Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss-Egyptian professor of contemporary Islamic studies and a controversial public figure in Europe. On 27 October, Paris prosecutors added a second allegation of rape and sexual assault against him.

The accusation, made by a 45-year-old woman who wished to remain anonymous, comes one week after that of Henda Ayari, a former Salafist, and secular feminist author. Ayari has published a book which contains a description of the rape that she now claims Tariq Ramadan committed.

The news has shocked  Muslim religious groups and associations. Few have come out to discuss what, as rumored, many already knew about. One of the only Muslim news sources to report on the allegations is the Muslim information site Oumma.com.

Ramadan has been a familiar face on TV screens since the 1990s. He is also the grandson of Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), founder of the Islamic movement  "Muslim Brotherhood". At 55, he has become an acclaimed personality among certain Muslim groups, his popularity spreading beyond mosque-going Muslims.

For his often unconditional supporters, he represents a reconciliation between Islam and modernity. For his detractors, the most vehement being the writer Caroline Fourest, he epitomizes the Islamic preacher with a “double discourse”.

They view him as being polite and relaxed in front of the camera while promoting a political strain of Islam which threatens pluralism and democracy in Europe.

Ramadan is hugely popular on social media (over 600,000 followers on Twitter and two million on Facebook). He gives public talks in the francophone world and has written around thirty books. He is a key figure yet difficult to actually pin down. 

For the last twenty-five years, he has worked in universities, been the subject of a series of television scandals and mediatized political scuffles, and has traveled extensively around Europe, especially in France, the UK, and Belgium.

Now a British resident and professor at Oxford University, Ramadan was born in Switzerland, where his family moved in 1954, five years after the assassination of his grandfather in Egypt. He was educated in the French system and studied literature and philosophy in Geneva before pursuing Islamic studies in Cairo, where he was joined by his family. 

He married a converted Breton woman with whom he has four children. His thesis was on the subject of the Muslim Brotherhood and was generally regarded as being too idolatry by the academic community.

Ramadan began a more political career path and garnered a wide network of loyal followers in the 1990s and 2000s, especially in France.

“Rather than an intellectual with a double discourse, he is an opportunist who spotted the identity crisis among young Muslims in poorer areas and pounced," says Bernard Godard, formerly of the French Ministry of the Interior, where he was known as “Mr. Islam”.

With the support of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (Union des organisations islamiques de France – UOIF), Ramadan has promoted the notion of the identity of a Muslim citizen, a vaguely defined paradox, but one which hits home for many.

It was around this time that his most famous media “clashes” with Nicolas Sarkozy and Caroline Fourest took place. Fourest claims to have been aware of “very serious facts” concerning Ramadan’s private life from 2009. 

Due to lack of concrete evidence and official allegations, she refrained until now from publicly denouncing his “double life, in contradiction with the sermons he gave about Islamic ideology and sexuality".

During the 2000s, as his popularity among Muslim communities and in certain media channels was on the rise, Ramadan's academic reputation suffered. He was turned down for posts in the United States and worked as a casual employee at the University of Fribourg. The UOIF’s star orator finally settled in the UK, where Tony Blair called on his expertise after the London terrorist attacks in 2005.

Backed by Qatar, he was appointed to the chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford in 2009. This post gave him the intellectual credibility and recognition he desperately desired. 

Bernard Godard says:

“From the 2000s, his main objective was to join the world of intellectuals. This is why he always refused to lead a militant movement. He has become a kind of untouchable guru in the French-speaking Muslim community, where he prefers to act as a guide [rather] than actually put any kind of structure in place.”

His most recent book, which came out this month, is co-authored by the French philosopher Edgar Morin.

The accusations he faces are likely to widen the gap between his detractors and his most unconditional supporters, many of whom have already taken to social media claiming that he is the victim of slander and defamation.