Tariq Ramadan ( ; born 26 August 1962) is a Swiss-born Egyptian academic, philosopher and writer, who was convicted of three counts of rape by a French court in 2026. He has held academic positions including professor of contemporary Islamic studies at St Antony's College, Oxford and the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford. He was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and a former director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) in Doha.
Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has written and lectured on Islam, Muslim identity in Europe and reformist thought. He has described himself as a "Salafi reformist".
Ramadan has been convicted of rape and sexual coercion in Switzerland, and of rape and rape of a vulnerable person in France. In 2024, a Swiss appeals court convicted him in relation to a 2008 incident in Geneva, which became final in 2025 after his appeal was rejected by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland. In March 2026, the Paris criminal court convicted him of raping three women and sentenced him to 18 years’ imprisonment; the judgment is subject to appeal.
Life and career
Tariq Ramadan was born in Geneva, Switzerland on 26 August 1962 to an Egyptian Muslim family. 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 PhD in Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Geneva. He also wrote a PhD dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche, titled Nietzsche as a Historian of Philosophy.
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 He was appointed a professor at the University of Notre Dame in the United States in 2004 before his visa had been revoked by the Bush administration because of the Patriot Act.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 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,
* Originally published in Das Magazin on 7 January 2006. adapted from chapter 8 of Le Sabre et le Coran, translated from the French by Transatlantic Intelligencer.
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'. 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.
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". 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.
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.
Family life Tariq Ramadan married in 1986 and is the father of four children. His wife was born in Bretagne, France. She converted from Catholicism to Islam and adopted the name Iman. The couple live separately.
U.S. visa revocation and subsequent lifting In February 2004, Tariq Ramadan accepted the tenured position of Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, at the University of Notre Dame. He was granted a nonimmigrant visa on 5 May; however, on 28 July, his H-1B visa was revoked by the State Department. In August 2004, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cited the "ideological exclusion provision" of the U.S. Patriot Act as the grounds for Ramadan's visa revocation. In October, the University of Notre Dame filed an H-1B petition on Ramadan's behalf. After hearing no response from the government by December, Ramadan resigned his position from the university.
In September 2005, Ramadan filed an application for a B Visa to allow him to participate at speaking arrangements with various organizations and universities. The government did not issue a decision on Ramadan's visa application, so the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on 25 January 2006 against the United States government on behalf of the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors and the PEN American Center – three groups who had planned on meeting with Ramadan in the US – for revoking Ramadan's visa under the "ideological exclusion provision". The ACLU and NYCLU argued that the ideological exclusion provision was in violation of the First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights of those three groups and that the government's actions violated the Administrative Procedures Act. After two months had passed without a decision being made, the plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction. Pursuant to the injunction, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the government on 23 June 2006 to issue its decision on Ramadan's pending B Visa application within 90 days.
On 19 September 2006, the government formally denied Ramadan's visa application. A State Department statement said: "A U.S. consular officer has denied Dr. Tariq Ramadan's visa application. The consular officer concluded that Dr. Ramadan was inadmissible based solely on his actions, which constituted providing material support to a terrorist organization." Between December 1998 and July 2002, Ramadan had given donations totalling $940 to two charity organizations, the Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians (CBSP) or Comité de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens and the Association de Secours Palestinien. The United States Treasury designated both the CBSP and ASP terrorist fundraising organizations for their alleged links to Hamas on 22 August 2003. The U.S. Embassy told Ramadan that he "reasonably should have known" that the charities provided money to Hamas. In an article in The Washington Post, Ramadan asked: "How should I reasonably have known of their activities before the U.S. government itself knew?"
On 2 February 2007, the ACLU and NYCLU amended their complaint, arguing that the government's explanation for denying Ramadan's visa application was not "facially legitimate and bona fide" and that the ideological exclusion provision of the PATRIOT Act was in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. They also argued that Ramadan's denial violated the First Amendment rights of those who wanted to hear him speak. In his decision on 20 December 2007, District Judge Paul A. Crotty ruled that the government's justification for denying Ramadan's visa was "facially legitimate and bona fide" and noted that the Court "has no authority to override the Government's consular decision".
In January 2008, the ACLU appealed Crotty's ruling. Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project and lead attorney in the case, stated: "The government's shifting positions only underscore why meaningful judicial review – the kind of oversight that the district court failed to provide – is so important. In Professor Ramadan's case and many others, the government is using immigration laws to stigmatize and exclude its critics and to censor and control the ideas that Americans can hear. Censorship of this kind is completely inconsistent with the most basic principles of an open society." Ramadan himself remarked: "The U.S. government's actions in my case seem, at least to me, to have been arbitrary and myopic. But I am encouraged by the unwavering support I have received from ordinary Americans, civic groups and particularly from scholars, academic organizations, and the ACLU. I am heartened by the emerging debate in the U.S. about what has been happening to our countries and ideals in the past six years. And I am hopeful that eventually I will be allowed to enter the country so that I may contribute to the debate and be enriched by dialogue."
On 17 July 2009, the US federal appeals court reversed the ruling of the lower district court. The three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit – composed of Judges Jon O. Newman, Wilfred Feinberg and Reena Raggi – ruled that the Court had "jurisdiction to consider the claim, despite the doctrine of consular nonreviewability". They stated that government was required by law to "confront Ramadan with the allegation against him and afford him the subsequent opportunity to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that he did not know, and reasonably should not have known, that the recipient of his contributions was a terrorist organization." Under the limited review permitted by the 1972 Supreme Court ruling in Kleindienst v. Mandel, the panel concluded that the "record does not establish that the consular officer who denied the visa confronted Ramadan with the allegation that he had knowingly rendered material support to a terrorist organization, thereby precluding an adequate opportunity for Ramadan to attempt to satisfy the provision that exempts a visa applicant from exclusion under the 'material support' subsection if he 'can demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that [he] did not know, and should not reasonably have known, that the organization was a terrorist organization.'" Additionally, the panel agreed with the plaintiffs' contention that their First Amendment rights had been violated. The panel remanded the case to a lower court to determine if the consular officer had confronted Ramadan with the "allegation that he knew that ASP provided funds to Hamas and then providing him with a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate, by clear and convincing evidence, that he did not know, and should not have reasonably known, of that fact."