Ataullah Siddiqui was a founder president and vice-chair of the Christian Muslim Forum
FarooqMurad
Tue 15 Dec 2020 08.21 EST
Last modified on Fri 1 Jan 2021 13.34 EST
My friend Ataullah Siddiqui, who has died aged 66 of cancer, was a leading scholar on Islam and a figurehead of interfaith relations in Britain.
He migrated from India to Britain in 1982 to take up a research fellowship in interfaith relations at the Islamic Foundation in Leicester. While lecturing, writing and editing, he completed a PhD from the University of Birmingham in Christian-Muslim dialogue in 1994. It was at a Muslim students conference at the University of Sheffield in 1988 that he met Colette Alia (nee Emson), and they married the following year.