UK Ministry of Defense
LONDON, ENGLAND, November 15, 2005: The newly appointed Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh Chaplains to the Armed Forces were today welcomed to their roles by the Secretary of State for Defence, John Reid. Dr. Sunil Kariyakarawana (Buddhist Chaplain), Krishan Attri (Hindu Chaplain); Imam Asim Hafiz (Muslim Chaplain) and Mandeep Kaur (Sikh Chaplain) are all civilians with cross-service responsibilities. They were appointed last month following an external recruitment campaign earlier this year. Welcoming the chaplains, John Reid, said: “We are committed to providing an environment that welcomes and encourages people throughout society to build a successful military career. Ensuring that they enjoy spiritual support is integral to this, and the chaplains will make a huge contribution to service personnel and their dependents. I am delighted to welcome them to the chaplaincy family.”
The Chaplains are fully integrated members of the Armed Forces chaplaincy service. They will provide spiritual, moral and pastoral support to service personnel and their dependents, including conducting or arranging for appropriate ceremonies, leading communal prayers and providing group teaching to members of their own faith. They will also support the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces by providing advice on faith specific issues. The new chaplains have been appointed on a three-year fixed contract. To reflect the anticipated workload only the Muslim chaplain post is full-time, the others are all part-time. The Armed Forces have 300 regular commissioned Christian chaplains and one honorary officiating Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Wiseman. His appointment is part of a longstanding arrangement with the Jewish community.
At present the numbers of adherents of the Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh faiths within the Armed Forces are relatively small, and do not justify the appointment of regular commissioned chaplains. Specifically, these are made up as follows: Buddhist (220); Hindu (230); Muslim (305)and Sikh (90). At 1 July 2005 there were 65 Jews and 183,000 Christians in the Armed Forces. It is, however, our longer term aspiration to appoint Commissioned Chaplains from other faiths as and when this can be justified.