1) Emergency Medicine training…

Born in India but raised in the UK, I went to medical school in Southampton, and qualified as a doctor in 1999. After 4 years of surgical training, I decided to specialise in Emergency Medicine in 2003.

I have worked almost exclusively in Emergency Medicine since 2003. I became a Member of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (MRCEM) in 2004. After completing Higher Specialist Training in 2009, I became a Fellow of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (FRCEM) and obtained the Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) in Emergency Medicine.

Part of my Higher Specialist Training was in Brisbane, Australia. I have additional qualifications in Medical Toxicology, and experience in Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine.

… and Emergency Medicine Consultant experience

Between 2010 and 2012 I worked as a Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Leicester Royal Infirmary, which has one of the largest Emergency Departments in the UK. During 2011 – 2012 I was an Associate Clinical Lead in this department. In 2012 – 2014 I was a Senior Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Hamad General Hospital in Doha, Qatar. During 2015 – 2016 I was a Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Kettering General Hospital. My main interests were Clinical Leadership (in particular Quality Improvement & Service Development) and Resuscitation.

I returned to Leicester Royal Infirmary in 2016 as a Consultant in Emergency Medicine. Since then, I have held the posts of Clinical Governance Lead, Audit & Quality Improvement Lead, Sepsis Lead, and Interim Head of Service for Emergency Medicine.

Along with three colleagues, I was one of the Course Organisers of the Central FCEM Course and MCEM International OSCE Course. I also taught on the Sheffield MCEM Course and the North-East London FCEM Course. I am the author of the book The Successful Speaker: 273 Tips for Powerful Presentations.

2) Other interests that are more interesting…

Outside of clinical medicine, my main interest is the study of proselytism in missionary religions such as Christianity and Islam. Missionary religions, at their very core, have a mission to invite people to convert to them. They promise salvation and eternal bliss for those who believe in the religion’s message, and condemnation and eternal punishment for those who reject it.

These religions claim that they have a divine origin. They put forward rational evidences to support the claim that their message has come from God, and that the religion was not invented by humans. For example, Christians say that the Bible is a historically accurate, honest and trustworthy account of the miracles performed by Jesus.

His miracles included turning water into wine, healing the sick simply by touching them or talking to them, bringing the dead back to life and walking on water. Jesus’s miracles indicate a power far beyond any imaginable human capability. Therefore when Jesus subsequently talks about God and the afterlife, those who have witnessed the miracles are compelled to believe him.

2.1) But  WHY  is this really interesting?

I am a scientist who values evidence and critical thinking. Also, I am a diagnostician who evaluates the evidence to reach the most correct understanding of a situation. This is in my DNA.

Therefore, I find the rational, unbiased and unprejudiced investigation of such claims to be an irresistible endeavour.

• How do we know whether what is said to have happened, actually happened?
• Are there any alternative explanations for what was witnessed?
• Could facts be interpreted or understood in another way?
• How has the evidence survived the passage of time?

All these questions, and others, help us to examine how strong the evidence is, and to reach a secure understanding of the matter at hand.

2.2) The Qur’ānic claim…

Whereas the Bible draws on its historical accuracy of past events, the Qur’ān (the Islamic holy book) takes a very different approach to proving that it is literally the word of God. The Qur’ān proposes that it is inimitable. It says that humans are unable to produce anything similar to it. It says that this inimitability is proof that it is written by God, and not by any human being. If it was written by a human being, other humans would have been able to write something like it.

This is a bold and audacious claim, which is actually repeated five times in the Qur’ān.

We know that:

• Speechwriters routinely write speeches in the style of other people.
• Songwriters write songs in the style of a particular artist.
• Celebrities hire a ghostwriter to write as if the celebrity themselves were writing.
• When you contribute a book chapter, or submit an academic paper to a journal, you must write in the same “house style” as the rest of the publication.

It should therefore be possible to write something like the Qur’ān… right?

… and the consequences of the Qur’ānic claim

The claim that it is not possible to write something like the Qur’ān – if true – would constitute a miracle, analogous to Jesus’s miracles. If humans could turn water into wine or resurrect the dead, then Jesus’s actions would not have been so special. If humans could write something like the Qur’ān , then the Qur’ān is nothing special.

And yet, it is unfathomably peculiar and strange that in the 1,400 years since this challenge was launched, there has been not a single new addition to the corpus of Qur’ānic verses, or their genre.

2.3) My undergraduate education in Arabic

In order to understand and appreciate the Qur’ānic challenge first-hand, during 2017 – 2021 I completed a BA (Hons) degree in Arabic at SOAS University of London.

My “Year Abroad” dissertation at Qasid Arabic Institute, Jordan in 2020 was an examination of the approximately 21 literary devices of Arabic Rhetoric which are present in just one verse of the Qur’ān: Surah 11, Verse 44.

My final-year dissertation was a translation project involving the translation from Classical Arabic into English of a chapter from the book “I‘jāz al-Qur’ān” (“The Inimitability of the Qur’ān”) written by the Islamic theologian al-Bāqillānī (c.940–1013 CE) where he outlined a methodology for investigating this inimitability of the Qur’ān.

2.4) My postgraduate education in Arabic

Islamic theologians such as al-Jurjānī (1009 – c.1081) have stated that the seat of the Qur’ān’s inimitability is specifically within the linguistics of the Classical Arabic language in which the Qur’ān is written. In particular, the way the Qur’ān uses Arabic Rhetoric (al-Balāgha) to convey its message in an impactful manner, is something that cannot be matched by any human writing.

To further investigate the role of Arabic Rhetoric in the Qur’ān’s claim to be a miracle, I completed an MA degree in Advanced Arabic at Exeter University during 2021 – 2022. The title of my Master’s dissertation was “Creation of a Numerical Scoring System to Objectively Measure and Compare the Level of Rhetoric in Arabic Texts: A Feasibility Study, and A Working Prototype.”

In this project, building on the work of as al-Jurjānī and others, I proposed that it is possible to objectively compare the level of Arabic Rhetoric in texts by measuring and comparing the density of Arabic Rhetoric literary devices in the texts under comparison. This could ultimately lead to an objective comparison between the level of Arabic Rhetoric in the Qur’ān and other Arabic texts.

The main output of this work was the BALAGHA Score, a tool to calculate the density of rhetorical devices in any Arabic text. This is a completely novel and unique development. In September 2022 when I tested this tool on five sample texts, this was the first time in the ~2000 years history of Arabic that the Arabic Rhetoric content of these texts has been objectively and numerically compared.

2.5) My doctoral research

My PhD research project at SOAS University of London is to improve the BALAGHA Score. I am also working on its sister project, the Encyclopedia of Arabic Rhetoric.

Please contact me to discuss this work in more detail, or for more information about any of the topics on this page.

Last updated on Friday 30 May 2025.