Mona Siddiqui

Mona Siddiqui
Born	1963 (age 48–49) Karachi, Pakistan
Residence	Glasgow, Great Britain
Fields	Islamic studies
Institutions	University of Glasgow

Mona Siddiqui OBE (born 1963) is a British Muslim academic. She is Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding at the University of Glasgow, as well as the Director of its Centre for the Study of Islam, and is a member of the Commission on Scottish Devolution.

She is also a regular contributor to Thought for the Day and Sunday on BBC Radio 4, and to The Times, The Scotsman, The Guardian, Sunday Herald and (since February 2007, as its first regular Muslim columnist) The Tablet.

Early life

Siddiqui was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1963. Her parents were religious and the family prayed and read the Qur'an together. The family moved from Pakistan to England in 1968. Her father was a psychiatrist and moved to England to carry out post-graduate work in Cambridge, and his work eventually took the family to Huddersfield when he gained a substantive job there. The family lived in four successive houses in Huddersfield, moving partly because the family expanded from four to six, and finally into a 1930s detached house in a relatively prosperous area near the town centre. The household was very literary and there were many books in the house. Siddiqui became closest to her sister about seven years younger than herself. Urdu was generally spoken at home, and so the children became bilingual. Her father also spoke Arabic and worked in Saudi Arabia for a few years, where he was visited by Siddiqui at the age of about 18 years together with her sister.

At the age of 11 years, Siddique attended Salendine Nook High School, a multicultural school, where she excelled in English. She later moved to Greenhead College.

Career

Siddiqui took her BA in Arabic and French at the University of Leeds (graduating in 1984), and her MA in Middle-Eastern Studies and PhD in Classical Islamic Law at the University of Manchester (graduating in 1986 and 1992 respectively). She is or has been a member of the Advisory Boards for Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, Scottish Asian Arts, IB Tauris Religious Studies project and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in March 2005 and of the Royal Society of Arts in October 2005. She is currently the Chair of the BBC's Scottish Religious Advisory Committee. She also holds an Honorary D.Litt. from the University of Wolverhampton and the University of Leicester. In addition she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of Huddersfield.

She has worked at the University of Glasgow since 1996, and in 1998 founded the Centre for the Study of Islam. In 2006, she was appointed Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding, and served as a Senate Assessor on the University Court.

Her areas of specialism are classical Islamic law, law and gender, early Islamic thought, and contemporary legal and ethical issues in Islam. Professor Siddiqui published in 2007 'How to Read the Qur'an' Granta. Her four volume edited collection called 'Islam' published by SAGE appeared in June 2010. She is currently working on two further monographs with Cambridge UP and Yale UP. She has published articles and chapters on classical Islamic Law and also writes frequently on Christian-Muslim issues.

Siddiqui was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to inter-faith relations.

Personal life

Professor Siddiqui is fluent in French and Urdu and is married with three children.

External links

• University of Glasgow Theology and Religious Studies Staff page