Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the European continent, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the Western part of Europe. Another definition was created during the Cold War (approx. 1945-1991) and used to describe the non-Communist states of Europe that were allied (to an extent for each of them) with and influenced by the United States to some degree. For this purpose the Western European Union (1954–2011; today part of the European Union), a defensive alliance among non-communist European nations during the Cold War, was drafted in 1948. As a result, countries culturally and geographically associated with other European regions that steered clear of Soviet influence during the Cold War are usually included, while western members of the former Eastern Bloc (with the exception of Eastern Germany) are excluded.^{[citation needed]}

Adrian Davies (born 17 June 1962) is a barrister and a member of Lincoln's Inn, London. He was formerly a solicitor with the magic circle firm, Slaughter and May. He is the eldest son of the traditionalist Catholic writer, Michael Davies.

Davies was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he took a first class honours degree in modern languages in 1985 and at the University of London where he took a LLM degree. Davies is fluent in French and Croatian.

After a year spent as a trainee at Ernst & Young, Davies qualified and practised litigation for six years as a solicitor at Slaughter and May. His specialist area was property litigation in which field he was known as a tenacious and enthusiastic litigator. Davies later retrained as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1998. He now practises at 3 Dr Johnson's Buildings. His specialist areas include recoveries; real property, mortgages, landlord & tenant; wills, probate and trusts; civil actions against the Police, Customs & Excise et al.; and slander and libel.

Tariq Ramadan (Arabic: طارق رمضان‎; born 26 August 1962 in Geneva, Switzerland) is a Swiss academic and writer. He is also a Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University. He advocates the study and re-interpretation of Islamic texts, and emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of Western Muslims.

Tariq Ramadan is the son of Said Ramadan and Wafa Al-Bana, who was the eldest daughter of Hassan al Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Gamal al-Banna, the liberal Muslim reformer is his great-uncle. His father was a prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and was exiled by Gamal Abdul Nasser from Egypt to Switzerland, where Tariq was born.

Tariq Ramadan studied Philosophy and French literature at the Masters level and holds a PhD in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Geneva. He also wrote a PhD dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche, entitled Nietzsche as a Historian of Philosophy.