Tariq Ramadan has the measured delivery of an academic, which is no more than you would expect from a man who used to be a high school principal and wrote his doctoral thesis on Nietzsche. But as the leading Islamic thinker among Europe's second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants, the Geneva-based university lecturer also inspires a good deal of mistrust—from both Arab Muslims for his Western sensibility and Westerners for his controversial Islamic roots. Ramadan, 38, is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder, in 1928, of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic revival movement that spread from Egypt throughout the Arab world, criticizing Western decadence and advocating a return to Muslim values. Yet Ramadan says, "I'm a European who has grown up here. I don't deny my Muslim roots, but I don't vilify Europe either."

Ramadan's chosen task is to invent an independent European Islam: "We need to separate Islamic principles from their cultures of origin and anchor them in the cultural reality of Western Europe." With 15 million Muslims on the Continent, Ramadan believes it's time to abandon the dichotomy in Muslim thought that has defined Islam in opposition to the West. "I can incorporate everything that's not opposed to my religion into my identity," he says, "and that's a revolution."