AN OXFORD professor of contemporary Islamic studies will face a judge over allegations of rape, Reuters has reported.

Swiss academic Tariq Ramadan is being investigated charges of rape and 'rape of a vulnerable person' after two women accused him of violently assaulting them in hotel rooms in Lyon and Paris in 2009 and 2012 after conferences.

It comes nearly three months after the accusations were first made public in November.

Professor Ramadan, 55, has since been on a leave of absence from his work at Oxford.

Following two days of questioning this week, the professor was taken before three magistrates on Friday, suggesting he faces an 'extensive investigation', sources have said.

Ramadan has also been accused of sexual misconduct by four Swiss women, and some have suggested the two current charges could now be followed by more.

However the professor has denied wrongdoing and is suing Henda Ayari, a former radical Islamist who now heads a secular feminist group.

The senior research fellow at St Antony’s College took a leave of absence in November after the two women filed complaints.

At the time he said the leave was taken upon a mutual agreement with Oxford University and that he would use it devote his energies to his defence.

Born in Switzerland in 1962, the grandson of Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Prof Ramadan studied philosophy, literature and social sciences at the University of Geneva and Arabic and Islamic studies for his PhD.

He is a scholarly European Muslim, whose books, grounded in Islam’s textual sources, show him to be a skilled interpreter of Islamic history.

A controversial figure, Prof Ramadan was previously ejected from the United States as an extremist, judged to have provided material support to terrorist organisations.

He has received global praise for his academic work, including being ranked as one of the 100 most important innovators of the 21st century by Time magazine.