Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic scholar and Oxford university professor, was arrested by French police yesterday over allegations by two women that he raped them.
The Swiss-born academic, 55, answered a summons to report to Paris police who are conducting a preliminary investigation. The women laid police complaints last year claiming that Mr Ramadan assaulted them in hotel rooms.
After the allegations Mr Ramadan, who is regarded by critics as an apologist for political Islam, took leave in November from his post as professor of contemporary Islamic studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford.
He denies the claims and says that he has started legal action against the women for libel. On Saturday, he wrote on Facebook that a new suit would follow “within a few days, in response to the campaign of lies launched by my adversaries”.
The police were expected to release Mr Ramadan, a popular figure with conservative Muslims, after questioning. They could decide whether to open a full investigation or drop the case.
Advertisement
The allegations by the women were followed by claims from other women in Switzerland and Belgium that he charmed Muslim women into private meetings.
In Geneva, four women have claimed that he had sex with them when they were teenagers and he was their teacher. He also denies these claims.
The accusations against Mr Ramadan, one of the most visible Muslim intellectuals and a former adviser to Tony Blair, prompted a furore in France.
Supporters claimed that he was the victim of a “war against Islam” while critics accused his defenders of playing into the hands of fundamentalist Islamists.
Le Monde newspaper noted what it called a “deafening silence” in Britain over the affair and attributed the quiet to the favour that he enjoys as the holder of the post at Oxford, which is financed by Qatar; as a contributor to The Guardian newspaper and as a former government adviser on Islam and society.
Advertisement
Henda Ayari, 41, the first accuser who came forward, described the alleged rape in a book published in November 2016. She wrote that she was insulted, slapped and raped in a Paris hotel room after a conference in 2012.
The other accuser, a disabled women identified only as Christelle, alleged that he assaulted her in a hotel room in Rouen in 2009. “He hit my crutch. He made me fall and picked me up by the hair. I feared for my life,” she said.
“Then it was hell. Blows. Sexual violence. Unspeakable, disgusting language . . . The more I screamed, the more he hit me.” The assault lasted several hours, she told the news channel BFM TV.