Patrick Sookhdeo


Patrick Sookhdeo is the director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity and was for 22 years International Director of the Barnabas Fund. Sookhdeo is an outspoken spokesman for persecuted Christian minorities around the world. He has made many media appearances in Great Britain and is an advocate for human rights and freedom of religion.
Sookhdeo is a commentator on jihadist ideology, and has lectured British and NATO military officers on Islamic extremism.

Life

Patrick Sookhdeo was born in 1947 in British Guiana, to an originally Hindu father who had become a Muslim in order to marry Sookhdeo's Muslim mother. His family migrated to England in the late 1950s, and in 1965 the student Sookhdeo converted to Christianity. In 1967 he pursued studies at London Bible College and went on to obtain a doctorate in 2000 from London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. During that time Sookhdeo began exploring interfaith dialogue and became increasingly concerned by the brutality being leveled at Christian minorities in Islamic nations, and the Islamic death penalties for conversion from Islam.
In 1975 with his wife Rosemary, Sookhdeo founded "In Contact Ministries", now called Servants Fellowship International, promoting evangelism and compassionate ministries in multi-cultural urban contexts in the UK. During this period, Sookhdeo was also one of the organisers of the early Greenbelt Christian arts festivals.
In 1989, Sookhdeo created the London-based Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, and this saw the creation of a global database on extremist movements and ideologies whose followers were persecuting religious minorities across the Muslim world. By 1991, Sookhdeo was predicting that an "Islamic storm" was on the horizon. He is the International Director of the Barnabas Fund, a charity that supports persecuted Christian minorities around the world.
Sookhdeo was awarded the 2001 Coventry Cathedral International Prize for Peace and Reconciliation. The Syriac Orthodox Church has awarded him St. Ignatius Theophoros' Decoration as Commander. He is also Chorepiscopus in the Syriac Orthodox Church.
He is Dean Theologian of the Diocese of Abuja Province, Nigeria, and is ordained in the Church of Pakistan. Sookhdeo is non-residentiary canon of Khyber Diocese, Pakistan. He has been a pastor, evangelist and Bible teacher for 40 years.
Sookhdeo has been an adjunct professor at Western Seminary and guest professor at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, and McLean, Virginia, as well as lecturing in many other theological institutions. He has lectured, taught and written extensively on religious, cultural and security issues. He is currently an adjunct professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom and Visiting Professor at Cranfield University, UK. He has been a visiting lecturer at Oak Hill Theological College, London; at Ridley Hall, Cambridge; at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford; and Guest Lecturer at the NATO School, Oberammergau, Germany. He is a Fellow of The Security Institute of the UK.
He is the author of numerous papers and author/editor of several books, including Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam and Understanding Islamist Terrorism. Melanie Phillips reported in The Spectator that Sookhdeo received death threats following the publication of Global Jihad. A number of his books have been translated into German, Romanian and Russian, and at least one book is translated into Norwegian.
Sookhdeo's wife, Rosemary, is the author of Secrets Behind The Burqa.

Legal problems

On 10 March 2014, The Independent newspaper reported that Sookhdeo had been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault against a woman. He has denied the charges. On 18 May 2014, Sookhdeo was formally charged by British police with sexual assault on a woman. He was released on police bail to appear at the Swindon Magistrates' Court later in the month. Following his arrest and indictment, Barnabas UK launched an internal investigation and temporarily suspended him from his duties. In June 2014, Sookhdeo was reinstated after the board decided that there was insufficient evidence of sexual assault. Later, it was alleged that Sookhdeo had used "intimidating and manipulative" language against two prosecution witnesses.
On 23 February 2015, Sookhdeo was found guilty by a majority 10-2 verdict of the jury at Swindon Crown Court on the charge of sexual assault and unanimously on the two further charges of intimidating witnesses. He was ordered to serve a three-month community sentence, and ordered to pay £3500 prosecution costs and a £60 victim surcharge. On 27 February 2015, Christianity Today reported that Sookhdeo had resigned from his position as director of Barnabas Aid, citing his sexual assault conviction. However, he was subsequently reinstated to his positions as a trustee of Barnabas Aid International and as the International Director and CEO of the Barnabas Fund. Sookdeo's conviction drew mixed responses from within the British Christian community and media. In August 2015, the British Christian news website Christian Today's contributing editor Mark Woods sharply criticized the Barnabas Fund for alleged "victim blaming" and reinstating Sookhdeo as its international director despite the verdict. By contrast, the Orthodox Anglican website Virtueonline's managing editor David Virtue criticized the legal process as a travesty, asserted Sookhdeo's innocence, and cited concerns about the complainant's behaviour and inconsistencies in her testimony.
On 21 November 2015, Patrick Sookhdeo was arrested by the Metropolitan Police at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of indecent assault. The following day, Sookhdeo resigned from all roles at Barnabas Aid International and Barnabas Fund due to the media publicity around his arrest. In February 2016, the trustees of the Barnabas Fund defended Patrick Sookhdeo and announced his intention to appeal the conviction. They reported that twelve senior Anglican figures had concluded after looking at the evidence that "there had been a concerted move to take Patrick Sookhdeo down and destroy Barnabas Fund." It also described Sookhdeo's arrest by armed officers from the Metropolitan Police at Heathrow after an 'all ports' alert had been issued for him, even though for a month prior, he had been living in his own home 100 metres from the police station which prompted the arrest.
In early March 2016, it was reported that Patrick Sookhdeo was facing historical sexual assault charges against a woman dating back to 1977. On 4 April 2016, Sookhdeo appeared in the Thames District Court where he was arraigned on one count of indecent assault on a woman aged 16 or over in Plaistow, East London, in 1977. At Snaresbrook Crown Court the jury unanimously found him not guilty on 2 August 2018.

Criticism and praise

Hamza A. Bajwa, News Editor of The Muslim Weekly, has criticised Sookhdeo, claiming that he presents a distorted image of Islam and Muslims, and Mehdi Hasan in The Guardian accused him of being a "crude, anti-Islam propagandist". Against this, Sheikh Dr Muhammed Al-Husseini, a Muslim scholar from the interfaith organisation Scriptural Reasoning, has said of Sookhdeo: "It is an absolute pleasure to be with somebody who is a very highly valued colleague, a deeply trusted colleague and for whose work I have the highest regard." A joint statement in support Sookhdeo was also published by Muhammed Al-Husseini and Islamic thinker and reformer Tawfik Hamid as a response to the Guardian article.

Works

Articles

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