Double Talk Accusation, an allegation that an opponent says one thing in public and another in private.

This allegation is often levelled against someone who speaks two languages, one Western, and the other 'foreign'. The allegation always centers on the accused saying something to the general public in the language of the majority, and saying the opposite to the other group often in another language or in lectures.

In recent times, the following people have been accused of this:

• Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Accused of talking peace in English and inciting attacks on Israel in Arabic.

• Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss Muslim scholar. Accused of talking tolerance, and respect for the democratic institutions to the francophone public, but hiding an extremist agenda to his followers.

In the first case, most of these charges were not substantiated, and are a little more than a political rhetorical tool.

For Tariq Ramadan, the conflict between the secular democracy, and Qur'an and Shariah remains open as is most clearly proven by Ramadan's repeated insistence that there isn't any conflict between Shariah and secular democracy, while at the same time the European Court for Human Rights ruled just the contrary that "sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy" (13/02/2003).