Sheikh Dr. Mohamed Aboulkhair Zaki Badawi
(RA)|
WORLD ISLAMIC MISSION (WIM) |
Sheikh Dr. Mohamed Aboulkhair Zaki Badawi
(RA)
|
World Islamic Mission along with the rest of the Muslim ummah express profound grief on the passing of a dear friend, Dr. Zaki Badawi, Principal of The Muslim College in Britain and former Imam of Regent Park Mosque (UK), who died in London on Tuesday 24 January 2006. Dr. Badawi was a close friend of His Eminence Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani Siddiqui RA with whom he shared many similar ideas and with British Muslims scholars associated with the World Islamic Mission. Dr. Badawi served the cause of Islam and Muslims in Britain and the entire world. His contributions in disseminating contemporary Islamic culture were marked by tolerance and moderation. With his scholarship and and understanding of human culture he consolidated the cause of coexistence among civilizations and religions. The Secretary General of World Islamic Mission, Maulana Prof. Shahid Raza, current head of postgraduate studies at the Muslim College and who worked with Dr. Badawi for over twelve years expressed profound sadness over this great loss, and prayed that Allah Almighty accepts the deceased in His Vast Mercy, grants him a place in His Vast Paradise and offers his family and the entire Muslim Ummah patience and solace.
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Badawi Visionary Arab scholar who helped British Islam make peace with modernity Jack O'Sullivan |
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| Zaki Badawi, who has died
suddenly aged 84, was Britain's most influential Muslim. A brave,
visionary figure, he identified the vulnerabilities of his community
long before the Salman Rushdie affair, the emergence of Osama bin Laden
and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq exposed them to public view. More importantly, he spent nearly 30 years almost single-handedly creating British Islamic institutions and setting out arguments in their favour. Thus he laid the intellectual and bureaucratic foundations for that community to make peace with modernity, and live as a minority in a western society - a process now beginning to protect British Islam against hijack by the powerful forces of Middle East conflicts. Islam lacks the hierarchies of the Christian churches, but Badawi ranked on matters of faith alongside the archbishop of Canterbury and the chief rabbi. As chairman of the council of imams and mosques and founding principal of the Muslim College, which trains imams for British mosques, he used his position to question constantly the assumptions of the prejudiced: namely that Islam is characterised by violence and primitive practices often oppressive of women, and that it is on a collision course with western values. To the first charge, Badawi would quote the farewell sermon of the Prophet Muhammad at the foot of the Mount of Mercy: "God had made inviolable for you each other's blood and each other's property until you meet your Lord." He campaigned vigorously in favour of women's rights and, most particularly, against forced marriage and female circumcision: he considered the latter to be an African custom erroneously inserted into religious tradition in some parts of the Islamic world. As an enthusiastic leader of inter-faith dialogue, he highlighted Islam's history of flexibility and tolerance - particularly of Judaism - speaking of the common Abrahamic roots and Hellenistic heritage of Islam and Christianity. "Their ethical principles are not in conflict," he would say. "Past and even present conflicts between them originate in territorial ambitions and over the acquisition of resources." At crucial moments of tension, Badawi used his considerable learning and authority to steer British Islam (he coined the term) on a wise course. He immediately condemned the 9/11 atrocity as "a violation of Islamic law and ethics". When, in 1989, other Islamic figures threatened Salman Rushdie with death for his novel The Satanic Verses, Badawi called on Muslims to spurn the book but spare the man, and declared that he would not hesitate to offer the novelist sanctuary in his home. As the media highlighted fears that British Muslim soldiers would not fight in Iraq, he urged Muslims to obey orders and accurately predicted that there would be no problem of divided loyalty. Small, confident, occasionally curmudgeonly but always with a keen sense of humour, Badawi had a skill in rescuing his community from marginalisation that sprang from a lifetime's experience of the British empire. Born in Sharkia, Egypt, to a religious family that dedicated him to the study of religion, he agitated against the British presence as part of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, but eschewed its resort to violence. He was educated at the University of Al-Azhar in Cairo, the Islamic world's Oxford, and later became a celebrated scholar and professor there. He went on to teach Islamic studies in Singapore and Malaya. While teaching for 12 years in Nigeria (1964-76), he established a reputation as a tolerant figure, hiding Christian Ibos in his home during the civil war, to save them from slaughter by Muslims who were convinced that their brethren had been killed. During these three decades of traveling the world, from his graduation from Al-Azhar in 1947 until he settled in Britain in 1976, Badawi was already being drawn into British life. In 1951 he arrived to spend three years studying psychology at London University. There, he met a fellow student, Mavis, who had been born into a middle-class Buckinghamshire family. She could speak French to the Egyptian Islamicist with poor English. They soon married, and had a son, Faris, and a daughter, Laila. But it was his appointment in 1978 as the first chief imam at Regent's Park mosque, in London, that convinced Badawi that his mission was to save British Islam from dangerous isolation. "I was horrified that none of the other imams could speak English," he recalled. "I was amazed that they didn't understand anything about other religions and were so unfamiliar with western culture." His attempts to place Islam at the heart of British life were many and various. He liked to recall the claims that King John had promised to convert to Islam in return for Moroccan military support against his rebellious barons, and recalled a belief by some in the Muslim world that Queen Victoria had converted to Islam. Badawi's hero was the Catholic leader, Cardinal Basil Hume. Before his death in 1999, Hume had led his community on the final steps to acceptance in Britain, so that now, for example, his successor can be found even preaching to the Queen at Windsor. "It was so clever," said Badawi, "how Hume inserted Catholicism into the establishment without compromise." Likewise, Badawi enjoyed a close relationship with the Prince of Wales, whom he admired for his outspoken sympathy with Islam. Ironically, despite calling for high-ranking Muslims to be elevated to the House of Lords - an environment in which he would have thrived - he was never ennobled himself, although he was awarded an honorary knighthood in 2004 (having chosen to remain an Egyptian citizen). A closeness to the establishment did at times lead to accusations that he was an Uncle Tom figure, too ready to adapt the tone of Islam to suit a western audience. He also ran the risk of isolation by making damning statements about the community he led - words from an Arab intellectual that an often poorly educated Asian community found hard to stomach. "I blame my community because they have the ability to remedy the thing I am asking them to do," he would say as he attacked dogmatic leadership. "For too long, we have had Muslim chemists or businessmen represent us in a religious function. Because they lack knowledge, they are often rigid, whereas a scholar can be more flexible." But Badawi was more than a critic: like the late Michael Young, his indefatigable appetite for social innovation lasted well into his ninth decade. In 1984, he founded the council of imams and mosques in an attempt to bring scholarship and unity to the leadership of British Islam. Likewise, in 1986, he established the Muslim College, in west London, as a postgraduate seminary to train imams and religious leaders for the west. He also established and chaired the sharia council to resolve conflicts between Islamic law and civil law. Alongside longstanding, and ultimately successful, work to make no-interest Islamic mortgages available, historians will find in Badawi's achievement a systematic approach to showing how Muslims can live at ease in a western liberal environment. For him, the mission was more than about Britain; his goal was to show how the gulf between east and west, ancient and modern, could be bridged peacefully and fruitfully. He is survived by his wife and two children. · Mohamed Aboulkhair Zaki Badawi, scholar, born January 14 1922; died January 24 2006
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| Publications: | Banking, Finance and Business Ethics |
38 Articles on the application of Muslim Law to financila management. Examples: Medical Ethics Islam and Science Publications and Public Lectures: |
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