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Iqbal Siddiqui, the author of this blog, is a British Muslim of Indo-Pakistani origins, born, brought up and still living in Slough, an industrial town a few miles west of London.
I have been involved in Islamic activism all my adult life. After graduating from university (BA in Modern History, Economic History and Politics at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, 1989), I began working that the Muslim Institute, London, while also beginning work part-time on a PhD on Muslim political thought in British India. This was in the aftermath of the Rushdie affair, and I was involved in the establishment and running of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, which proved so all-consuming that my PhD fell by the wayside.
The Muslim Institute and Muslim Parliament declined rapidly after the death of their founder, Dr Kalim Siddiqui (my father) in 1996. My association with them ended in 1998, and I joined with a number of people previously associated with the Muslim Institute to establish the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT), to continue at least some of the Institute's work. Later the same year, I became editor of Crescent International, a Toronto-based "newsmagazine of the global Islamic movement" that had a long association with Dr Kalim Siddiqui and the Muslim Institute, and had been edited since 1980 by Zafar Bangash, who had now become the Director of the ICIT.
As editor of Crescent, I developed my interests in contemporary history and the Islamic movement. I considered trying to return to academia, doing an MA in Middle Eastern Studies (focusing on Middle Eastern politics and modern Islamic thought) at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2002-2004, which I originally hoped would lead to a PhD on contemporary Islamic political thought. However, the experience of two years back in a university convinced me that there was no room for me in contemporary western academia, and I decided to concentrate on being a journalist and commentator within the Islamic movement.
I am stepping down as editor of Crescent International later this year (2008), in order to concentrate on other projects, insha'Allah.
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