Dr James Shera — Peace Builder
ByDrAkbar Ahmed
American University
Washington
As someone who is frequently in the media speaking on behalf of the Muslim community, I was dismayed when bombs exploded in an Egyptian church this past Sunday. I thought of religious minorities in my home country Pakistan, and to one of the best representatives of the kindness and generosity of Pakistani Christians in the West, my dear friend of many decades, James Shera.
I have hardly met anyone with a greater love for Pakistan than James. It would not surprise the reader to know that when I launched my Quaid Quartet of two films and two books on the Quaid in the 1990s while teaching at Cambridge University, James Shera was an immediate and ardent supporter. Many is the conference and meeting to which he accompanied me in order to raise the consciousness of the Quaid and the necessity of the project, and during these sessions, he would invariably meet both praise and criticism of our project with good humor and goodwill.
In addition to his invaluable assistance with the Quaid Quartet, he would frequently support my work in bridge building through a variety of means. He has even addressed international audiences on my behalf at both a United Nations conference in Istanbul and the hallowed Oxford Union Society. It was not lost on people how rare of a circumstance this must be, a scholar of Islam sending a Christian to represent him at the highest of international fora at a time when relationships between faith communities are strained in both Muslim societies and in the West. For a British Pakistani Christian to make as public a gesture of affection as he did in his introduction of me to a session at the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' last major public event at Lambeth Palace, referring to me as "one of the two great Akbars Asia has produced," is all the rarer.
Not least among his extraordinary and varied contributions to the British community are serving as the first Pakistani mayor of Rugby, England, making him the second Pakistani mayor ever in the UK; on a number of school boards from primary schools to universities, including most recently in Newman University College in Birmingham; and on the National Health Service (NHS) in various ministerial positions, as well as the chair and founder of Rugby Hospice Project Board. He has also been a tireless advocate for minority communities in Great Britain, particularly the Pakistani and Muslim communities, whether through advising local government on how to improve intercultural and minority education or chairing various race and equality boards in the NHS and elsewhere. It is due to his efforts that the Pakistani community in Rugby has a mosque, community center, and a burial ground, a rarity for a town of its size in the United Kingdom.
James has worked tirelessly to support a better understanding of Islam in the UK through the creation of the Interfaith Millennium Project; participation in the Archbishop of Canterbury's Pakistan Focus Group; chairmanship of the Pakistan Christian Alliance, UK and Europe; and presentation of numerous papers. He has also appeared in a variety of local and international media outlets. Always in touch with the suffering of those back home, he even fundraised over £10,000 in an appeal following major flooding in Pakistan in September 2010 to build water filtration plants, as well as over £20,000 and two ambulances converted into mobile hospitals for Pakistan following an earthquake in November 2005.
James has gone on to receive some of the highest honors in the UK and Pakistan. In 1992, James Shera was given Sitara-e-Pakistan, the third highest public award by the Government of Pakistan, "in recognition of fostering good relationships between the UK and Pakistan and interfaith relations." In June 2007, James was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honour's List "for services to the NHS and communities in the Midlands." In 2009, a street in Rugby was named "James Shera Way" for "recognition for services to local people," making him the only Pakistani to have a road named after him in the UK. Now, he has been conferred with the honor of "Freedom of the Borough of Rugby" for his dedication to the community of Rugby and his decades of building bridges at the local, national, and international levels.
A veritable lion in winter, few are capable of matching the contributions James Shera has made on a global scale. It is with deep sadness that I watch as minorities in Egypt, Pakistan, the UK, America, and across the span of Europe and the Muslim world, future James Sheras, are being targeted on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or nationality. Such events are a far cry from the intentions of the Quaid-i-Azam in founding our nation, and it pains me to think of what the Quaid himself, the man who spent his last and only Christmas in church in solidarity with the Christian community before his death, would think of what our countries have become today.
James Shera has retained his sharp Punjabi sense of humor. "The Quaid gave the white in the Pakistan flag for the Christian minorities," he says with a twinkle in his eye, "today too, the Pakistan flag has something for the minorities. Unfortunately, it is only the danda (stick)."
(The writer is an author, poet, filmmaker, playwright, and the IbnKhaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University in Washington, DC. He formerly served as the Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland. He tweets @AskAkbar)
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