Dr. Kalim Siddiqui (1931-1996)

DR KALIM SIDDIQUI was one of the leading intellectuals and Islamic movement activists of the modern era. As Founder and Director of the Muslim Institute, London, he played a leading role in developing the political understanding and thought of the contemporary Islamic movement, and in globalizing the movement after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. He also founded and led the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, which was a radical new sort of Muslim community institution when it was inaugurated in 1992.Dr Kalim Siddiqui combined intellectual insight and understanding with movement activism and political leadership. Intellectually, his major contribution was to the political thought of the Islamic movement, in a series of papers published in the 1970s and 1980s, which presented radical and revolutionary ideas in a way which ordinary Muslims found accessible and easy to understand. His intellectual work culminated in his paper Processes of Error, Deviation, Correction and Convergence in Muslim Political Thought (1989) and his last book, Stages of Islamic Revolution (1996). When he passed away in South Africa in 1996, he was working on a new project on political dimensions of the Seerah. His final paper on this subject was published after his death by the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT).The two major institutions he founded and worked through, the Muslim Institute, London, and the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, both declined after his death. However, the ICIT was established in 1998 by some of his closest colleagues and associates, including Zafar Bangash (now Director of the ICIT), Imam Mohammed Al-Asi, and his son, Iqbal Siddiqui, to continue his intellectual work for the Islamic movement.