietzsche as a Historian of Philosophy.

Tariq Ramadan (طارق رمضان, ; born 26 August 1962) is a Swiss Muslim academic, philosopher, and writer.

Tariq Ramadan was born in Geneva, Switzerland on 26 August 1962 to an Egyptian Muslim family.

In 1994, he addressed a French-speaking public audience, in Switzerland, with the help of Hassan Iquioussen and Malika Dif.

He taught at the Collège de Saussure, a high school in Lancy, Switzerland, and claims to have held a lectureship in Religion and Philosophy at the University of Fribourg from 1996 to 2003, something the university publicly denied in 2018.

He was listed by Time magazine in 2000 as one of the seven religious innovators of the 21st century and in 2004 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and was voted by Foreign Policy readers (2005, 2006, 2008–2010, 2012–2015) as one of the top 100 most influential thinkers in the world and Global Thinkers.

Ramadan describes himself as a "Salafi reformist".

He was appointed a professor at the University of Notre Dame in the United States in 2004 before his visa had been revoked by the Bush administration because of The Patriot Act.

In October 2005 he began teaching at St Antony's College, Oxford, on a visiting fellowship.

In 2005 he was a senior research fellow at the Lokahi Foundation.

In September 2005 he was invited to join a task force by the government of the United Kingdom.

He is also the founder and President of the European Muslim Network, a Brussels-based think-tank that gathers European Muslim intellectuals and activists.

In 2007 he successfully applied for the professorship in Islamic studies at the University of Leiden.

This led to severe criticism from both academics as well as politicians who deemed Ramadan a 'radical Islamist' and a 'wolf in sheep's clothing'.

Ramadan later turned down the appointment, stating that the criticism on his appointment played no role in this decision.

He was also a guest professor of Identity and Citizenship at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Interview: Tariq Ramadan, Prospect magazine interview by Ehsan Masood

until August 2009 when both the City of Rotterdam and Erasmus University dismissed him from his positions as "integration adviser" and professor, stating that the program he hosted on Iran's Press TV, Islam & Life, was "irreconcilable" with his duties in Rotterdam.

Ramadan described this move as 'Islamophobic' and 'politically charged'.

Beginning September 2009, Ramadan was appointed to the chair in Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University.

Ramadan established the Mouvement des Musulmans Suisses (Movement of Swiss Muslims), which engages in various interfaith seminars.

He is an advisor to the EU on religious issues and was sought for advice by the EU on a commission on "Islam and Secularism".

As of 2009, Tariq Ramadan was persona non grata in Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Syria, which he has said is because of his criticism of their "undemocratic regimes".

He is also considered persona non grata in Israel.

In 2012 the Court of Rotterdam District ruled in a civil law case that the Erasmus University acted "carelessly" by dismissing Ramadan at short notice.

The dismissal by the municipality of Rotterdam, however, was not careless according to the Court.

In November 2017, Tariq Ramadan took leave of absence from Oxford to contest allegations of rape and sexual misconduct.

The university's statement noted that an "agreed leave of absence implies no acceptance or presumption of guilt".

He was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at St Antony's College, Oxford and the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, but since 2018 has been taking an agreed leave of absence due to being held in prison following two rape allegations.

He is a senior research fellow at Doshisha University in Japan, and is also a visiting professor at the Université Mundiapolis in Morocco.

He was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and used to be the director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), based in Doha.

He is a member of the UK Foreign Office Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief.

In February 2018, he was formally charged with raping two women: a disabled woman in 2009 and a feminist activist in 2012.

In September 2019, the French authorities expanded the investigation against Ramadan, already charged with raping two women, to include evidence from two more alleged victims.

On 5 December 2019, a Swiss woman who had accused him of rape in 2018, launched a new case against him for slander.

The charges have not come to a full conclusion yet, but he was acquitted of one charge in May 2023.

In February 2020, Ramadan was formally charged with raping two more women and in October 2020, Ramadan was formally charged with raping a fifth woman.