Tariq Ramadan

(born August 26, 1962, Geneva, Switzerland) Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss theologian, Islamics scholar, philosopher, and media personality. Although Ramadan’s parents were native Egyptians, Ramadan himself is a native Swiss; he was naturalized by the Swiss state in 1984, about two decades after his birth in Geneva. Reflecting on his multiple identities, Ramadan once described himself as “Swiss by nationality, Muslim by religion, Egyptian by memory.”

Ramadan’s family was long steeped in the study and dissemination of Islam. His maternal grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization advocating a return to the Qurʾān and the Hadith (a corpus of the sayings or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) as guidelines for a healthy and thriving Islamic society in the modern era. His father, Saïd Ramadan, was the founder of the Centre Islamique de Genève (Islamic Center of Geneva), a mosque and gathering place for Muslims in Switzerland. In 1954 a failed assassination attempt against Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser at a mass meeting in Alexandria led to a harsh campaign of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood, which forced Tariq Ramadan’s parents into exile.

Ramadan received a Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the University of Geneva and received training in classical Islamic scholarship at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He later taught at world-leading universities, including the University of Oxford. In 2005 he also joined a British governmental task force investigating the roots of extremism in Britain, at the invitation of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the difficult period for interfaith dialogue following the September 11 attacks, Ramadan publicly condemned the suicide bombings, including before Muslim audiences.

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Some of the recurring themes of Ramadan’s work are the interplay between religion and politics and the need for greater mutual understanding and cohesive existence between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. His work commonly explores how the text of Islamic tradition can enlighten the present and vice versa. For instance, he discusses how the life of the Prophet Muhammad in the 6th to 7th century ce can shed light on modern life and how the Qurʾān should be interpreted through the lens of contemporary reality. In the context of European Islam, Ramadan argued that it was possible to faithfully abide by the teachings of the Qurʾān while respecting the secular laws of the state. He demanded at the same time that Muslims cease to be treated as second-class Europeans.

Ramadan’s public reception as an intellectual and scholar has varied dramatically between national contexts. His intellectual contributions were celebrated not only in the Muslim world but also in the United Kingdom. Many applauded his efforts to find common ground between Islamic thought and modernity in a European context.

In France, however, Ramadan has been a much more polarizing figure. One common critique is that he communicates in “doublespeak,” on the one hand offering to the general public a progressive and reformist discourse and on the other hand offering to his Muslim public a more fundamentalist discourse opposing liberal Islam. His critics, such as the journalist and movie producer Caroline Fourest, author of Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (2008), also claimed that Ramadan remained personally connected, beyond his family heritage, to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ramadan’s many books in the field of Islamic studies include Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation (2009), In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad (2007), Islam and the Arab Awakening (2012), and The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism (2010).

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In May 2023 Ramadan was acquitted on criminal charges of rape and sexual coercion related to an incident in Geneva in 2008. In September 2024, however, a Swiss appeals court overturned the lower court’s decision, and in August 2025 Switzerland’s highest court upheld Ramadan’s conviction. Ramadan’s legal team has since attempted to appeal his conviction to the European Court of Human Rights.