My friend Ataullah Siddiqui, who has died aged 66 of cancer, was a leading scholar on Islam and a figurehead of interfaith relations in Britain.
He migrated from India to Britain in 1982 to take up a research fellowship in interfaith relations at the Islamic Foundation in Leicester. While lecturing, writing and editing, he completed a PhD from the University of Birmingham in Christian-Muslim dialogue in 1994. It was at a Muslim students conference at the University of Sheffield in 1988 that he met Colette Alia (nee Emson), and they married the following year.
In 2000, Ataullah joined the Markfield Institute of Higher Education in Leicestershire, going on to hold numerous positions including director (2001-08), and retiring as professor of Christian-Muslim relations and interfaith understanding in 2019. He was a founder president and vice-chair of the Christian Muslim Forum in England, and a founding member of the Leicester Council of Faiths. As well a number of publications on interfaith relations, he authored a major government report on the study of Islam at Universities in England in 2007. He argued that the Islamic studies syllabus needed to look beyond classical texts and area studies (particularly the Middle East) and that Muslims in Britain should be helped to understand their faith as practised in different contexts.
Ataullah was the pioneer of the Muslim chaplaincy programme at the Markfield Institute, in response to the need highlighted by the Muslim Council of Britain. Seeking to combine the Christian expertise in chaplaincy with the Islamic traditions, he was also keen to support the development of the role and training of imams.
To him, the Qur’an encapsulated four key values: compassion, forgiveness, justice and excellence. He observed that in the UK, interfaith activities placed more emphasis on theology rather than living together; in India it was the reverse. Ataullah believed in dialogue as the only way to build successful plural societies. He selflessly and reliably supported the work of others, quietly encouraging and guiding their aspirations. Service was perhaps the hallmark of his professional life.
Ataullah was born in Uttar Pradesh, India, to Zafrun Nisa, a housewife, and Maulana Sibghatullah Siddiqui, an imam and religious teacher. His father moved the family to a hill town next to Darjeeling when Ataullah was just under a year old. After attending an Islamic seminary for his early education, he went to the Scottish Universities Mission Institution in Kalimpong and Kalimpong College.
Much admired by people of all faiths, Canon Andrew Wingate, former chaplain to the Queen said of Ataullah: “He was a very reflective person and a great listener. He believed deeply in Muslims being fully part of the British context. He lived that.” Prof Sophie Gilliat-Ray, director of the Islam-UK Centre at Cardiff University, wrote that “the world of British Muslim Studies [has] lost one of its most thoughtful founding scholars”.
He is survived by his wife, their twin daughters, Sarah and Nadia, and four granddaughters.