Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss citizen and academic, Visiting Fellow at St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, who is an advocate of Islamic reform. In Time Magazine's article naming him one of the 100 top innovators for the 21st century, his goal was quoted as separating "...Islamic principles from their cultures of origin and anchor them in the cultural reality of Western Europe." He is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood,

The George W. Bush Administration revoked his visa, when he was invited to become atenured position as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Their rational was that he contributed funds to  a Swiss-based charity, the Association de Secours Palestinien (ASP), between 1998 and 2002. The U.S. did not designate ASP  a supporting organization of the terrorist group Hamas until 2003. In 2006, the American Association of University Professors, American Academy of Religion, New York PEN and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the U.S. government over its blocking visas for academics under "ideological exclusion" provisions of the U.S. PATRIOT Act.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally authorized his entry to the U.S. "The decision brings to an end a dark period in American politics that saw security considerations invoked to block critical debate through a policy of exclusion and baseless allegation," Ramadan responded.