Topic: Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan (Arabic: طارق رمضان‎,(born 26 August 1962, Geneva, Switzerland) is a Swiss academic. He is a Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University. He advocates the study and re-interpretation of Islamic texts, and emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of Western Muslims. He emphasizes the necessity for their contribution to Western society.

The British Prospect and the American Foreign Policy magazines placed him eighth in a list of the world’s top 100 contemporary intellectuals in 2008.

Ramadan is the son of Said Ramadan and the grandson of Hassan al Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Gamal al-Banna, the liberal Muslim reformer is his great-uncle. His father was a prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and was exiled by Gamal Abdul Nasserfrom Egypt to Switzerland, where Tariq was born.