Ghayasuddin Siddiqui
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Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui is an academic and political activist.
He was born in Delhi in 1939, migrated to Pakistan in late 1947 and moved to the UK in 1964.
As leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain - which he co-founded in 1992 - and director of one of the oldest Muslim think-tanks in Britain, the Muslim Institute - which he co-founded in 1973 - he is amongst the first generation of leaders who pioneered the Muslim presence in Britain.
Dr Siddiqui met [1] Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi and much of the early Jamaat-e-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood leadership. Rejecting their methodologies, he forged a close relationship with Iran meeting the more radical late Ayatullah Khomeini and many in the revolutionary Iranian leadership.
He was the first Muslim leader to join the Stop the War Coalition, joining its inaugural Central Committee. Dr Siddiqui is patron of the Guantanamo Human Rights Commission, and a commissioner on the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia. He is a founding trustee of British Muslims for Secular Democracy. Dr Siddiqui attacks Saudi and Saudi-sponsored institutions, accusing them of destabilising the world by working with the CIA against the Soviet Union during the Afghan jihad.
Dr Siddiqui was also one of the first Muslim leaders who championed women’s causes, against forced marriage, domestic violence and murder in the name of honour. Together with some senior clerics, he launched a Muslim marriage contract to protect rights of women. He is now leading a campaign against child abuse within faith-based environments, co-authoring a report on the subject.
Dr Siddiqui has consistently campaigned for opening up mosques to young people, both men and women as a counter to extremism and has called for changes within faith schools to meet needs of a multi-cultural Britain.
His son [2] is Asim Siddiqui, Chairman of the The City Circle.
