Anwar Shaikh

Who was Anwar Shaikh?

Mohammad Anwar Shaikh was a Pakistani-born British author residing in Cardiff, Wales. Born Haji Mohammad, he was born into a devout Sunni Muslim family of Kashmiri Pandit ancestry in Gujrat, Punjab. His mother could recite a large part of the Qur'an from memory. During the violent days of the Partition of India in 1947 he, then filled with Muslim nationalist fervor, killed on one day two Sikhs, a father and his son. In his youth, Shaikh was a young ardent believer. He later killed another Sikh. But when he reached the age of 25, he began doubting Islam and later became its ardent critic, and memories of his crime have haunted him ever since. Thereafter he immigrated into U.K., married a Welsh woman, and became a successful businessman. The importance of Shaikh's work was recognised by Tariq Ali who devoted a chapter of his book 'The Clash of Fundamentalisms' to his views and the reaction they provoked.

He converted to Hinduism and adopted the name Aniruddha Gyan Shikha.

Shaikh was living in Cardiff, Wales, when a fatwa was issued against him from his homeland Pakistan in 1995, where at least fourteen clerics issued death sentences against him for renouncing and criticising Islam. He died in Wales on 25 November 2006.