Professor Mona Siddiqui OBE
Biography
Mona Siddiqui is Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, a member of the Commission on Scottish Devolution and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. She is also a regular contributor to Thought for the Day and Sunday on BBC Radio 4, and to The Times, The Scotsman and The Guardian.
Siddiqui took her Bachelor of Arts in Arabic and French at the University of Leeds, and her Master of Arts in Middle-Eastern Studies and PhD in Classical Islamic Law at the University of Manchester. She worked at the University of Glasgow between 1996 and 2011, and in 1998 founded the university’s Centre for the Study of Islam. In 2006, she was appointed Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding, and served as a Senate Assessor on the University Court. In 2011, Siddiqui became the first person to hold a chair in Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Divinity. She was subsequently appointed International Dean for the Middle East. Her areas of expertise are classical Islamic law, law and gender, early Islamic thought, and contemporary legal and ethical issues in Islam. Siddiqui is patron of The Feast, a pioneering youthwork charity which works for community cohesion between Christian and Muslim young people.