FEW MEN have done as much to reconcile Islam with modernity as Zaki Badawi, the founder and principal of the Muslim College in London. And few men have played such a crucial role in attempting to find a harmonious balance between the beliefs, culture and values of Islam and secular British society. Indeed, that almost two million British Muslims are today able to define themselves as such owes much to the vision of the Egyptian-born scholar who saw, early on, that the many Muslims who settled in Britain from different parts of the Islamic world would, one day, form a significant strand of British society — which happened to be Muslim.

For years, Badawi was the unofficial — and almost lone — spokesman for Muslims in Britain who had no visible figurehead or institutional structure. Appointed in 1978 as chief imam of the London Central Mosque as well as director of the Islamic Cultural Centre, he used these influential positions in the capital to call for an Islam that fitted comfortably with British values, so that younger generations, brought up and educated in this country, would find no conflict between their faith and their civic identity as British citizens.

To him, this meant an Islam that was inclusive, moderate, tolerant and without the rancour or hostility that marked attitudes to Western values prevalent in some of the more zealous sects of Arabia and the Middle East. He therefore devoted his life in Britain to building bridges — of faith, of dialogue and of scholarship. It is thanks largely to his pioneering work in the 1990s in helping to establish a forum for the three Abrahamic faiths — Christianity, Judaism and Islam — and his tireless, behind-the-scenes work in reaching out to British society and institutions that Britain has fared so much better than other European nations with Muslim minorities in integrating its Muslim citizens. But for Badawi, Britain might have fared far less well in avoiding the social alienation that has marked relations between Muslims and the rest of society in France.

Equally, however, Badawi was an outspoken voice in upholding Muslim dignity and the true values of his faith when these came under attack. This was never more crucial than in the aftermath of the September 11 atrocities in America. And when many other leading Muslim scholars were reluctant to speak out to condemn violence or denounce terrorism, he wrote an article for The Times in which he insisted that taking revenge on the innocent was abhorrent to Islam. He gave a warning that no society was immune from violence, and the worst was one which donned the garb of religion. But he said the Koran emphasised that those who disturbed the peace of society and spread fear and disorder deserved the severest punishment that could be imposed.

His denunciation of violence and extremism was forcefully repeated again last year, when he joined religious leaders in commemorating the victims of the London bombings and in calling for tolerance and calm. Again, his words, among others, may have helped Britain to avoid any widespread and violent backlash against Muslims across the country.

Born in Cairo in 1922, Badawi studied at al-Azhar University, where he claimed to have gained his rebellious streak. “I have always refused to be deferential, even to heads of state,” he told a journalist in January 2003. “Irreverence is part of my Islamic culture, of my training at al-Azhar.”

It did nothing to harm his studies: after an undergraduate degree in theology, Badawi gained a master’s degree in Arabic language and literature and the King Faruq First Prize for best postgraduate student. After gaining his doctorate, he returned to teach at al-Azhar before coming to Britain for the first time in 1951. He gained a degree in psychology from University College London, followed by a doctorate from London University in modern Muslim thought.

He then spent several years in South-East Asia, setting up the Muslim College of Malaya and taking teaching posts in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. He took up professorships in Kano and Zaria, Nigeria, and in Jeddah. He returned to London as a research professor for the Haj Research Centre of the King Abdul Aziz University in Saudi Arabia.

Badawi first came to grips with the British way of life, and the challenges it held for Muslims, in 1978 when he took the post of director of the Islamic Cultural Centre (ICC), while also serving as chief imam of the London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park. He helped to establish the Shariah Council, to reconcile conflicts between Islamic and British law. He found it incredible that most imams would not — and could not — preach in the language of their adopted country, and he was the first Muslim to make this criticism clear.

He doubted, too, that priests or teachers could reach out to young British Muslims as if they were on home soil in Pakistan or Bangladesh, and was quite sure they should not try. As British Muslims became third and fourth-generation citizens, he felt certain that the cross-pollination of ideas needed a new, Westernised approach, and an awareness and respect of all faiths, in order to make sense of it.

The prospectus of the Muslim College, which he established in 1986 to train imams in the new approach, and where he served as principal, states that the training of “traditional” imams “is not always sufficient to deal with the cultural environment of modern Western Europe and the USA, nor with problems arising from interaction with Western societies”.

Perhaps most infuriating to fundamentalists was Badawi’s firm belief in the idea of British Muslims, with British as a badge of honour, a social and cultural designation, not a mere branch of one contiguous caliphate. “Within a couple of generations Muslims will lose their cultural baggage. Indian and Pakistani ways will disappear. They will adopt Western cultural values, and the whole community will be brought together as British Muslims,” he said.

A dislike of “cultural baggage” was at the heart of Badawi’s rebellious streak. He campaigned against female genital mutilation, insisting that it was an outmoded cultural, not religious, practice with no causal link to Islam. He stated that the fatwa had become overused, and that those who proclaimed them usually had no divine sanction. “Since Ayatollah Khomeini issued his against Salman Rushdie, everyone has opened a fatwa shop,” he said.