Patrick Sookhdeo

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.

Life

Patrick Sookhdeo was born in 1947 in British Guiana (now Guyana), 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) and went on to obtain a Doctorate from the London University's School of Oriental and African studies. 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.

In 1975 with his wife Rosemary, Dr Sookhdeo founded "In Contact Ministries" now called Servants Fellowship International, promoting evangelism and compassionate ministries in multi-cultural urban contexts in the UK. During this period, Sookhdeo was also one of the organisers of the early "Greenbelt" Christian Arts Festivals.

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. By 1991, Sookhdeo was predicting that an "Islamic storm" was on the horizon. He also runs the Barnabas Fund, a charity that supports persecuted Christian minorities around the world.

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 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) 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).

Criticism

During a radio debate on Premier Christian Radio, 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'.

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. The Barnabas Fund, run by Sookhdeo, felt it necessary to issue a plea for supporters to pray for their staff.

Mehdi Hasan in The Guardian claimed Dr Patrick Sookhdeo is a “crude, anti-Islam propagandists”. However, this is refuted in a Premier Christian Radio debate with Sheikh Dr Muhammed Al-Husseini - a Muslim scholar from the Inter-faith organisation Scriptural Reasoning. 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 .

Works

Articles

• The Age: Islam, The West And The Need For Honesty
• The Myth of Moderate Islam
• Evening Standard: The schools that divide the nation
• The Islamization of Europe

Books and booklets

• 1972 – The Asian in Britain, London: Community and Race Relations Unit of the British Council of Churches (booklet)
• 1972 – Asians in Britain : a Christian understanding, Church Pastoral-Aid Society, ISBN 0-85491-831-0
• 1983 – Christianity & Other Faiths, Attic Press, ISBN 0-85364-363-6
• 1990 – Sharing Good News: The Gospel and Your Asian Neighbours, Scripture Union, ISBN 0-86201-547-2
• 2001 – A Christian's Pocket Guide to Islam,Christian Focus and Isaac, ISBN 1-85792-699-4 (also 2006, ISBN 1-84550-119-5)
• 2002 – A People Betrayed: The Impact of Islamisation on the Christian Community in Pakistan, Christian Focus Publications ; Isaac Publishing, ISBN 1-85792-785-0
• 2004 – Understanding Islamic Terrorism: The Islamic Doctrine of War, Isaac Publishing, ISBN 0-9547835-0-6 (published in US 2009 as "Understanding Islamist Terrorism: The Islamic Doctrine of War", ISBN 978-0-9787141-6-1)
• 2005 – Islam in Britain: The British Muslim Community in February 2005, Isaac Publishing, ISBN 0-9547835-5-7
• 2006 – Islam the Challenge to the Church, Isaac Publishing, ISBN 0-9547835-4-9
• 2007 – Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam, Isaac Publishing, ISBN 978-0-9787141-2-3
• 2008 – Faith, Power and Territory: A Handbook of British Islam, Isaac Publishing, ISBN 978-0-9787141-3-0
• 2008 – Understanding Shari'a Finance: the Muslim challenge to Western economics, Isaac Publishing, ISBN 978-0-9787141-7-8
• 2009 – The Challenge of Islam: to the church and its mission, Isaac Publishing, ISBN 978-0-9787141-5-4 (2nd rev. ed. of "Islam the Challenge to the Church")
• 2009 – Freedom to Believe – Challenging Islam's Apostasy Law, Isaac Publishing, ISBN 978-0-9787141-9-2
• 2010 – A Pocket Guide to Islam, Christian Focus Publications ; Isaac Publishing, ISBN 978-1-84550-583-7 (2nd rev. ed. of "A Christian's Pocket Guide to Islam")

Co-authored or contributed

• 1981 – Christianity and Marxism, with Alan Scarfe, Paternoster Press, ISBN 0-85364-289-3
• 2004 – Christians in the Muslim World in The Myth of Islamic Tolerance : How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-59102-249-5
• 2010 – Ideas Matter: How to Undermine the Extremist Ideology Behind al Qaeda in Towards a Grand Strategy Against Terrorism, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 978-0-07-352779-6

Edited

• 1974 – All One in Christ: The Biblical View of Race, Marshall, ISBN 0-551-05398-4
• 1978 – Jesus Christ the Only Way: Christian Responsibility in the Multicultural Society, Paternoster Press, ISBN 0-85364-236-2
• 1988 – New Frontiers in Mission, Paternoster Press, Baker Book House, ISBN 0-8010-8284-6
• 1991 – Sharing Good News – the Gospel and your Asian neighbours, Scripture Union, ISBN 0-86201-547-2
• 2004 – The Persecuted Church, Lausanne Committee for World Evangelisation (reprinted in South Africa 2005, 2007)

External links

• Patrick Sookhdeo's blog.
• Article, originally published in the Sunday Telegraph, with extensive comments from Patrick Sookhdeo on the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.
• The Myth of "The Myth of Moderate Islam" — Response to Sookhdeo originally published in Islamica Magazine.