Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan held in Paris over rape allegations
French police on Wednesday detained prominent Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan after two women filed rape charges against him. Britain's Oxford University suspended Ramadan as a professor of contemporary Islamic studies in November.
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Ramadan was summoned for questioning to a Paris police station and taken into custody "as part of a preliminary inquiry in Paris into rape and assault allegations", legal sources told news agencies, confirming a report by RTL radio.
Last October Henda Ayari, a former Salafist who has become a secular feminist, accused Ramadan of raping her.
Her allegation came as the fallout from the #Metoo movement, inspired by the scandal over Hollywood film moghul Harvey Weinstein, hit France.
A week later another woman filed more charges, reportedly supplying doctors' certificates to back up her account of an assault in a hotel in a provincial French city.
Ramadan denied Ayari's accusations and sued her for libel.
Some of his supporters launched a social media campaign against her.
Ramadan, who is the grandson of the founder of Egypt's Muslim Brothers, is a controversial figure in France, where he has had some support among Muslims and been accused of trying to smuggle Islam into politics by his detractors.
The rape allegations sparked a row between the vehemently secular Charlie Hebdo paper and the Mediapart website over the left's attitude to Islamism.
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