Patrick Sookhdeo is the director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity and International Director of the Barnabas Fund. Sookhdeo is an outspoken spokesman for persecuted Christian minorities around the world. He has made many media appearances in Great Britain and is an advocate for human rights and freedom of religion.
Sookhdeo is a commentator on jihadist ideology, and has lectured British and NATO military officers on radical Islam.[1]
Contents |
Patrick Sookhdeo was born in 1947 in British Guiana (now Guyana),[1] to an originally Hindu father who had become a Muslim in order to marry Sookhdeo's Muslim mother. His family migrated to England in the late 1950s and, in 1965, the student Sookhdeo converted to Christianity. In 1967 he pursued studies at London Bible College (now the London School of Theology)[2] and went on to obtain a Doctorate from the London University's School of Oriental and African studies.[1] During that time Sookhdeo began exploring inter-faith dialogue and became increasingly concerned by the brutality being leveled at Christian minorities in Islamic nations, and the Islamic death penalties for conversion from Islam.[1]
In 1975 with his wife Rosemary, Dr Sookhdeo founded "In Contact Ministries" now called Servants Fellowship International,[3] promoting evangelism and compassionate ministries in multi-cultural urban contexts in the UK.[4][5] During this period, Sookhdeo was also one of the organisers of the early "Greenbelt" Christian Arts Festivals.[5]
In 1989, Sookhdeo created the London-based Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, and this saw the creation of a global database on extremist movements and ideologies whose followers were persecuting religious minorities across the Muslim world.[1] By 1991, Sookhdeo was predicting that an "Islamic storm" was on the horizon.[1] He also runs the Barnabas Fund, a charity that supports persecuted Christian minorities around the world.[6]
Dr Sookhdeo was awarded the 2001 Coventry Cathedral International Prize for Peace and Reconciliation and was awarded the Templeton Project Trust prize for progress in religion in 1990.
He is Dean Theologian of the Diocese of Abuja, Nigeria, and ordained in the Church of Pakistan. Dr Sookhdeo is non- residentiary canon[7] of Khyber Diocese, Pakistan. He has been a pastor, evangelist and Bible teacher for 40 years.
He has been the Adjunct Professor at Western Seminary and Guest Professor at the Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, Florida and McLean, Virginia, as well as lecturing in many other theological institutions. He has lectured, taught and written extensively on religious, cultural and security issues. He is currently Adjunct Professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Defence Academy of the UK and Visiting Professor at Cranfield University, UK. He has been a visiting lecturer at Oak Hill Theological College, London; Ridley Hall, Cambridge; at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford; Guest Lecturer at the NATO school, Oberammergau, Germany. He is a Fellow of the Security Institute of the UK.
He is the author of numerous papers and author/editor of several books, including, Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam (reviews of which are accessible here[8][9][10]) and Understanding Islamist Terrorism. A number of his books have been translated into German, Romanian, Russian, and at least one book is translated into Norwegian (A Christian's Pocketguide to Islam/Den kristnes lommeguide til Islam).[11]
During a radio debate on Premier Christian Radio,[12] he was also criticised by the News Editor of The Muslim Weekly, Hamza A. Bajwa, for presenting a distorted image of Islam and Muslims. Bajwa has also written a book review of Sookhdeo's 'Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam'.[13]
Melanie Phillips reported in The Spectator that Sookhdeo received death threats as a result of his authorship of Global Jihad, a book on militant Islam.[14] The Barnabas Fund, run by Sookhdeo, felt it necessary to issue a plea for supporters to pray for their staff.[15]
Mehdi Hasan in The Guardian[16] claimed Dr Patrick Sookhdeo is a “crude, anti-Islam propagandists”. However, this is refuted in a Premier Christian Radio debate[17] with Sheikh Dr Muhammed Al-Husseini - a Muslim scholar from the Inter-faith organisation Scriptural Reasoning[18]. In it Sheikh Dr Al-Husseini says of Dr Sookhdeo that: “It is an absolute pleasure to be with somebody who is a very highly valued colleague, a deeply trusted colleague and for whose work I have the highest regard.” A joint statement was also published by Sheikh Dr Muhammed Al-Husseini and Dr. Tawfik Hamid - an Islamic thinker and reformer - in support of Dr Patrick Sookhdeo as a response to The Guardian article [19].