Kalim Siddiqui (writer)
Kalim Siddiqui, Ph.D. (15 September 1931 - 18 April 1996) was a Pakistani British writer and Islamic activist. Early life. Siddiqui was born in the village of Dondi Lohara, CP, British India on 15 September 1931. He became increasing involved in politics as a teenager, when during a small demonstration close to his home town a bullet fired by a British soldier barely missed him, killing the youth behind him. After the creation of the state of Pakistan he briefly joined the Khilafat Movement in Karachi and became the editor of its newspaper, "The Independent Leader". Along with  other members of the movement, he moved to London in the early 1950s. In the mid 1960s he put himself through college and university, taking a degree in Economics and then, in 1972, a PhD in International Relations from University College, London. He founded the Muslim Institute for Research and Planning in London in 1972 and campaigned through his writings for political Islam. Supporting Iran. He publicly declared his support for the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979, and was later a defender of Ayatullah Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie. The Muslim Parliament. In 1989 he founded the Muslim  Parliament of Great Britain. Although activism was certainly a major part of his life, the core of his work was a unique analysis, understanding and exposition of Muslim history and the contemporary situation facing Muslims which he developed and presented in a series of major writings and speeches. He died in Pretoria, South Africa on 18 April 1996, after attending the International Conference on Creating a New Civilization of Islam. He was an outspoken force in the need for an integrated body of Muslims which could exercise communal interests (the regulation of halal meat and the sighting of the Ramadan  moon) and act as a lobbying body in the wider British community, like the Board of Deputies of British Jews.