Travelling west from Rajanpur: it's a long way from a remote village in Pakistan to Brighton, England. Imam Abduljalil Sajid tells Mary Lean about the encounters which inspired his passion for interfaith understanding - Profile

For A Change, April-May, 2002 by Mary Lean

The bridgebuilding Imam of the Brighton Islamic Mission, Dr Abduljalil Sajid, describes himself as an optimist. He believes the terrible events of 11 September 2001 have opened opportunities for better understanding between the West and Islam. `Evil exists,' he says. `It can only be eradicated with good. And good ultimately comes, provided our objective is clear.'

Since he settled in Brighton 22 years ago, Sajid has devoted himself to building understanding between different faiths and ethnic groups. He was one of 200 delegates to a world summit of Muslim leaders in Indonesia last December, which affirmed Islam's commitment to peace, justice and interfaith dialogue. `Islam is a religion of moderation,' he pointed out there. `Islam and terrorism are contradictory terms.'

Abduljalil Sajid has travelled a long way since his birth in Pakistan in November 1947, three months after the country's creation. `I'm a pure Pakistani,' he says. `I don't carry the past baggage of hate between Hindus and Muslims.'

The sitting room of his home in Brighton, where he tells me about his life journey, is lined with books. There used to be even more, until his wife put her foot down and he sent 35,000 to the Al-Hijrah Trust in Birmingham, where they have opened a section in his name. Yet when he was a child the only light he had to read by was the moon.

He was born in the remote village of Rajanpur, in an area which the British Raj had left undeveloped. `There were no roads, no electricity and all the buildings were made of mud.' He was one of 14 brothers and sisters, in a shared multigenerational home of 47 people.

The house had a well, and food came from the family farm just a few hundred yards from the house. His father, who had a cloth shop, was the only member of the family to have left the farm, and he was determined that his sons should be educated.

A devout Sufi (Muslim mystic), Sajid's father believed `that the difference between Islam and non-Islam is knowledge.' He used to wake Abduljalil at 2.30 am for prayers, to study the Qur'an and to hear stories about his heroes, who were not only Muslims.

Sajid was one of the first graduates of Rajanpur's primary and middle schools and then, at the age of 11, his father sent him to study at an Islamic University in Multan in the Punjab. The Madrassa Jameluloom combined Islamic religious education with optional secular subjects such as English, history and political science.

He left in 1965 with a BA with distinction in Arabic and Islamic Studies, the rank of Alim (religious scholar) and Mufti (the highest degree in traditional religious studies) and a secular BA in Political Sciences. Within four months the Punjab University in Lahore had granted him a first class MA--a course which normally took two years. He was only 18. When I suggest he must have been brilliant, he maintains he simply worked hard. `I never believed in wasting time.'

When he went on to study in Dhaka (now capital of Bangladesh), his village turned out in force to see him off. One of his mother's friends asked him why he had to go so far to study when he already had his MA and the President of Pakistan hadn't even got a BA. `Can't you replace him now?'

It was in Lahore that Sajid made his first step towards people of other faiths. He was set an essay on what different faiths believed about honesty. He had never met a Christian or a Jew before, but he set out round the city's churches, synagogues and temples to ask for quotations from the different scriptures. Only the Christians failed to come up with anything.

Finally, he tried the library of the British Council, where he was given the writings of Frank Buchman, a Christian, who initiated MRA (now Initiatives of Change). He found Buchman's emphasis on absolute moral standards of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love familiar. `It struck me that this was what the Prophet, peace be upon him, had said in his last sermon--that the human being cannot become a proper human being unless he is honest with himself.'

The process continued in Dhaka, where Sajid found himself in a multicultural community. He learnt Bengali and began to get to know Hindus and people of other faiths. When India invaded in 1971, he returned to West Pakistan and married Jamila.

Sajid arrived in Britain in September 1972 to start a PhD at the London School of Economics (LSE). His first impression was of `absolute loneliness'. Throughout his life he had been surrounded by people. He had left Jamila with his family and he was now alone in a country where no one seemed to bother about anyone else.

`In the trains people picked up their newspapers and hid their faces. In the library it was silent. In the university I knew nobody and everybody was rushing. The nights were long and dark. Those three months were really hell.'

As Christmas approached Sajid saw a notice in a students' hostel inviting overseas students to stay with local families over the break. He applied and found himself in the home of a Christian minister in Reigate, Rev Carr, who had 11 children, no TV and would not allow alcohol in his house. `This was very contrary to my stereotyping of the British that they love dogs and hate children. The prejudices I was beginning to build up went out of the window. I realized that not all British were selfish, greedy, immoral, all the things that had come to my mind during the previous three months.'