Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad

Founder & Chair of Board of Trustees

Cambridge Muslim College was the original vision of Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, who continues to oversee and contribute to its work as Chair of the Board of Trustees. Abdal Hakim was educated at Cambridge, Al-Azhar and London universities. He is currently the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer of Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University and Director of Studies in Theology at Wolfson College. He has published and contributed to numerous academic works on Islam, including as Director of the Sunna Project, and is a leading figure in inter-faith activity, notably as one of the signatories to the Common Word statement. He is well-known as a contributor to BBC Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’.

Mustafa Davies

UK Chartered Accountant

Mustafa Davies is a UK chartered accountant with over 25 years’ experience in business and consulting, most recently in the not-for-profit sector in an equine hospital and independent school. He has an MBA from Alliance Manchester Business School and specialises in finance, operations and strategy. Originally from North Devon, Mustafa converted to Islam in 1994 and lived in the Middle East for 13 years, before returning to the UK in 2022. Mustafa is passionate about education, inequality and the environment and is proud to serve as a Trustee at the Cambridge Muslim College.

Professor Lejla Demiri

Chair of Islamic Doctrine at the Center for Islamic Theology, University of Tübingen

Demiri holds a BA and MA from Marmara University (Istanbul), licentiate degree and postgraduate diploma from the Pontifical Gregorian University (Rome), and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. In 2007-10 Demiri was a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge; taught courses on religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue at the Cambridge Muslim College; and subsequently held post-doctoral fellowships at the Free University of Berlin (2010-12). Her research interests include systematic theology, Islam and religious pluralism, Christian-Muslim relations and Ottoman intellectual history. She is the author of Muslim Exegesis of the Bible in Medieval Cairo (Brill, 2013), and co-editor of The Future of Interfaith Dialogue (with Yazid Said; Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Early Modern Trends in Islamic Theology (with Samuela Pagani; Mohr Siebeck, 2019).

Dr Sohaira Siddiqui

Associate Professor of Theology, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Qatar

Dr Siddiqui received her doctorate in Religious Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara. Her first monograph, Knowledge, Law and Politics: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni, analyses the thought of the 11th century jurist and theologian Abu Ma’ali al-Juwayni through a close reading of his legal, political and theological treatises. Her research interests include classical Islamic legal theory, classical Islamic political thought, the development and intersection of legal thought and political thought from the 9th to 11th centuries, Islamic Law under colonialism, and secularism and modernity in relation to Islamic law and Muslims in the West. She has previously taught courses in Religion, Islamic Law and Islamic History at the University of Saskatchewan. She completed CMC’s Diploma Programme early in her academic career and has held fellowships at Cambridge University and Harvard Law School.

Dr Ali Almihdar

Barrister, Outer Temple Chambers

Dr Almihdar was educated in law at Churchill College, Cambridge (MA & LLM), his legal career started as Legal Adviser to the Saudi Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, and then expanded (through Almihdar Law Firm (ALF) established in Jeddah, 1976), to handling work for that Ministry and many other corporate and private clients from around the world including the UK, the USA and Western Europe. He holds a PhD in “Good Faith in Contracts” from Alexandria University. He was the Honorary Legal Adviser to the British Consulate in Jeddah from 1998 to 2010.

Dr Haroon Sidat

Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, Cardiff University

Dr Haroon received his doctorate in 2019 where he looked at the formation and training of British Muslim Scholarship with an ethnographic study of a Dar al-Uloom, or a traditional Islamic seminary in modern Britain. He holds a BA in Economics and Social Studies and has completed the traditional Dars-i Nizami syllabus. He teaches courses in Islamic law and theology alongside undergraduate modules related to contemporary Muslims concerns in Britain. Currently, alongside being an imam, he is working on an important three-year project looking at the lived experiences of imams in Britain. He is finalising a monograph that explores Islamic authority and tradition and what it means for Muslims living in the West.

Aishah Sameem

Head of Public Fundraising at the British Refugee Council

Aishah has worked in a variety of roles across marketing, comms and income generation for the third sector since 2006, for organisations within health care, international aid and social welfare. She is currently the Head of Public Fundraising at the British Refugee Council. Aishah’s background in social anthropology and international development helped her grow her passion for communicating in personal ways to influence change and raise vital funds. Aishah is an advisor for our Development and Comms directorate at the college.

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