The people that make up the
Christian Muslim Forum
Graduate from UCL, BSc (Hons) in Psychology, postgraduate from SOAS, MA in Islamic Societies and Cultures, PGCE in science from the Institute of Education. My current and past positions have been, Secondary Head of Science in Al Sadiq School and Al Zahra School for twenty-seven years and part of the educational management committee of the Al Khoei Foundation. Responsibilities representing the Al Khoei Foundation at the Religious Education Council of England and Wales (REC) as well as organising inter-faith projects and community cohesion. Trustee of Al Ayn Social Care Foundation UK since 2006. Muslim representative of the ‘Faith and Football’ program organised by the Football Association. Trustee of the CMF from March 2020. Honoured with an MBE for community cohesion with the Al Khoei Foundation in 2015.
Qari Asm is a senior Imam at Makkah Mosque in Leeds and Legal Director at global law firm, DLA Piper. Qari is passionate about fostering relations between communities. He is an executive board member of National Council of Imams & Rabbis, and is one of the faith advisors to the Near Neighbours programme. He also acts as a consultant to a number of mosques, institutions, public bodies and agencies.
Jill Dhell is a lay Christian from an evangelical perspective. It was while volunteering in India during her twenties that she first experienced the richness of being embraced by an Indian family and of friendships in which impacts from differing histories, global perspectives and faiths were freely discussed. These experiences deeply motivated her to subsequently develop similar close personal relationships in the UK. Jill has been involved with the Christian Muslim Forum since 2016, as well as with several Christian organisations engaging with British Muslims. In 2021, she completed an MA in leadership and organisational studies, during which she explored unconscious assumptions held by Christians in relation to inter-faith engagement. Separately, from a career perspective, she is experienced in building relationships and networks across organisations inhabiting the same broad field yet having differing aims, priorities and organisational cultures. She also has experience of assessing cohesiveness between an individual organisation’s visions, aims and processes.
Martin Gorick was born in Liverpool, but grew up in Nottingham. He read Theology and Religious Studies at Cambridge with an early focus on Indian religions and interreligious dialogue. He trained for the ministry in Oxford before being ordained in Durham in 1987, serving as an Anglican parish priest for over 25 years in the North East, Smethwick and Stratford upon Avon. He is a practitioner rather than a scholar who enjoys making connections between people and communities for the common good. He undertook some study at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in the early ‘90’s, before enjoying extensive practical engagement and religious dialogue with his local mosque in Smethwick, and then pioneering a two year dialogue between Christian and Muslim young people in Stratford and Nuneaton. He went on to serve as Archdeacon of Oxford and Interfaith Adviser to the Bishop of Oxford from 2013, before becoming Bishop of Dudley in the Diocese of Worcester in 2020.
Bishop Paul is Catholic Auxiliary Bishop with responsibility for the South West of the Southwark Catholic Archdiocese in London. He was ordained by Archbishop Kevin McDonald in February 2006. He studied for the priesthood at the English College, Rome (1979 – 1985). He obtained a Licence in Philosophy from the Gregorian University, Rome. He was ordained priest at Holy Innocents, Orpington in 1984. His first appointment, in 1985, as an assistant priest was to St Boniface, Tooting. In 1989 he was appointed Philosophy Lecturer and Bursar at St John’s Seminary, Wonersh. His next appointment was as parish priest of Our Lady of Sorrows, Peckham, in 1999. He serves on the Diocesan Finance Committee and is the Diocesan Advisor on New Religious Movements and Cults.
Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra serves as an imam and scholar in Leicester. He was born in Malawi into a family of Indian origin and emigrated to the UK at the age of 18 to study and settle. He has been trained in classical theology and the traditional sciences of Islam. He holds religious credentials from Daru-`Ulum, Holcombe as well as advanced theological qualifications from Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Shaykh Mogra undertook a postgraduate degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He is the founder and Principal of Khazinatul-`Ilm, Madaris of Arabic and Muslim Life Studies, in Leicester. He was elected as an Assistant Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain in 2008. Prior to that, he was chair of the Council’s Masjid and Community Affairs Committee as well as the Inter Faith Relations Committee, of which he is still the chair. As a local community activist in Leicester and a national leader in the MCB, Shaykh Mogra has been at the forefront in deepening interfaith relations in the UK and around the world. He is chair of Religions for Peace UK, Advisory Board member of the Three Faiths Forum, and a member of the Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace. He continues to serve as a specialist advisor on Muslim affairs to media outlets including the BBC, Sky News, ITN and several newspapers.
Mona Siddiqui joined the University of Edinburgh’s Divinity school in December 2011 as the first person to hold a chair in Islamic and Interreligious Studies. She also holds the posts of Assistant Principal for Religion and Society and Dean international for the Middle-East at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to this she worked at Glasgow University directing the Centre for the Study of Islam. Her research areas are primarily in the field of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and ethics and Christian-Muslim relations. Amongst her most recent publications are, 50 Ideas in Islam (Quercus, 2016), Muslim Christian Encounters 4 volumes, (Routledge, 2016) Hospitality in Islam: Welcoming in God’s Name (Yale UP, 2015), My Way: A Muslim Woman’s Journey (IB Tauris, 2014), Christians, Muslims and Jesus (Yale University Press, 2013), and The Good Muslim: Reflections on Classical Islamic Law and Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2012). She is currently working on writing her Gifford lectures on the theme of human struggle for publication. She has held visiting professorships at several Dutch and American universities including a Humanitas Professorship at Cambridge University in 2014. Currently she is Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey, British University in Dubai and Kings College, London.
She is well known internationally as a public intellectual and a speaker on issues around religion, ethics and public life. She is a regular commentator in the media, known especially for her appearances on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland’s Thought for the Day. In June 2016, she became a panellist on BBC Radio 4’s award winning The Moral Maze. In 2012, she appeared as a guest on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs and in July 2015, was a guest on BBC Radio 3’s Private Passions. She chairs the BBC’s Religious Advisory Committee in Scotland and during 2016 served as chair of the Scotland `Stronger In’ pro Europe campaign. In April 2016, she was invited by the Home Office to lead an independent review of shari`a councils in the UK. She is an elected member of the Nuffield Council of Bioethics as well as the British Medical Associations’ Ethics committee; she is also a member of the Franco-British Council and in November 2016, was invited to join the Robertson Trust trustees. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, holds five honorary doctorates and an honorary fellowship of the Royal Society of Scottish Architects for her contributions to public life. In 2011, she was awarded an OBE for her
Abdal-Hakim Murad’s profile and work have attracted media coverage both in the Muslim World and the West. Conversant in both traditional Islamic scholarship and Western thought and civilization, Shaykh Murad has made significant contributions on many Islamic topics.
Shaykh Murad is currently the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer of Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, Director of Studies in Theology at Wolfson College, and a doctoral student at Oxford University, where he is studying the relationship between the government and Sufi brotherhoods in the Ottoman Empire. Murad is also the secretary of the Muslim Academic Trust (London), Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe, President of the UK Friends of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Director of the Sunna Project, which has published scholarly Arabic editions of the major Sunni Hadith collections.
The Rt Revd Dr Richard Cheetham has been Bishop of Kingston in the Diocese of Southwark since 2002. He is also Whitelands Professorial Fellow in Christian Theology and Contemporary Issues at the University of Roehampton, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at King’s College, London.
Bishop Richard read Physics and Philosophy at Oxford University and holds a PhD from King’s College, London for his thesis on “The nature and status of religious belief in contemporary Britain (with particular reference to the concept of “truth”) as reflected by acts of collective worship in a sample of Luton schools since the 1988 Education Reform Act”. He was Anglican Co-Chair of the Christian Muslim Forum from 2010 to 2012, and its Anglican President from 2012 to 2016. He is also the Diocese of Southwark’s Lead Bishop for inter faith matters, a Patron of the Curriculum for Cohesion, and was involved in the development of “Sharing Perspectives”, St George’s College Jerusalem’s flagship course for people who are influential in inter faith work in the UK and Canada.
Bishop Donnett Thomas was consecrated in July 2003. She is Senior Pastor at Power of the Living Word Ministries International in London and has Apostolic Covering Churches in Mombasa, Kibwezi, Kitui in Kenya and in Pradesh, India. Bishop Donnett has a missionary heart and believes it is our Kingdom responsibility to help the poor. She is experienced and articulate. An international preacher and teacher who has spoken all over the world in Houston, California, New Jersey, Chicago, Antigua, Jamaica, the Philippines, Kenya, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Botswana. Bishop Donnett is Chair of Churches Together in South London.
The Rev Trevor Howard is our Free Church President. He is on the Board of the Free Churches Group and is the International Co-ordinator of Churches in Communities International, a network of independent churches, ministries, chaplains and networks in the UK and several nations with mixed Christian/Muslim populations.
He holds a BA (Hons) in Arabic and French with Middle Eastern and European Studies, an MA in Urban Education and an MTh in South Asian Islamic and Christian religion and politics. He travels regularly in Africa and South Asia.
Trevor is also a member of the Churches Commission on Inter Faith Relations (of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland).
