John Mohammed Butt is an

Islamic scholar In Islam, the ''ulama'' (; ar, علماء ', singular ', "scholar", literally "the learned ones", also spelled ''ulema''; feminine: ''alimah'' ingularand ''aalimath'' lural are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of reli ...

and broadcaster, known as the first Westerner to graduate from

Darul Uloom Deoband The Darul Uloom Deoband is an Islamic seminary (darul uloom) in India at which the Sunni Deobandi Islamic movement began. It is located in Deoband, a town in Saharanpur district, Uttar Pradesh. The seminary was established by Muhammad Qasim ...

Early life

Born in

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

in 1950, Butt spent his early life in

Walton-on-Thames Walton-on-Thames, locally known as Walton, is a market town on the south bank of the Thames in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey, England. Walton forms part of the Greater London built-up area, within the KT postcode and is served by a wide ran ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, and attended

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exten ...

Stonyhurst College Stonyhurst College is a co-educational Catholic Church, Roman Catholic independent school, adhering to the Society of Jesus, Jesuit tradition, on the Stonyhurst, Stonyhurst Estate, Lancashire, England. It occupies a Grade I listed building. Th ...

before becoming a

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

and traveling to

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

Conversion to Islam and life in Pakistan

Arriving in

Swat In the United States, a SWAT team (special weapons and tactics, originally special weapons assault team) is a police tactical unit that uses specialized or military equipment and tactics. Although they were first created in the 1960s to ...

in 1969, he was impressed by the tribal way of life and (unlike most of his fellow hippies) settled in the area, learning

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...

and

Dari Dari (, , ), also known as Dari Persian (, ), is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the term officially recognised and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language,Lazard, G.Darī � ...

(he speaks a total of seven languages). He

converted to Islam Religious conversion is the adoption of a set of beliefs identified with one particular religious denomination to the exclusion of others. Thus "religious conversion" would describe the abandoning of adherence to one denomination and affiliatin ...

in 1970. He studied for eight years at

in India, graduating in 1984, the only Westerner to do so since its foundation in 1866. In Deoband, he studied under the scholars like

Saeed Ahmad Palanpuri Saeed Ahmad Palanpuri (also written as Saʻīd Aḥmad Pālanpūrī) (1940 – 19 May 2020), was an Indian Sunni Muslim scholar and author who served as Shaykh al-Hadith and Principal of Darul Uloom Deoband. A number of his books are required ...

. Although he continued to live mainly in Swat, he began spending part of each year as the Muslim chaplain at

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. He left Swat in 2010 when his house was washed away by floods.

Broadcasting career

In 1993 he worked with the

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...

to create a new

and

radio

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

. Loosely based upon the format of ''

The Archers ''The Archers'' is a BBC radio drama on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural settin ...

'',

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

's long-running series, ''New Home New Life'' became so popular that it has been credited with influencing the

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

not to press ahead with plans to outlaw radio. When the Taliban began to gain influence in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

and

, he saw their radical interpretation of Islam to be in conflict with the traditional Islamic tolerance of tribal culture. In response, he established the Pak/Afghan Cross-border Radio Training and Production (Pact) project in 2004, producing the ''Da Pulay Poray (Across the Border)'' programme to confront what he saw as

Islamic extremism Islamic extremism, Islamist extremism, or radical Islam, is used in reference to extremist beliefs and behaviors which are associated with the Islamic religion. These are controversial terms with varying definitions, ranging from academic unde ...

. He has continued to promote what he sees as 'mainstream' Islam, and has been among those pressing ahead with plans for a new Islamic university in

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلال‌آباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jala ...

, offering a moderate alternative to radical clerics:

It makes perfect sense. There is currently nowhere in Afghanistan where a young man can do higher Islamic studies. They go to Pakistan, where as we know some of them have become radicalised.

References

External links

John Butt
at

Penguin India Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes , family Spheniscidae ) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator. Highly adapt ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Butt, John Mohammed Deobandis 1950 births English Muslims English people of Trinidad and Tobago descent Converts to Islam Living people Muslim chaplains People educated at Stonyhurst College People from Walton-on-Thames English emigrants to Pakistan