“There is a relationship between those who fail to subdue their desires and the fire,” writes Dr Haroon Sidat. “The fire, when fed, becomes ever more ferocious…”
Author: Dr Haroon Sidat
Dr Haroon Sidat
Haroon is an imam in Blackburn and a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK at Cardiff University. He completed a PhD looking at the formation and training of British Muslim Scholarship (ulama) with an ethnographic study of a Dar al-Uloom, or traditional Islamic seminary in modern Britain. This was part of the Jameel Scholarship Programme. He also has a background in traditional Islamic Studies, and this is where he seeks to combine textual learning of the Islamic tradition with the social sciences; text with context. He has a degree in Economics and Finance alongside an accountancy qualification. His current interests include the formation of religious authority, theories and application of tradition with modernity, secularism, and religious embodiment. He continues to teach courses in the Islamic traditional sciences in the areas of Islamic law (fiqh) and theology (aqīdah), and also teaches modules around contemporary Muslim concerns such as Sufism and Islamic law in Britain. Currently, Haroon is working on an innovative and ground-breaking project looking at the lived experiences of imams in Britain.