Loyal Enemies British Converts to Islam, 1850 1950

LOYAL ENEMIES

JAMIE GILHAM

Loyal Enemies British Converts to Islam, 1850–1950

A A

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York AucklandâCape TownâDar es SalaamâHong KongâKarachi Kuala LumpurâMadridâMelbourneâMexico CityâNairobi New DelhiâShanghaiâTaipeiâToronto With offices in ArgentinaâAustriaâBrazilâChileâCzech RepublicâFranceâGreece GuatemalaâHungaryâItalyâJapanâPolandâPortugalâSingapore South KoreaâSwitzerlandâThailandâTurkeyâUkraineâVietnam Copyright © 2014 Jamie Gilham Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title Gilham, Jamie Loyal Enemies British Converts to Islam 1850–1950 ISBN 978-0-19-937-725-1 (hardback) Printed in India on Acid-Free Paper CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vii List of Illustrations ix Glossary xi Abbreviations xv Note on Quotations and Spelling xvii

Introduction 1 1.âBritain’s First Muslim Peer of the Realm: Henry Stanley and Islam in Victorian Britain 19 2.â‘A Witness Shall be Raised out of Every Nation’:

W. ÂH. Â Abdullah Quilliam and Islam, 1856–1932 51 3.â‘Upholding the Banner of Islam’: The Liverpool Muslim Institute and British Converts, 1887–1908 87 4.â‘Buckling on the Armour of Islam’: British Conversions, 1908–1953 123 5.â‘Sending Up a Silent Prayer for Allah’: British Muslim Lives, 1908–1953 177 6.â‘Loyal Enemies’? Identities, Allegiances and the Eclipse of British Muslims in Late-Imperial Britain 213 Epilogue 243

Notes 247 Select Bibliography 299 Index 319

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this book would not have been possible without the generosity of many people. I am particularly thankful for the hospitality of the late David Cowan and his partner Antoinette. I was also privileged to meet and correspond with the relatives and friends of numerous British Muslims discussed in these pages, including Calum the

Glen; Dr HedleyÂ and Odile Churchward; Martin Dean; Eric, Lord Avebury; Edwina Epstein; Pamela Gibson-Watt; Patricia and Paul ÂGordon; Jim Howard; Ben Lovegrove; Gay Oliver; Pat Scott; Angus Sladen; Thomas, Lord Stanley of Alderley; Linda Sutton; Miranda ÂTaylor; and others who wish to remain anonymous. â Scores of individuals and organisations helped me to locate source material. I am grateful to: Dr MohammadÂ Akbar Ali; Bano Anwar;

Dr ÂZahid Aziz; Gwyn Jenkins; Khalil Martin; Somaia McTeer; Ian Simpson; and the SOAS Alumni Office. I am indebted to staff at the following archives and libraries: Bodleian Library, Oxford; British Library, London; British Newspaper Library, London; Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies Service, Chester; General Register Office/Family Records Centre, London; General Register Office for Scotland, Edinburgh; John Murray Archives, London; John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester; King’s College Cambridge Archives, Cambridge; Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London; Liverpool Record Office; Manx National Heritage Library, Douglas, Isle of Man; Mary Evans Picture Library; Middle East Centre Archive,

St ÂAntony’s College, Oxford; The National Archives, London; National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh; Principal Registry of the Family

vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ÂDivision (Probate), London; Royal Geographical Society, London; SOAS Library and Archives, University of London; Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh; Senate House Library, University of London; ÂSomerset Archive and Record Service, Taunton; Surrey History Centre, Woking; University of Wales Archives Department, Bangor; West Sussex Record Office, Chichester. The Ross-shire Journal and Woking News and Mail kindly printed my letters requesting information about Lady Evelyn Cobbold and the Woking Muslim community respectively. I am indebted to Dr DunaÂ Sabri and Richard Cain for generously sharing their research with me, and thank the Hurst team for their support. â Finally, I am very grateful for the advice of Professor Humayun

Ansari, Yen-Ting Cho, Dr Â Tarja Moles, Dr MohammadÂ S. Seddon,Â

Dr ÂSarah Stewart and, above all, Ashley, whose encouragement and support enabled me to complete this book.

viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Henry Edward John Stanley, Third Lord Stanley of Alderley, c.1890s. Artist Unknown. 18 2. William Henry Abdullah Quilliam at Prayer, c.1905. Source: Liverpool Freeman, 8 July 1905, p.â11. 50

3. Dr ÂHaroun Mustafa Léon, c.1915. Source: Islamic Review and Muslim India, Vol.â3, No.â4 (1915), Frontispiece. 80 4. The Interior of the Main Lecture Hall, Liverpool Muslim Institute, 1896. Source: Religious Review of Reviews, Vol.â1, No.â3 (1891), p.â160. 89 5. John Yehya-en Nasr Parkinson, c.1914. Source: Islamic Review and Muslim India, Vol.â2, No.â2 (1914), Frontis- piece. 103 6. Left to right: Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Lord Headley and Abdul Muhy in Mecca during the 1923 Hajj. Source: Al- Hajj Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Islam and the Muslim Prayer, Seventh Revised Edition, Lahore: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1960; First Published in 1914. 131 7. Woking Muslim Mission Conversion Declaration Form, c.1940s. Source: Author’s Collection. 143 8. Marmaduke/Mohammad Pickthall in 1919. © Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans. 150 9. ‘Brothers in Faith and Arms’—Sergeant Bertram/Khalid Sheldrake and Sergeant Omar Richardson, c.1917–18. Source: Islamic Review and Muslim India, Vol.â6, No.â2 (1918), Frontispiece. 154

ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 10. James William/Habeeb-Ullah Lovegrove Demonstrating Salat, c.1930s. Source: Al-Hajj Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Islam and the Muslim Prayer, Seventh Revised Edition, Lahore: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1960; first published in 1914. 186 11. William Burchell/Bashyr Pickard Demonstrating Salat, c.1930s. Source: Al-Hajj Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Islam and the Muslim Prayer, Seventh Revised Edition, Lahore: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1960; first published in 1914. 187 12. Lady Evelyn Cobbold as Depicted in the Islamic Review, 1934. Source: Islamic Review, Vol.â22, No.â3 (1934), FrontisÂ piece. 196 13. Lady Evelyn Cobbold in Pilgrim Dress during the 1933 Hajj. Source: Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Pilgrimage to Mecca, London: John Murray, 1934, Frontispiece. Reproduced by Courtesy of Angus Sladen. 197 14. ‘A British Muslim Family’—the Welchs. Source: Islamic Review and Muslim India, Vol.â4, No.â3 (1916), Frontis- piece. 206

15. The Wedding of S.AhmedÂ Toto and Olive Zeytoun Howell at Woking Mosque, 1939. Source: Author’s Collection. 207 16. Harry St John Bridger/Abdullah Philby in his Mecca ÂGarden, 1933. © Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). 233

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of the images and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The pub- lisher apologises for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

x GLOSSARY

Adhan Arabic Muslim call to prayer Alim Arabic Learned scholar qualified to offer Islamic legal opinions Bai’at Arabic Initiation Bibi Urdu Indian wife or mistress Caliph Successor to the Prophet Muhammad and thereby head of the umma (also known as khalifa) Caliphate The office and jurisdiction of the caliph (also known as ‘Khilafat’) Eid al-adha Arabic Feast of sacrifice celebrating the end of the annual hajj Eid al-fitr Arabic Feast to end Ramadan Fatiha Arabic The opening sura of the Qur’an Fatwa Arabic Legal opinion made by a mufti Hadith Arabic Report of the sayings/doings of the Prophet Muhammad Hajj Arabic Pilgrimage to Mecca; the fifth ‘pillar’ of Islam Hajja Arabic Pronominal title given to female ÂMuslims who make the hajj Hajji Arabic Pronominal title given to male ÂMuslims who make the hajj Halal Arabic Permitted or lawful for a Muslim; used for Muslim dietary laws concerning the

xi GLOSSARY slaughter of permitted animals in such a way as to drain them of blood Harem Arabic Women’s quarters (see also zenana) Hijab Arabic Headscarf Hookah Urdu Water-pipe Imam Arabic Religious leader Jama‘at Arabic Community Jihad Arabic ‘Struggle’; the greater jihad is considered to be the struggle to overcome inner personal weakness whereas armed struggle or ‘holy war’ is the lesser jihad Juma namaz Persian/Urdu Friday prayer Kaaba Arabic The cube-shaped shrine at the centre of the Grand Mosque in Mecca Kalima Arabic Alternative term for shahada Khalifa Arabic Leader of the Muslim community; spiritual leader of the Qadianis Maulana Urdu Title for a Muslim religious scholar or alim Muezzin Arabic Muslim who calls co-religionists to congregational prayer Mufti Arabic Learned exponent of the sharia; qualified to issue a fatwa Mullah Persian Religious man/leader Namaz Persian Worship/prayer Nautch Urdu Dance display Nawab Persian/Urdu ‘Prince’; Muslim nobleman/regional governor Nisab Urdu The zakat-payable amount, which sav- ings or capital assets must exceed in order for a Muslim to be obliged to give zakat Nizam Urdu Ruler, as in nizam of Hyderabad Purdah Persian Seclusion of women Qur’an Arabic The final revelation of Allah to humanity and believed to be the Word of God; Islam’s holy book Ra’is Arabic Corsair captain xii GLOSSARY Ramadan Arabic Muslim month of fasting Salat Arabic Worship/prayer; the second ‘pillar of Islam Sawm Arabic Fasting and abstinence during Rama- dan; the fourth ‘pillar’ of Islam Shahada Arabic Islamic profession of faith: ‘I declare that there is no god but God and I declare that Muhammad is His Mes- senger’; the first of five ‘pillars’ of Islam, also known as the kalima Sharia Arabic ‘The path to be followed’, or Islamic law Sheikh Arabic Tribal chief or religious leader; spiritual master in the Sufi tradition Sufi Follower of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism Sufism Islamic mysticism Sunna Arabic Custom, practice of the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community, which is for Muslims an authoritative example of the correct way to live a Muslim life; the second authoritative source after the Qur’an Sura Arabic Chapter of the Qur’an Tabligh/Tabliq Arabic Preaching Tariqa Arabic Literally ‘the way’; Sufi order Umma Arabic Worldwide Muslim community Yashmak Persian Face veil Zakat Arabic Almsgiving or religious tax; the third ‘pillar’ of Islam Zawiya Arabic ‘A corner’, used in Sufism to mean a spiritual retreat; small mosque or centre of a Sufi order Zenana Persian Women’s quarters (see also harem)

xiii

ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations are used in the main text.

AOS Anglo-Ottoman Society BMS British Muslim Society CAS Central Asian Society CIS Central Islamic Society LMI Liverpool Moslem/Muslim Institute LMM London Mosque Mission MSGB Muslim Society of Great Britain/Muslim Society in Great Britain WIA Western Islamic Association WMM Woking Muslim Mission

NOTE ON QUOTATIONS AND SPELLING

To allow the sources to ‘speak for themselves’ and retain their authentiÂ city, all quoted material is verbatim unless otherwise stated. This accounts for the various spellings of the same word, such as ‘Maho- metan’, ‘Mahomedan’, ‘Mohammadan’, ‘Mussalman’ and ‘Moslem’ for Muslim. Where appropriate, to avoid confusion a ‘translation’ has been added in square brackets after the original spelling. Spelling of Muslim names, for example ‘John Yehya-en Nasr Parkinson’, and italics and capitalisation within quotations are also verbatim.

Quotations from the Qur’an are taken from The Koran, trans. N. Â J. Dawood,Â New edn, London: Penguin, 1999.

xvii

INTRODUCTION

This book uncovers the history and lives of the first Britons to freely convert to Islam and live as Muslims on British soil. It considers individuals and communities connected by their conversion and commitment to Islam in the century before the onset of mass immigration from Britain’s former colonies. The period has been defined as the heyday of the British Empire: it began with the Indian revolt, or ‘Mutiny’, of 1857–59, which led to the transfer of the administration of India from the British chartered East India Company to the Crown, and ended with the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953—arguably the last great colonial spectacle of the imperial age.1 But, the century can be alternatively demarcated, opening in 1859 with reports in the British press that the Honourable Henry Stanley (1827–1903), eldest son of an English peer of the realm, had become a Muslim. Loyal Enemies reveals that Stanley was the first of many Britons from across the social classes who defied convention by converting to Islam in this period. By the early 1950s, the British Empire was fragmented and Britain was experiencing large-scale immigration of Muslims, especially from South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Post-war immigration fundamentally altered the ethnic and cultural composition of Muslim Britain and, as we will see, diminished the influence of a previously strong and active British Muslim convert community. â Examining conversions and converts within this high-to-late-imperial historical context enables us to identify continuities and changes across the century. Loyal Enemies considers how the culture of Empire and imperialism influenced and affected the conversion and subsequent lives

1 LOYAL ENEMIES of these Britons (hereafter called British Muslims), which generates a number of further questions. First, why and how were Britons exposed to Islam from the mid-nineteenth century onwards? Why did individuals and, sometimes, entire families turn to Islam? What were they turning to and how did they adapt and indigenise their new faith? Moreover, who were these people, and how many converted in this period? We will see that, although their overall number was small, conversion to Islam consistently aroused hostile reactions at both the local and national level. This book, therefore, also probes the roots of common antipathy towards Islam and Muslims, identifies its manifestations and explores what conversion entailed socially and culturally for individuals and groups. Crucially, it considers whether there was any substance to persistent allegations that converts to Islam had ‘divided’ loyalties between the British Crown and a Muslim ruler or country or the umma (worldwide Muslim community). Indeed, this book’s title is taken from an astute description of arguably the most influential British Muslim convert writer and intellectual of the period, Marmaduke/Mohammad Pickthall (1875–1936), who was dubbed ‘England’s most loyal enemy’ by virtue of his commitment to both Britain and Turkey during the First World War. Were Pickthall and his fellow Muslim converts really (as was alleged) ‘traitors’, ‘infidels’ and ‘enemies’ of the State, or was their affinity with Britain, loyalty and patriotism more stable than their detractors believed? How did British Muslims negotiate and sustain their national and religious identities, especially when, as was frequent during this period, diplomatic relations with Muslim countries and peoples were strained or broken? Ultimately, what impact did the converts have in their lifetime? â This is a book about the past rather than the present, about ritonsB who lived in quite different historical circumstances compared to contemporary British Muslim converts, but these questions and this book’s core themes—about faith and belief, personal and national identity, Britishness (which, it is now widely accepted, is not and was not in the past innate, static or permanent, and means different things to different people)2 and Empire, belonging, allegiances and loyalties, and discrimination—are salient today. Indeed, almost a century after Pickthall, and in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, which increased public scrutiny of Muslims in Britain, a prominent British Muslim convert decried in the Spectator that ‘Muslim converts are not traitors in

2 INTRODUCTION your midst’.3 Finally, then, this book considers the converts’ legacy and reflects on their relevance for contemporary Muslims and non-Muslims in modern Britain.

I. Precursors: Barbary ‘renegades’ Although conversions to Islam in Britain occurred during the late nineteenth century, there is a much longer history of Britons converting to Islam which dates to at least the sixteenth century. These well-documented conversions shed light on the attraction of Islam, motivations and consequences of conversion for Britons and other Western Europeans in the two-and-a-half-centuries that immediately precede the period examined in this book.4 â Conversions to Islam, past and present, have to be considered in the context of the often fraught and complex historical relationship between the Christian ‘West’ and Islamic ‘East’ since the Middle Ages.5 The earliest recorded British conversions to Islam occurred in the late sixteenth century, when Britain’s contact with the Islamic lands and peoples of the Ottoman Empire and North Africa intensified through trade and plunder on the high seas. Indeed, the first English convert to Islam whose name survives in an English source, dated 1583, was a captive in Tripoli, John Nelson.6 British contacts were especially frequent with the Barbary powers of Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia and Tripoli (the last three were regencies or military provinces of the Ottoman Empire), from the Atlantic coast of Morocco to the Libyan Desert, which was outside of the European system of international law and conduct.7 Although there were similar contacts and maritime skirmishes involving Britons and other Europeans in Asia after the institution of the East India Company in 1600, its power was initially commercial and India seemed a distant land to most Britons.8 â British relations with Islam were therefore most extensive in the ÂOttoman Empire and North Africa until the mid-eighteenth century. Throughout that period, the Ottomans presented the most sustained threat to Christian rule in Europe, which generated a genuine fear and loathing of what, in 1603, the English historian Richard Knolles called ‘the scourge of God and present terror of the world’.9 As the historian Norman Daniel has shown, with Islam in the ascendant, British and other Western images of Islam were often oppositional: fearful of a cul-

3 LOYAL ENEMIES turally and militarily formidable competition to Christianity, European scholars used their knowledge of Islam’s core features to construct a constituted, distorted canon of belief about Islam. The aim of that canon was to denigrate ‘pagan’ Muslims who had made an idol of their prophet and spread their ‘fraudulent’ dogma by the sword, and to reaffirm the supremacy of Christianity. Consequently, in spite of periods of peaceful co-existence and co-operation, the Christian concept of Islam and the Muslim response generated a mutual hostility and distrust. This was perpetuated through the continuous passage of negative ideas about each other that rested on theological points (centred on the means and nature of revelation) which are impervious to change.10 â Edward Said uses as a starting-point for his now classic but contested Orientalism (1978) Daniel’s assertion that the Christian ‘image’ of Islam was designed not so much to represent Islam in itself as to represent Islam for the Christian.11 Said argues that the ‘West’/‘Occident’ and ‘East’/‘Orient’ (by which he primarily means Western Europe—especially France and Britain—and the Islamic Middle East respectively), were (and remain) social constructs designed to create identity, and one that might be strengthened by construction of an Other against which the self can be contrasted. Extending the term beyond its traditional, more innocuous definition as a nineteenth-century artistic movement or academic tradition, Said redefines ‘Orientalism’ as ‘a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident”.’12 For Said, from the late-eighteenth century, when the Christian West was in the ascendant, ‘so far as the West was concerned […] an assumption had been made that the Orient and everything in it was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the West’.13 Said’s Orien- talism is ‘something more historically and materially defined’ than earlier definitions allow: it becomes ‘the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient […]: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for domi- nating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’.14 â Research on early modern European conversions to Islam shows that, precisely because Britain did not have military or industrial power over the Ottoman Empire or other Muslim countries, the confused and complicated ‘image’ of Islam in that period was often devoid of colonialist domination and Orientalist construction of the Other. It follows that Christian-Muslim interaction was not initially entirely adversarial or

4 INTRODUCTION oppositional and, indeed, there was also extensive cultural, intellectual and missionary engagement with Islam in Britain between the late-sixteenth and early-eighteenth centuries.15 As the early modern scholar, Nabil Matar, argues, because of its magnitude and civilisation, the Ottoman Empire actually, ‘played a significant role in the formation of British (and European) history and identity: for it was always engaged and alluded to, recalled and examined’.16 As long as the Turkish advance was at the expense of the Roman Catholic powers, Islam was not an altogether negative phenomenon from the Protestant point of view, and in fact many early modern Britons believed Islam to be less dangerous than Roman Catholicism.17 A minority went further by rejecting popular and learned demonisations of Islam and Muslims during the seventeenth century, arguing instead for greater toleration and openness towards Islam. It was in the context of this complicated relationship with Muslim powers, in which Britons simultaneously embraced and vilified elements of the Arab and Ottoman civilisations, that the first Englishmen converted to Islam. â The surviving evidence indicates that, until the early nineteenth century, the majority of Britons who converted to Islam probably did so against their own will. Most converts were male prisoners of the Barbary powers who, according to the historian Linda Colley in her study of captive Britons, seized 20,000 or more British and Irish seamen and passengers between 1600 and 1850.18 Contrary to popular belief, many Britons and other Western European captives were able to resist conversion or were discouraged from doing so because it would have obliged their Muslim captors to treat them better.19 Some Europeans converted precisely because they believed—erroneously—that it was a Qur’anic principle for a Muslim master to free his enslaved co-religionists. Others were, however, simply forced to convert by their captors. The best known of these was the Englishman Joseph Pitts (c.1663–1739), who was seized by Algerian pirates in 1678, forced to convert to Islam and published a popular account of his adventures after returning to ÂEngland.20 Pitts indicated in his book, A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans (1704), that the process of forced conversion in Barbary was a mere formality requiring the individual to hold up the forefinger of the right hand and pronounce the Islamic profession of faith (the shahada): ‘I declare that there is no god but God and I declare that Muhammad is His Messenger’. The process was more formal in cases of voluntary conversion, but, whether forced or free, the natives of Barbary bothered little about instructing the con-

5 LOYAL ENEMIES verted in their new faith. Thus, for European ‘renegades’ like Pitts, conversion involved little obligation in terms of religious practice and a basic outward cultural conformity through dress and integration into his masters’ world.21 As Pitts explained to his Protestant readers, ‘I was forced by that cruelty that was exercised upon me to turn Turk, yet I was really a Christian in my heart.’22 â More worryingly for his readers, Pitts conceded that, ‘Many there are that do so turn [to Islam], out of choice, without any terror or severity shown them.’23 Scores of Britons and other Europeans ventured into Ottoman territory in the early modern period not to colonise Muslim lands but with the intention of advancing their social and financial position from within through conversion. Word had spread to Britain that the powerful Ottoman Empire offered opportunities unavailable in European society to men irrespective of their ethnicity or lineage. Indeed, Islam, with its (theoretical) guarantee of equality of status, pro- jected an allure that promised a common Briton social and political power.24 Some Europeans did attain high and influential positions: for example, of the forty-eight grand viziers (powerful administrators) who held power in Constantinople between 1453 and 1623, at least thirty- three were of Christian origin; and in the late-seventeenth century, one of the wives of the Dey (ruler) of Algiers was English, as was a favourite wife of the Moroccan sultan (ruler), Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif (d.1727).25 Many more Europeans found that conversion turned them from poor, poverty-stricken soldiers or sailors into a well-paid ra’is (corsair captain). European technical and military skill definitely helped the Barbary corsairs to ply their trade.26 â Whether forced to convert or motivated by material gain, it seems that few early modern European converts had a genuine spiritual or emotional attachment to their new religion. There were undoubtedly exceptions: for example, whilst in captivity, Pitts met James Grey of Weymouth, who had voluntarily converted to Islam: He became very diligent in learning to read the Alcoran [Qur’an] and very forward to perform sallah [salat, worship/prayer], so that he was looked on as a zealot. He would often correct me for my backwardness to go to mosque and for my intimacy with the neighboring slaves, insomuch that I was afraid to oppose or contradict him in anything.27 â In the absence of reliable sources, little is known about the motivations of these ‘renegades’ beyond the obvious real and imagined material

6 INTRODUCTION benefits. However, Colley suggests that aspects of Islam as a working faith, such as the banning of images from places of worship, seemed to be quite familiar and even congenial to Protestant dissenters, and therefore might have encouraged their conversion.28 Moreover, constant exposure to Islam also increased the acculturation of Europeans in ÂBarbary, especially those like Pitts who had been captured in their early teens. Pitts was tempted to, ‘lay aside all thoughts of escaping [from captivity] and to return to Algier [sic] and continue a Mussulman [ÂMuslim]’.29 As trade with Turkey began to flourish, the travel writer Sir Thomas Shirley (1564–1633/4) warned that, ‘conuersation with infi- delles doeth currupte’. Shirley observed that, the more time Europeans spent in the East, the closer they moved away from their particular parochial habit and towards adopting the manners of the Muslims: ‘Many wylde youthes of all nations as well Englishe as others […] in euerye 3 yeere that they staye in Turkye they loose one article of theyre faythe.’30 Some European traders were so deeply influenced by the religious life and civil law they found in the large urban centres of Muslim lands that they immersed themselves in its traditions, celebrations and feasts, adopted local dress and customs, and thereby gradually came to regard themselves as Muslims.31 There was potential amongst this group for a more genuine and sustained commitment to Islam, but their lives passed largely unrecorded. â Those ‘renegades’ who did return to Britain were typically displaced, powerless captives who converted in the knowledge that they would never live to see their family or homeland again.32 Colley shows that, prior to the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, barely a quarter of captives got the chance to return to Britain. After 1650, the English State applied itself more systematically to the business of redemption, with government records for 1670–1734 suggesting that at least 2,200 captives were shipped home.33 This figure is a fraction of Colley’s estimated 20,000 Barbary captives, but their return nevertheless provoked widespread anxiety in Britain, especially England, where conversion to Islam—both forced and voluntary, regardless of the circumstances—was considered an affront to Christian Protestantism. Indeed, by adopting the apparently alien culture of Islam, the ‘renegade’ threatened both the faith and idea of England, renouncing all that defined England to ÂEnglishmen.34 Consequently, repatriated ‘renegades’ whose conversion was known (many more returned home without admitting to their con-

7 LOYAL ENEMIES version) were coerced into publishing accounts of their experiences to refute that they had converted or, like Pitts (who resisted life in Algiers and was eventually released from bondage at Mecca), to affirm that they had outwardly converted to Islam for their own survival: ‘I became a Mohammetan […] through my patroon’s [sic] cruel and merciless usage to me’.35 Either way, captivity narratives were designed to allay fears that exposure to the alien environment had truly tested or broken their loyalties to Crown and Church. â Repatriated ‘renegades’ were considered to be an embarrassment to the nation. Their return to Britain provoked writers and theologians to reflect on the interaction between Christianity and Islam, denigrating the ‘renegade’ for renouncing his religion and country. The ‘renegades’ also raised troublesome questions about the strength of Christianity, especially since it was clear that more Christians were converting to Islam than Muslims were converting to Christianity.36 These fears were, however, misplaced: returned ‘renegades’ never showed a strong commitment to or even a good understanding of Islam. Their ‘conversion’ was typically borne out of necessity rather than religious conviction, and in Britain it was unlikely that a repatriated ‘renegade’ would continue to adhere to Islam.37 Ultimately, British fears of the Barbary threat were extinguished during the eighteenth century with the military and intellectual decline of the Ottoman Empire and emergent military, techno- logical and doctrinal pre-eminence of Western Europe, which brought a halt to the Barbary corsairs’ activities.38

II. Predecessors: ‘nabobs’, Orientalists and ‘white Mughals’ Britons in India were also attracted to and, in some cases, converted to Islam between the late-sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries.39 These conversions occurred in the context of marked respect and social interÂ action between Britons and Indians, particularly during the Enlighten- ment, before the position of the East India Company changed from trade to colonisation and British attitudes towards non-Europeans hardened. Indeed, as early as the seventeenth century, Indians were perceived to be different but not necessarily inferior to Britons.40 Concurrently, some Company officials—or ‘nabobs’ as they were known upon their return to Britain—came to genuinely admire the indigenous cultures of their Indian kin41. For example, the Company’s most enlightened gover-

8 INTRODUCTION nor general, Warren Hastings (1732–1818), became convinced that Europe and Christendom had no monopoly on civilisation. Hastings later admitted that, ‘I love India a little more than my own country.’42 â William Dalrymple, in his celebrated White Mughals, finds that, whilst respectful of indigenous cultures and religions, the majority of Company men—Hastings included—remained practising or nominal Christians through to the Company’s demise in the nineteenth century. However, since the success of the Company in its formative years depended as much on contacts across the lines of ethnicity and religion as it did on any commercial acumen, traders, soldiers, diplomats and even clergymen in India had little choice but to embrace Mughal (ÂMuslim) culture to varying degrees.43 In his pioneering study of British life in eighteenth-century India, T. G.Â P.Â Â Spear considers that this Â‘Indianization’ of the British simply made life more comfortable, and was thus ‘superficial, a thing of clothes and food and not a radical transformation of essential ideas. What they borrowed from India were the excrescences of Indian customs and not their essence. Thus they took the zenana [harem, or women’s quarters] from Mussulman society but never became Mussulmans.’44 Dalrymple, on the other hand, argues that there was actually, ‘wholesale interracial sexual exploration and surpris- ingly widespread cultural assimilation and hybridity’, among the British in India until the early nineteenth century.45 Like Spear, Dalrymple shows that most of the younger Company servants were indeed drawn to superficial Indian (particularly Mughal) customs such as smoking a hookah (water-pipe), donning a turban, attending nautches (dance dis- plays) and taking a bibi (Indian wife or mistress). However, he also locates a number of Britons who went further in their adoption of a Mughal lifestyle by converting to Islam, which was more enticing than Hinduism due to the impenetrability of the Hindu social system.46 â Forced conversions to Islam were not uncommon in India, especially following the disastrous British defeat by Tipu, sultan of Mysore (1753– 99) during the 1780s,47 but many Britons and other Europeans who converted to Islam in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India did so as free men. Similar to their compatriots in Barbary, most converted for material rather than spiritual gain: like the first known ‘renegade’ in India, Josua Blackwelle (who converted in 1649), they were generally poor men with no reason for loyalty to the flag of a trading company owned by wealthy London merchants, and were eager to enter into the

9 LOYAL ENEMIES service of the Mughal court, which was open to outsiders.48 Again, very little is known of what became of these ‘renegades’ (if they returned to Britain, they did not publish accounts of their lives), but Dalrymple’s research suggests that such conversions declined as British power and thoughts of Empire increased during the eighteenth century, and incen- tives to desert the Company for financial gain diminished. â Dalrymple also identifies a neglected group of ‘sympathetic and slightly eccentric’ British Indophiles—the ‘white Mughals’—who converted to Islam in India in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. The ‘white Mughals’ are therefore the immediate predecessors of the British Muslim converts discussed in Loyal Enemies. They included senior British officials whose location in the distant outposts of the country, away from the suffocation of the insular British residency towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, made them more prone to acculturation. Dalrymple shows that these men became attracted to Indian culture and religions and often converted to Islam as a precondition for marriage (as expected in orthodox Islam) to a well-born Muslim.49 This was politically opportune because conversion and marriage bound the ‘white Mughals’ into the Indian political system, and granted them a degree of access and leverage over it. Colonel William Linnaeus Gardner (1771–1835/6), for example, converted to Islam to marry the daughter of the Nawab of Cambay in the 1790s, and his family intermarried with Âthat of the Emperor of Delhi. The Asiatic Journal considered that, ‘Colonel Gardner has, of course, adopted many of the opinions and ideas of the people with whom he has passed so great a portion of his time, and in his mode of living he may be termed half an Asiatic’.50 Dalrymple argues that this was, ‘the ultimate colonial nightmare, and in its most unpalatable form: the captive preferring the ways of his captors, the coloniser colonised’51 â Central to Dalrymple’s account is the story of Major James Achilles Kirkpatrick (1764–1805), the British Resident (effectively Ambassador) at the court of Hyderabad—the largest independent Muslim state in India—between 1797 and 1805. Kirkpatrick’s apparent eccentricities— he kept a harem at the back of his house, wore an Indian moustache and Indian clothes, and hennaed his hands in the manner of a Mughal nobleman—raised few eyebrows in Calcutta since his Anglo-Mughal lifestyle was not uncommon among Company men. However, news of Kirkpatrick’s conversion to Islam and marriage according to Islamic law

10 INTRODUCTION to a young Muslim noblewoman, Khair un-Nissa (d.1813), upset the British authorities. As far as they were concerned, Kirkpatrick’s conversion and marriage raised questions about his political loyalties. The issue of ‘divided loyalties’—real or imagined—certainly permeates the history of British conversions to Islam. In the case of Kirkpatrick, these concerns probably had some foundation. Dalrymple shows that, although Kirkpatrick remained Resident until his premature death in 1805, and absorption into Mughal society allowed him to reap the political benefits of friendships with the nobles of the Court, his allegiances came to rest as much with the nizam (ruler) of Hyderabad as they did with the ÂBritish.52 Moreover, his loyalty to India strengthened as, towards the end of his life, he saw the East India Company becoming greedy and danger- ously overconfident. Indeed, the tide began to turn against the Indophiles, ‘nabobs’, ‘white Mughals’ and mixed-race relationships with the appointment of Lord Cornwallis (1738–1805) as governor general in 1786. Cornwallis brought with him the more assured, aggressive viewpoint of Whitehall, with its advocacy of a racial and ethnic hierarchy and belief in the moral and even biological superiority of the British. Cornwallis put an end to the grand dinners, reciprocal entertainments and intimate friendships with Indians.53 By the time Lord Wellesley (1760–1842) succeeded Cornwallis as governor general of Bengal and Supreme Head of India in 1798, men like Kirkpatrick who had ‘gone native’ were increasingly derided in both Calcutta and London. â The gulf between the two worlds was secured by Wellesley, an Empire- builder with a new imperially-minded British attitude to the ‘East’ and bullying approach to Indian rulers which distressed Kirkpatrick. At the end of Wellesley’s governorship in 1805, British rule had become supreme in India and the power of stately princes reduced by the crush- ing defeat of Tipu in 1799 and the Marathas in 1803. Open fraternisation between Company men and the ‘natives’ was largely restricted for diplomatic duty, and with a shift from trade to administration, the ‘nabobs’ were replaced by politicos groomed in the West. Under the influence of the Evangelical ‘Anglicists’, the East India Company was persuaded to opt for an educational and cultural policy based on the principle that British Protestant civilisation was manifestly superior to the Indian. Progress and modernisation in India would be attained by a radical expansion in the use of English and the spread of Christianity.54 The conversion of Muslims and other ‘infidels’ to Christianity there-

11 LOYAL ENEMIES

fore Âbecame part of Britain’s imperial strategy. Dalrymple thus sees Kirkpatrick as one of the last British officials who found it possible to truly cross cultures in India: with the arrival of Wellesley, ‘India was no longer a place to embrace and to be transformed by; instead, it was a place to conquer and transform.’55 The trust and mutual admiration forged by the ‘white Mughals’ was destroyed amid the bloodshed of the ‘Mutiny’, and the respect for the cultural achievements of Indians foun- dered with the rise of imperialism and pseudo-scientific theories of race, which stereotyped them as mentally and morally inferior to white, Christian Europeans.56 â Dalrymple and others concur that, with the advent of scientific Âracism and the strengthening of imperialism in the 1850s, British conversions to Islam abroad petered out. Dalrymple concludes that the death of the last surviving Kirkpatrick child in 1889, ‘effectively brought to a conclusion three hundred years of fusion and hybridity, all memory of which was later delicately erased from embarrassed Victorian history books.’57 Loyal Enemies, however, shows that this was not the case: that the chain of British conversions and attempts to bridge the cultures of (Western) Christianity and Islam since at least the early modern period in fact continued into and beyond the mid-nineteenth century.

III. Methods, sources and approach Reconstructing this history is not an easy task because studying religion and the religious, especially historically, is problematic. As the historian of religion Callum G. BrownÂ has highlighted, ‘the foundations of religion rest on the faith, not the proof. Faith is blind, as the saying goes. And people holding that faith are interesting, but difficult for exploration. There is no isolatable “essence” of religion, only the reflection or shadow for us to study.’58 Loyal Enemies studies faith, or its ‘shadow’, its impact and the faithful themselves through what people in the past said they believed and what they did as a result—as individuals and members of religious groups. It is, therefore, essentially the social and cultural significance of conversion to Islam that is examined in this book. MethoÂ dologically, this is achieved by assembling and synthesising a range of scattered qualitative and quantitative source material. The converts’ lives and ‘voices’ are reassembled through the surviving and accessible private papers of individuals as well as their unpublished and published writing

12 INTRODUCTION (many were prolific writers, some professional). Much of the latter is culled from publications of the various Muslim religious and political organisations which represented or included converts in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Like all organisational or ‘community’ publications, these periodicals, newsletters, bulletins, pamphlets and books usually took an ideological/sectarian position. As long as the influences and biases are understood and acknowledged, the contribu- tions from converts offer rich and varied insights into the motivations for and process of conversion, their lives and concerns as British Mus- lims, as well as invaluable information on specific communities, including their philosophies, activities and the attitudes of outsiders. â Conversion testimonies were frequently published in Muslim missionary periodicals. Some scholars of (contemporary) conversion cast doubt on the ability of these to illuminate the conversion process, arguing that testimonies are almost exclusively produced retrospectively, are temporally variable and socially constructed in terms of both ideology and vocabulary.59 James Beckford finds that there is a formal, public or even ‘official’ conception of appropriate features of the conversion experience in testimonies.60 These arguments are not surprising because, like all biography, conversion testimonies are constructions or reconstruc- tions of experiences. Responding to Beckford, conversion theorists John Lofland and Norman Skonovd show that problems arising from the ‘moulding’ or ‘structuring’ of testimonies are not insurmountable. Rather, ‘the conversion experience itself is partly molded [sic] by expectations of what conversion is about or “is like”’, and consequently there is the probability of finding in testimonies a good fit between ‘real’ experiences and paradigmatic accounts.61 The writing of testimonies can also be an integral part of the conversion experience because testimony (made and remade) serves as an opportunity to demonstrate the converts’ language transformation and biographical reconstruction.62 Treated with caution, conversion testimonies can, therefore, offer otherwise scarce personal insights into the conversion process and its effect on individual lives. â There is no single reason for conversion to or within any religious system, including Islam, but the causes and effects remain hotly contested by conversion theorists.63 It is, however, generally agreed that conversion is a complex process which usually requires the formation of what sociologists John Lofland and Rodney Stark term an ‘affective

13 LOYAL ENEMIES bond’ with one or more believers and also, perhaps, ‘intensive interÂ 64 action’ with group members. Indeed, as David A. SnowÂ and Cynthia

L. ÂPhillips argue in their reassessment of Lofland and Stark’s thesis, ‘Of course people may facilitate their own conversion, but before they can “go about converting themselves” they must be privy to a universe of discourse that renders such transformations desirable and possible.’65 â Conversion theorists have long questioned the extent to which an individual changes in order to ‘convert’. There is, however, some consensus that the process of conversion subsumes diverse experiences: ‘conversion’ can describe an experience of increased devotion within a single faith system, a marked shift from no religious commitment to a devout religious life or a change from one religious system to another.66 Loyal Enemies examines the lives of individuals and groups who fit the latter category—typically Christians who converted from Christianity to Islam within a predominantly Christian society. Scholars also disagree on what constitutes ‘true’ religious conversion. For some, conversion simply denotes a definite break with former identities, involving a radical change of beliefs, ideas, behaviour and values.67 Others have more convincingly shown that people convert (past and present) with varying degrees of intensity, commitment and involvement. For example, arguing that it is misleading to group conversions into ‘types’, Lofland and Skonovd usefully identify six ‘motifs’, or key patterns, of conversion, each of which differs significantly according to historical context, across societal boundaries, and even across subcultures within a single society.68 They propose that more than one ‘motif’ can be present in any particular religious autobiography: 1)âIntellectual: the active individual becomes acquainted with alternative ideologies and ways of life by private investigation (for example, reading), in the absence of social pressures but probably with some social involvement. 2)âMystical (‘Pauline’ or ‘born again’ conversion): characterised by high subjective intensity and trauma, involving little social involvement. This results in intensive belief. 3)âExperimental: individuals initially adopt an ‘experimental’ attitude towards an alternative faith, and become involved with other believers. This process does not usually involve social pressure, but does require a high degree of social interaction. Belief ultimately arises out of participation over a long period.

14 INTRODUCTION 4)âAffectional: personal attachment or strong liking for practising believers, which occurs over a relatively prolonged period, involving social pressure usually in the form of support rather than an inducement. Belief arises out of participation. 5)âRevivalist: managed or manipulated ecstatic arousal in a group or collective context, typically involving an emotionally aroused crowd. This involves intense social pressure over a short period. Belief follows participation. 6)âCoercive (or ‘brainwashing’): takes place ‘only in extremely rare and special circumstances’ by means of compulsion, and involves a very high degree of social pressure. Belief arises out of participation.69 â This book does not seek to judge whether the mode of change experienced by the individuals and communities discussed constituted ‘true’ conversion. Rather, it relies upon the self-definition of ‘convert’ to Islam provided by the individual or group, or takes membership of a religious group (identifying, for example, statements and actions that attest to conversion, particularly formal declarations of the shahada and the adoption of Muslim forenames) as primary indicators of conversion to Islam. This approach, therefore, embraces the view that individuals can be considered to be members of the same group or movement (in this case ‘Islam’ which, as Aziz al-Azmeh rightly points out, is ‘not a generic essence but a nominal entity that conjoins, by means of a name, a variety of societies, cultures, histories and polities’),70 in different ways and with varying degrees of conformity and commitment.71 Indeed, this book seeks to prise out the diversity of responses to Islam among British Muslims to consider how far Islam affected their outlook and impacted on their lives. â In addition to the written material, the private lives of British Muslims and their communities are reassembled through insights derived from photographs (of which a small selection are reproduced within these pages) and information and anecdotes from descendents and colleagues of all the key, and less influential or public-facing, converts identified in this book (as well as the oral testimony of the last surviving core member of the important interwar Woking Muslim community, David/ Dawud Cowan, 1915–2003). Public and official responses to British Muslims in this period help ascertain mainstream reactions to the Âconverts and their faith, and these are documented through contempo-

15 LOYAL ENEMIES raneous newspaper reports, books, periodical articles, pamphlets and government files, particularly Foreign and India Office records. â Drawing upon these methods and sources, Loyal Enemies takes a broadly chronological approach, identifying linkages between individuals and groups, showing continuities and changes especially in terms of reasons for, and consequences of, conversion to Islam between the 1850s and 1950s. The first three substantive chapters broadly cover the mid- to-late-nineteenth century, focusing initially on the lives of two important British Muslim figures: Henry Stanley, the earliest known convert to live and die a Muslim on British soil; and W. H.Â AbdullahÂ Quilliam (1856–1932), the first Briton to defend and propagate Islam in Britain and actively encourage conversion amongst his compatriots. Chapter Three then examines Quilliam’s Liverpool Muslim Institute (LMI)—the first Muslim missionary organisation in Britain—and its British Muslim ‘community’. The final three chapters of this book concentrate on the early-to-mid-twentieth century. Chapter Four explains why and how Indian-led Islamic missions assumed the work of the LMI in Britain before the First World War and explores who converted to Islam through the pioneering Woking Muslim Mission (WMM) and its rival, the Lon- don Mosque Mission (LMM). Chapter Five is dedicated to understanding the post-conversion lives of twentieth-century British Muslim individuals and communities. The final Chapter documents and dis- cusses the circumstances that sustained and exacerbated popular suspicions about convert identities and loyalties throughout this period, examines if there was any substance to them, and concludes by accounting for the eclipse and decline of British Muslims at the dawn of the New Elizabethan Age.

1.âHenry Edward John Stanley, Third Lord Stanley of Alderley, c.1890s. Artist Unknown. 1

BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM

HENRY STANLEY AND ISLAM IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN

The increase in British imperial power following the Indian revolt coincided with reports in 1859 of the conversion to Islam abroad of an English traveller, the Honourable Henry Stanley, who returned home a patriotic British Muslim and became the first Muslim member of the House of Lords.1 Yet, although he is a pivotal figure in the history of British Islam, little has previously been written about Stanley’s life. Per- haps this is because Stanley himself did not publish a biography or anything about his religious conversion or Islam, and very few of his private papers survive. However, Stanley’s scant private correspondence and public documents, the more numerous diaries and letters of his family and contemporaries, as well as a wealth of press reports, enables us to reconstruct and examine his life in an historical context. In turn, we can begin to answer questions about the life and times of this important British Muslim. Why did Stanley convert to Islam in the late 1850s? What were the consequences of his conversion? How did late- Victorian discourse and attitudes about Islam affect Stanley personally and politically, and to what extent did he engage with Islam and Islamic affairs? Ultimately, how committed was he to his new faith?

19 LOYAL ENEMIES

I. ÂHenry Stanley and Islam before 1859 The allure of Islam With the decline of the once powerful Middle East and the rise of a more aggressive British imperialist policy and discourse, Enlightenment fear and, to a lesser extent, loathing of Islam and Muslims, was replaced with a fascination for the exotic.2 Many wealthy Britons and other ÂEuropeans were drawn to the Islamic East during the first half of the nineteenth century precisely because of its perceived exoticism. The vast Ottoman Empire was particularly appealing to Britons due to its historically close commercial and diplomatic links with Europe, and it also provided an antidote to the conventions of stuffy British society and the routine of the European Grand Tour.3 â The majority of Britons who visited uslimM lands in the early-to- mid-nineteenth century had a superficial and temporary encounter with Islamic culture and Muslims. However, a few individualistic travellers— whose lives have been well documented elsewhere—had more meaningful experiences. Some discovered in the East, especially its desert regions, a sense of both fantasy and freedom, and were drawn to the apparently safe and ordered Bedouin society.4 Lady Hester Stanhope (1776–1839), for example, toured the Holy Land and Lebanon, journeyed from Damascus to the ruined desert city of Palmyra in 1813 and settled in the foothills of Mount Lebanon.5 Some years later, the Honourable Mrs Jane Digby el-Mesreb (1807–81) followed Stanhope’s path through Syria, where she met a Bedouin sheikh (tribal chief or religious leader), and married him according to Islamic law. Digby learnt Arabic, wore Arab dress and became accepted by her husband’s family, but, like ÂStanhope, died a Christian in her adopted homeland.6 â Some travellers experienced more profound connections with Islam, notably Swiss-born Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817), whose thirst for adventure and Arab culture drew him from England to Aleppo in 1809. He eventually arrived at Jidda, the principal gateway to Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, from where he undertook the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca and the fifth of five ‘pillars’ of Islam)7 in 1814. By the time of his death in Cairo just three years later, Burckhardt had a genuine reverence for Islam and was buried—apparently in accordance with his wishes—in a Muslim cemetery.8 Like Burckhardt, the Presbyterian and Calvinist diplomat and writer, David Urquhart (1805–77), was inspired to write

20 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM about his Eastern travels and encounters with Islam. Although he never converted to Islam, Urquhart became a staunch Turcophile, and contro- versially celebrated the parochial and patriarchal structure of Turkish society and simplicity of Islam in his The Spirit of the East (1838).9 A few years later, the explorer, linguist and author, Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–90), landed in India. Fascinated by the codes and mystical revelations revealed only to the secret circle of initiates, Burton flirted with Sufism (Islamic mysticism). In 1853, a disguised Burton followed in Burckhardt’s footsteps by making the hajj. Burton later argued that he found in Islam, ‘the only practical ethical religion and almost free from the two great demoralising elements—dogma and priestcraft’.10 But, Burton did not convert to Islam either. In fact, he investigated Catholi- cism and other forms of Christianity just as thoroughly as Islam. Burton regarded his outward observance of Islam as a means by which to pen- etrate the diverse cultures of Islamic peoples he intended to write about, rather than a statement of faith. After all, Burton was, like most of his generation, imperially minded. He probably died an agnostic, never convinced by any religious dogma.11 â As we shall see, champions of Muslims and Islam like Burckhardt, Urquhart and Burton were not uncommon by the mid-nineteenth century. However, as imperialism advanced, Britons increasingly defined themselves against the colonial peoples (many of them Muslim) they conquered—peoples who appeared manifestly alien in terms of colour, culture and religion.12 Concurrently, relations with both colonised and free Muslim countries and populations, particularly the ailing Ottoman Empire, deteriorated and adversely affected British attitudes towards Muslims and Islam. It was certainly not expedient for an Englishman— and particularly not a privileged one like Henry Stanley—to convert to Islam or any other Eastern religion and, indeed, examples of voluntary conversions abroad peter out with the decline of the ‘white Mughals’.13

Early life and influences Piecing together Henry Stanley’s early life reveals a deep personal interest in the East and points to why he would eventually shatter convention by converting to Islam. Stanley was born on the family estate of Alderley Park, Cheshire, in 1827. He was the eldest son of the politician Edward John Stanley, second Baron Stanley of Alderley and first Baron

21 LOYAL ENEMIES of Eddisbury (1802–69), and Henrietta Maria Stanley (1807–95), eldest daughter of the thirteenth Viscount Dillon (1777–1832). Henry’s father was a friend of twice-prime minister Lord Palmerston (1784–1865), and held posts in several Whig governments, while Henry’s mother became a champion of women’s education.14 The British aristocracy have always been noted for their eccentricity, but the Stanleys of Alderley were, according to one critic, ‘eccentric far beyond the average of their class’.15 For the writer Nancy Mitford (1904–73), great-granddaughter of Henry’s sister Blanche, Countess of Airlie (1829–1921), and editor of the letters between Henry’s paternal grandmother, Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley of Alderley (1771–1863), and his mother Henrietta: The fusion of what Maria Josepha calls “the sluggish blood of the Stanleys” with that of these two intelligent and masterful women was destined to produce eccentric results. Henrietta, like her mother-in-law, had nine surviving children, amongst whom there was not one quite ordinary human being. Their common characteristics were a sort of downright rudeness, a passion for quarrelling, great indifference to public opinion, an unrivalled skill in finding and pointing out the weak points in other people’s armour, thick legs and eyebrows, lively minds and a great literary sense.16 â The Stanley’s were also marked by their religious freethinking. Besides various forms of High and Low Anglicanism within Henry’s immediate family, his youngest brother, Algernon Charles Stanley (1843–1928), became Roman Catholic Bishop of Emmaus, and another brother, Edward Lyulph Stanley (1839–1925), was famously agnostic. According to Mitford, the Stanley’s ‘various and peculiar’ religious opinions were, ‘generally adopted to annoy some other member of the family’. Mitford dismisses Henry as having started life, ‘such a dear little boy, [but he] became […] a complete misogynist at a sadly early age, perhaps owing to the fact that he was deaf’.17 His nephew, the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), considered Henry to be ‘the only one [of nine children] who was definitely stupid’, and ‘devoid of all the family merits, and was, I think, the greatest bore I have ever known’.18 A closer exami- nation of Henry’s life reveals that whilst he might have been a misogynist, certainly rather deaf and probably regarded a bore due to his strong, if changeable and seemingly eccentric convictions, he was not stupid. Moreover, his life was far from dull, primarily because, unlike many contemporaries fascinated with Britain’s African and Asian Empire, Henry had the means to indulge his early passion for all things

22 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM ‘Oriental’, which led to extensive travel in the East and, in time, his religious conversion. â Although Stanley never published an account of his religious conversion, his remaining private papers, publications, family correspondence and contemporaneous press reports hint at why he converted to Islam in 1859. The exotic Arabian Nights and romantic tales of imperial exploration in Africa and Asia by men like Burckhardt inspired Henry from a young age. His later travels abroad were a form of escape from his fretting family, worried about his poor hearing, growing reclusiveness and apparent eccentricity. Writing in March 1842, when Henry was just fourteen, his grandmother Maria admitted that she felt, ‘rather rejoiced that he is an eldest son and will not have to carve his way in the world’.19 By his early teens, Henry was interested in the Arabic language and wanted to explore Africa, prompting his grandmother to warn that: His very innocence from all bad thoughts and bad habits, [make] him the more likely to be drawn into the snare of Knowledge and Evil. Well it is no worse, and he no older, before he had to begin to learn the world. I fear he wants strength of character and may be liable to take the colour of those he lives with.20 These proved to be prophetic words, but, in the short-term, Stanley’s family had little to fear—he gave up wine, travelled in civilised Europe and, in 1846, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, to study Arabic. â After leaving Cambridge in December 1847, Stanley entered the Foreign Office as assistant précis writer to the Foreign Secretary, ÂPalmerston, with the object of qualifying himself for the diplomatic service. At that time, the most persistent and serious international problem the European diplomats had to deal with was the ‘Eastern Ques- tion’—the question of what should become of the Ottoman Empire. As we shall see, during the nineteenth century, the Eastern Question concerned attempts of the subject peoples and their rulers to secure some degree of autonomy or independence from the Ottoman Empire, and the efforts of the Great Powers (Russia, Britain and France) either to contain the tensions generated or to exploit them to their own advantage.21 Mid-Victorian attitudes toward the Ottoman leaders and their Islamic faith were therefore typically oppositional. However, Palmerston and other ‘whig-liberals’—including Henry’s friend, the archaeologist and excavator of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817–94)—appreciated the social and spiritual benefits which Islam provided the Turks, and found it more acceptable than the strate-

23 LOYAL ENEMIES gic, political and religious threat posed by Russia in the East.22 Although these Turcophiles were imperialists and tended to consider Islam to be a less developed form of Protestantism (with its refusal to tolerate idolatry and sacerdotalism), they admired its practical and moralising edge, intimately linked with the civil power, encouraging philanthropy to the poor, sick, orphans and animals, and crusading against gambling and alcoholism. Palmerston believed that, in many ways, the Turkish state was more civilised than its Russian counterpart. He thought that the Turkish commercial system was more liberal, religious toleration more widespread, personal liberty more secure and the press less restricted.23 Palmerston thus promoted the idea that the Turks were a ‘highly improving and civilised race’,24 and came to pursue a policy of bolstering up the Ottoman Empire at all costs. Henry Stanley was dazzled by Palmerston’s charisma and intellect. He also shared Palmerston’s admiration for the Turks; and, like Urquhart, concluded that the Turks were the key to an Islamic revival. â Although competent at his new job, Stanley was not at all content. His mother, now Lady Eddisbury,25 confided in her diary of 1848 that, ‘He lives such an odd retired uncommunicative life that I fear it will be most difficult to make him take any interest in any other undertaking than expedition to the Niger.’26 But Stanley’s restlessness was not simply a product of what Lady Eddisbury called his ‘Africa mania’. In fact, perhaps sparked by the political and social turmoil that spread across Europe in 1848,27 Stanley experienced simultaneous political and religious crises during his first year in Whitehall. As his mother wrote in November 1848, Stanley was no longer confident in his liberal outlook that, ‘some time hence, […] there will be any medium way between conservatism and communism’.28 Concurrently, although he did not necessarily lose faith in God, Stanley had theological doubts that kept him from attending church.29 His religious uncertainties continued into the next decade and coincided with the growth of religious doubt and unbelief in mid-Victorian Britain, which, as we shall see in the next chapter, accelerated in the 1870s.30 Stanley’s wavering, like that of some contemporaries, might have been stimulated by geological discoveries which hinted that the earth was older than the writers of Genesis had realised and, therefore, called into question the literal accuracy of the Bible, the foundation stone of Protestantism.31 Perhaps Stanley’s emerÂ ging Turcophilism and interest in Islam increased his uncertainty about

24 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM Christianity. He was certainly edging towards Islam by the late 1840s, receiving instruction from a Sufi sheikh whilst in Paris in 1849.32 Stanley kept quiet about his encounters with the sheikh, but was more forth- coming in letters to his family about an encounter with a curé (parish priest). His grandmother, still fearing Henry vulnerable and susceptible to corruption, wrote to Lady Eddisbury that she was: not quite easy about the Curé and his books. In his present state of mind a clever votary of the church might do a great deal of harm and the conversion of an English aristocrat might gain him great praise and honour. The step from infidelity to blind belief is a short one—I should like to know the turn of his thoughts in his solitary rambles.33 âStanley succumbed to neither the sheikh nor the curé in 1849, and settled back to his work in London. However, when, in December 1851, Lord Granville (1815–91) replaced Palmerston as Foreign Secretary, Stanley considered leaving the diplomatic service for a seat in Parliament. His grandmother thought Henry to be, ‘like a ship without rudder or compass, and nobody can tell what he may do next if not allowed to take his own way’.34 His father, who had assumed the title of Lord ÂStanley of Alderley in October 1850, agreed, and set about thwarting Henry’s plans to enter Parliament by persuading him to go abroad as a first paid attaché. Stanley chose the British Embassy at Constantinople, where Stratford Canning (1786–1880) was Ambassador. â This posting to the heart of the ttomanO Empire presented Stanley with his first prolonged experience of a Muslim country, and had a profound impact on his already fragile political and religious beliefs. Stanley approached the East with a greater degree of respect for the language and culture of the ‘natives’ than many of his contemporaries, but he was first and foremost a diplomat and was therefore intimately involved in the imperialist game. His first-hand experience of the diplomatic scene in Turkey, however, soured any belief he may have had in the necessity and benefit of European interference in Ottoman affairs, and undermined his faith in British imperial policy and conduct elsewhere. Importantly, Stanley disagreed with Canning’s policy of reform to bring Turkey into modern Europe under Christian tutelage. Gradu- ally, he began to shirk Christian society in Constantinople (‘one feels not only apprehensive but certain he does not try to make himself agreeable in it’, argued Maria),35 and became disinterested in his diplomatic work. In August 1852, his mother wrote to her husband that she had received:

25 LOYAL ENEMIES a very unhappy letter from Henry, he seems to dislike Con[stantin]ople and the whole thing more and more and to be only anxious to be allowed to pursue his own studies on the allowance you may choose to give him. I know you will be vexed, but still at his age, five and twenty, and with his moderate desires the best way, I feel convinced, will be to let him take his own course. He may be led, he will never be coerced, and he will ever be odd tho’ in his own lines he may do well.36 â Stanley had persuaded Henrietta that his future lay in Eastern travel and study. He was already well equipped to pursue a scholarly career: besides mastering several European languages, he had learnt Arabic, some Turkish and Persian, and joined numerous learned societies. In 1850, he served on the Council of the Hakluyt Society, established two years earlier, ‘for the purpose of printing rare or unpublished Voyages and Travels’.37 Stanley became a life-long member of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1858. His first Orientalist work, the translation of a rather obscure Chinese Manual compiled by French Jesuit missionaries (and which, Stanley noted in his Preface, he hoped would help promote the study of Chinese and assist traders, missionaries and political agents), was published in 1854.38 During sojourns in London in the 1850s, he attended Orientalist meetings and, to the dismay of his family, courted a number of Turks and other Muslims resident in the metropolis. In London in 1853, his aunt Rianette Stanley (1797–1882) found that Stanley, ‘tucked up his legs like a Turk and asked to leave to smoke a pipe’; Rianette and Maria wondered whether ‘he will ever take to English ways—certainly England will not be the home of his choice yet’.39 â Despite his grievances, however, Stanley remained in the diplomatic service throughout the 1850s. Relations with his father, ever the harsh critic of his heir’s eccentricities, remained fragile and Stanley consoled himself with the fact that diplomatic work provided an escape. Palmer- ston for one approved of his detailed knowledge of Turkey and its people, telling Alderley that, ‘what he liked in him was that, unlike most young men of the present time he seemed so much in earnest in the affairs in which he was concerned’.40 Such high praise secured Stanley charge of the consulate in Varna (Bulgaria) in 1853. The following year, he was appointed secretary of legation at Athens, a position he retained until 1859. Between 1856 and 1858, Stanley was also attached as secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer’s (1801–72) special mission to the Danubian Provinces. The mission was established to supervise elections to decide

26 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM the future of Moldavia and Wallachia (part of the Ottoman Empire) under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1856), which settled the Crimean War (1853–56) between Russia and an alliance of France, Britain, ÂSardinia and the Ottoman Empire. Buoyed by ‘the freedom from restraint, and the hospitality, of Oriental life’, Stanley travelled the Danubian provinces, romantically admiring the people and their ‘love of their native land and attachment to its soil’.41 â These experiences and the CrimeanWar, in which Britain and its allies opposed what they saw as a further extension of Russian power in the Ottoman Empire and committed themselves to its defence, rein- forced Stanley’s commitment to Turkey and disdain for Russia. While not uncommon, Stanley’s views went against the grain of popular opinion: following the Indian revolt there was a progressive hardening of racial attitudes in British imperial culture, particularly against Muslims, who were blamed for encouraging the ‘Mutiny’. As Jeremy Salt has argued, with Christianity supreme and the British Empire in the ascendant, public discourse increasingly imagined the ‘Oriental mind’ to be different from the ‘Occidental’, susceptible to corruption and sloth, and lacking any conscious morality. It was considered not merely different but inferior. Salt considers the connection with Islam to be explicit: ‘by a process of osmosis all the failings of Islam which existed in the “occidental” and mostly Christian mind were transmuted into the moral deficiencies of a people, the Turks’.42 â Alderley was particularly offended yb his son’s increasingly public allegiance to the Turks, whom he considered to be, ‘but semi-barbarians, stupid, illiterate, ignorant, tyrannical and oppressive when they have powers, and with all the additional vices that their absurd religion gives them’.43 Writing to his wife in December 1856, Alderley asserted that Stanley was, ‘very limited in his views, thinks there is no country and no people in the world but those stupid Turks and if their interests are not immediately affected he sees and knows no politics.’44 â Back in Constantinople, Stanley’s resentment of British bullying and exploitation of the Turks deepened. In January 1857, he complained to Austen Layard of colleagues who had been talking and acting, ‘as if Turkey was theirs, and the property of any speculator who chooses to ask for a concession, without consulting the real interests of Turkey.’45 By the end of the year, his pronouncements caused Bulwer to write to Alderley about ‘the absurdity and extravagance of [Stanley’s] Turkish

27 LOYAL ENEMIES admiration.’ For Alderley, ‘the fact is it is not only ridiculous but most injurious to him, and without sense or excuse, and shews [sic] an absence of right perceptions and even right feelings’. He considered that while Bulwer had been: very kind to Henry and does what he can for him, [Henry’s] conduct and behaviour make him the laughing stock of all those who see the ridiculous extravagance of his admiration for the Turks and his inability to appreciate or tolerate even the superior qualities of all other nations except in so far as they are partisans of these Turks. It will only be aggravating all the symptoms of his disease to travel further in the East. He had better come to the West and find some merit and some interest in people who wear a hat instead of a turban or a fez.46

II. ÂConversion to Islam and consequences, 1859–69 Conversion Although Stanley returned to London in the summer of 1858, he avoided most of his family and promptly set sail for Egypt, from where he ventured into Arabia. In January 1859, he visited Jidda. According to a friend of Maria’s, he ‘looked so much like a Turk […] he might go any where [sic] safely’, but Stanley claimed in a letter to his grandmother that he had decided against visiting Islam’s holiest city, Mecca.47 Details of Stanley’s religious conversion are not documented but we have seen that he was certainly primed for it by the late 1850s, having already forged personal relationships with Muslims in Europe and Ottoman lands which exposed him to Islamic discourse and custom. It might also be inferred that Stanley’s theological doubts since 1848 were the catalyst for his conversion, influenced by a deep attraction to the exotic, experience of Sufism and disillusionment with imperialism. His journey to Jidda settled his mind and gave him the strength to break free of the diplomatic service. After years of muted criticism of imperialist policy, European arrogance abroad and what he considered to be an inept consular system,48 and eager escape from the conventions of rigid English society, Stanley abruptly resigned his post at Athens to travel across the Muslim world, from the Middle East to South-East Asia. â Stanley’s travels in 1859 gave him the extensive first-hand experience and knowledge of the variety of Islamic peoples and cultures to be found in the Muslim world that facilitated his conversion. He was impressed by the manner in which religion entered the fabric of everyday life:

28 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM perhaps like his friend, the English poet and Eastern traveller Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922), Stanley was also struck with the visible vice and squalor in Constantinople. Blunt, who first met Stanley in 1860, considered those aspects of the city to be the modern Christian elements, and the beauty to be Islamic.49 Having escaped the diplomatic service, Stanley was determined to avoid European contact in the ÂMuslim lands he visited. However, unbeknown to him, occasional reports of both his travels and, to the distress of his family, religious conversion reached Britain via the colonial press. â In spring 1859, the Bombay Telegraph and Courier reported that Stanley had reached Suez, ‘in an Arab craft from Mecca, whither he had been to visit the shrine of the Prophet’, and converted to Islam; from Suez he took a steamer to the Spice Islands (the Moluccas), where he landed in early May: ‘The Hon’ble gentleman, we are informed [by the Ceylon Times], had embraced Mohamedanism, and travels with shaven crown, fez cap, and long flowing robes,—realising, outwardly, our ideas of a follower of the Prophet.’50

Reaction and consequences Precise details about when, where and how Stanley converted remain elusive. Instead, the sources—both public and private—provide a fasci- nating and rare insight into responses to conversion to Islam and attitudes towards that faith in mid-Victorian Britain. Further news of Stanley’s adventures reached Britain in late May 1859 via the China Telegraph, which reported that the ‘English Mohomedan’ was being entertained by Muslims in Kandy, Ceylon (Sri Lanka).51 Stanley was unable to avoid the British in Ceylon and, according to the press, caused a stir when he called on the governor, Sir Henry Ward (1797–1860), in ‘Mohammadan dress’. According to his sister Kate (1842–74), Stanley was ‘furious’ at the press coverage and adamant that: they are utter lies, because he was not civil to those low English out there, and as for his dress he wore a long cloak and turban for convenience sake, and going to Ceylon was quite accidental, but being there he did not think it worth while to stay away [from] Sir H[enry] Ward because he had no dress coat or black hat.52 â Stanley’s brother Johnny (1837–78), then working for the government in Calcutta, told their sister Maude (1832–1915) that he had advised Henry to:

29 LOYAL ENEMIES come to India where he w[ou]ld see how low a Mussulman can be—that of course was no news to him but he wrote to me (tho[ugh] you must not let him know I told you) so strongly for Mahomet and his creed that I c[ou]ld not but partly believe what I heard.53 Henry refused to visit Johnny, preferring to keep a low profile. â Financially, Stanley was able to pursue his interest in Eastern travel and culture, but his position as the eldest son in a distinguished English aristocratic family also brought unwelcome responsibilities and expectations. Though the family were, as Mitford states, somewhat indifferent to public opinion, Stanley’s conversion to Islam—the faith of the Turks whom his father (and many of his class) despised—distressed and embarrassed them. Stanley’s mother, for example, confessed to Maria in June 1859 that: the subject is too painful to me. I do not believe the full extent of what is said, but I can believe any folly of him and I feel deeply for you who have so tenderly loved him to have your last impressions of him so painful—the best we can hope for is that he should stay away […]. Pray do not let this letter be seen by anyone and pray burn it immediately. It will be the last time I refer to the subject and I do not wish anyone to write or speak to me upon it.54 â Alderley also found reports of his son’s conversion ‘most distressing’, and urged that, ‘if it can be done with truth sh[ou]ld be contradicted’.55 However, the very next day the Morning Post reported that Stanley had arrived in Penang from Ceylon: this enterprising and accomplished gentleman is said to be a Mohammedan.

He Âwears Turkish costume, speaks Arabic, and takes entirely, amongst Moham- medans at all events, the best way to become intimately acquainted with them. […] He is living in Chuliah-Street, with an Arab named Sheik Salim Bangadie, and carefully avoids all intercourse with Europeans.56 â Johnny Stanley wrote to his mother in July that he had received ‘a rather sad letter from Henry’, who had symbolically adopted the ÂMuslim name Hafiz (meaning ‘guardian’ or ‘protector’): he says “you know I have always been a Mussulman at heart.” I never really realised it tho’ and it is an awful thing to give up one’s religion. […] I think with you it is very sad—his appearing in that dress [in Ceylon] was more stupid than anything else and he shaved his head (if I am asked I say from fever).57 Johnny considered that, ‘the best way is to let him bore himself out of his new ideas’.58 But their father, who had read the Morning Post article, was

30 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM fuming that his son was ‘parading his enormities amongst English and European society’: Is he mad or what is he? He has never, through his life, lived with his equals or sought the society of those he ought to associate with. His love of travel is merely a desire to escape from European society—he has no object, no view, in travelling, he does not care for countries in connection with their former state or historical interest. I believe he never saw a place in Greece or in Turkey except in connection with those brutal and beastly Turks. As for contradicting what is said I do not know how it can be done. He must have seen these statements in the papers, but he can neither feel the disgrace of his position nor its degradation. […] What can he mean by parading himself in our Colonies and possessions in the degrading position he occupies? I will wait for his letters but if they are not satisfactory I will throw him off as far as I can do so, for there can be no help for him.59 Lady Stanley of Alderley replied that she had also seen the Morning Post article, ‘and it made me sick. I assure you I have written very strongly but we must be patient, he will I hope come out of this folly, I daresay things are exaggerated. If he comes home it must be as an Englishman, and his folly will be forgotten.’60 â Stanley wrote home in an attempt to placate his family, even denying reports of his conversion in correspondence with his anxious grandmother, who had taken the news badly.61 His mother, however, was not deceived and wrote to Maria in September 1859 that, ‘to tell you the honest truth I am afraid he wishes us to slide into the understanding that he is a Mussulman without the shame of avowing it, for I believe that towards his countrymen he is still ashamed.’ Fearing that he might accept Johnny’s invitation to visit India, she concluded that, ‘I must hope Henry will not go to Calcutta in any way but as an Englishman— it would be putting everybody in a painful position, the Gov[ernor] G[eneral] could not receive him in Turkish dress and the scandal would be overpowering.’62 Although by now more sanguine about the situation, Alderley was still anxious that his son’s friends were, ‘Arabs, Chinese, or anything but English or Christians, and he lives entirely in their society in a manner at all events unbecoming to an English Gentle- man.’63 Interestingly, news of Stanley’s conversion did not prevent the minister to Persia, Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810–95), offering him a job as second secretary. It is possible that Rawlinson considered Stanley’s

31 LOYAL ENEMIES conversion to be a useful diplomatic tool, but this seems unlikely in light of negative British attitudes towards Muslims and disdain for ‘renegades’ in this period. It is more plausible that Rawlinson offered Stanley the post as a favour to his father, who was eager for Henry to rejoin ‘civilised’ society. It also suggests that the conversion of an aristocrat’s son was not taken seriously (perhaps it was unthinkable) within the Establishment. Painfully aware of the sincerity of his son’s conversion, Alderley was relieved that Stanley declined Rawlinson’s offer: I don’t care as I think he is totally unfit for employment and no English Gov[ernmen]t would give him anything. He has thrown away the opportunity of being creditably employed or honourably considered by his countrymen and I am hopeless of his ever being fit for anything. What has Henry to do with Arabs at Penang, they are an inferior and degraded class of people and it is disgraceful his associating with them.64 â What, then, were the consequences for Stanley when he reappeared in London in April 1860? Stanley had hoped that by the time he returned home—via Siam (Thailand), Arabia, Egypt and the Conti- nent—the controversy caused by his conversion and behaviour in the colonies would have eased. Whether ‘ashamed’ about his conversion as his mother claimed, or more pragmatically fearful of reactions in ÂEngland, he repudiated some of the press reports written about him before his return. Confusingly, this prompted the Times (and scores of other newspapers) to reprint an article from the Macclesfield Courier claiming that reports that Stanley had ‘deserted the religious faith of his ancestors, embraced the doctrines of Mahomedanism, and, in fact, identified himself with the manners and superstitions of the East [… were] utterly void of foundation’:

Mr. ÂStanley, like many other intelligent English gentlemen, has mixed with the inhabitants of the countries through which he passed, with a desire to become thoroughly acquainted with their manners, language, habits, and religion, and in his intercourse with the natives may have assimilated his costume somewhat to their habits. But that he had become in any way imbued with their religious ideas is wholly a calumny, at which Mr. StanleyÂ must necessarily feel hurt and indignant. We understand that that gentleman […] is about to return home shortly, and with unabated regard for the creed and institution of his native land.65 â Stanley followed his mother’s advice and returned home ‘as an ÂEnglishman’, but an unhappy one. He therefore quickly disappeared

32 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM abroad again, spending long periods of the rest of the decade in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Curiously adamant that he could not love an ‘Englishwoman’, he searched the Continent for a wife.66 In France he met a Spanish Catholic of dubious descent, Fabia (actually Serafina Fernandez Funes, c.1835–1905), whom he married in Algeria in August 1862 according to Islamic law. The validity of the marriage was doubtful in the absence of a British consul, so the couple promptly remarried, again according to Islamic law, in Constantinople.67 Fearful of his father’s reaction, Stanley concealed the marriage from his entire family, and lived secretly with Fabia at Geneva for the next seven years. Little is known about Stanley’s life during those years except that, throughout, he longed to return to the East, and in the late 1860s made plans to travel from Bengal to China.68 Stanley’s expedition had to be shelved, however, in June 1869 when his father died. Henry Stanley automati- cally succeeded to the peerage, thereby becoming Britain’s first Muslim member of the House of Lords. He immediately made his marriage to Fabia public (with an announcement in the Times just a few weeks later),69 and returned to settle permanently in Britain, where he divided his time managing the family estates in Cheshire and Anglesey70 and working in the House of Lords.

III. ÂLord Stanley of Alderley, ‘English Mohomedan’ in Britain, 1869–1903 The ‘Eastern Crisis’ and late Victorian attitudes towards Muslims and Islam Following his family’s negative reaction to his conversion, Stanley spent his first decade as a Muslim living on the Continent. When he returned to Britain, popular attitudes towards Muslims and Islam had changed little. To understand Stanley’s later life as Lord Stanley of Alderley and particularly his relationship and commitment to Islam, it is important to consider why this was the case and why and how attitudes and discourse relating to Muslims, Islam and Islamic affairs began to shift in the late-nineteenth century. â Stanley entered public life with the Eastern Question looming large. Identifying oneself as British and Muslim was not expedient. Post- Crimean dislike of the Ottoman Turks and, by extension, other Muslims

33 LOYAL ENEMIES and Islam per se, accelerated as the reciprocal guarantees regarding the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire secured in 1856 collapsed. In 1875, the exactions of Muslim landowners and the influence of nationalist and pan-Slavic ideas inspired and supported by ÂRussian societies sparked off rebellions amongst the Ottoman Christian peasantries of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A similar rebellion occurred in Bulgaria the following year, which led to considerable massacres of both Bulgarians and Turks, and encouraged Serbia and then Montenegro to Âdeclare war against Turkey. In Britain, news of the massacres of ÂBulgarians aroused public indignation as well as pity for the Slavs and other Christians within the Ottoman Empire, and a sharp increase in opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s (1804–81) pro-Turk- ish (Palmerstonian) Eastern policy. This reaction was encouraged by the Liberal leader and four-times prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98), whose Bulgarian Horrors, and the Question of the East (1876) urged for the expulsion from Europe of the Ottomans, ‘the one great anti-human specimen of humanity’.71 â Popular hatred of the new Ottoman sultan, Abdul al-Hamid II (1842–1918), strained relations further. Al-Hamid, or ‘Abdul the Damned’ as he was known in Britain, had been proclaimed sultan in 1876, just as Russia intervened militarily in the Balkans to ‘safeguard’ its Orthodox Christian communities. Taking advantage of national humili- ation and despair evoked by defeat by Russia, al-Hamid had effectively suspended the secularist Constitution and reasserted the traditional authority of the sultan and caliph (or khalifa; successor to the Prophet Muhammad and thereby head of the umma, which was assumed by the Ottomans in 1517). His increasingly personal, autocratic and absolutist policy of administration was lambasted in Britain, and served to encourage a belief that the Ottoman Turks were the embodiment of unjust, despotic, backward and incompetent Muslim rule. In this hostile context, the reactionary attacks on Muhammad and monolithic images of Islam noted in the Introduction continued into the twentieth century. Influential Evangelical Christian apologists such as Sir William Muir (1819–1905), Canon Malcolm MacColl (1831–1907) and William St Clair Tisdall (1859–1929) made good use of popular journals to denigrate the character and conduct of Muhammad as a demonic, heretic impostor, and discredit the whole fabric of Islam, which they presented as a sensual but violent, hostile, intolerant and fraudulent creed.72

34 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM â Although rooted in popular culture, these attitudes and images were, however, not wholly monolithic or static. As the nineteenth century progressed, a greater plurality of images of both Muhammad and Islam emerged.73 Colonisation, exploration, emigration, immigration and an unparalleled Evangelical missionary endeavour required the study of religions such as Islam to help govern, trade with and displace the religious beliefs of the new territories. This, combined with a sense of some that Muhammad’s principles were actually a little less threatening to Christian orthodoxy and a confidence that Islam was no longer such a danger to Western Europe, generated more substantial and, importantly, reliable information about Muhammad and the origins of Islam. â Some enlightened scholars and amateur Orientalists, notably Charles

Forster (1787–1871), F. D.Â MauriceÂ (1805–72) and Reginald Bosworth Smith (1839–1908), were indeed willing to expand their Christian outlook to embrace new possibilities.74 Influenced in part by the study of comparative religion popularised by Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900) and, in some cases, regretful of past misrepresentation and antagonism towards Islam, these men developed a more sympathetic and conciliatory approach to Muhammad and Islam within a framework of Christian theology. As Christians, they were not uncritical of Islam but, taking their cue from Carlyle’s qualified praise of Muhammad in his On

Heroes Âand Hero Worship (1841), and through exploration of more authentic Muslim sources, they offered generally positive reappraisals of Muhammad as a sincere and true Prophet of God. Moreover, they argued that, since Islam came from Abraham, it was a ‘sister faith’ 75 rather Âthan an enemy of Christianity; that truth was not exclusive to Christianity and, therefore, within its limits, Islam might be considered an authentic expression of the human need to believe in a God with its own values; and that Islamic culture and Muslims had contributed to the progress of civilisation.76 The challenge presented to men like Muir by advocates of this ‘conciliatory’ approach further encouraged debate and helped increase popular rather than purely academic interest in Islam. â Concurrently, more numerous defenders of Islam and Muslims were persuaded to enter the public arena, among them several predominantly Indian Muslims. The Muslim modernist leader Sir Saiyid Ahmad (or Syed Ahmed) Khan (1817–98), for example, produced a commentary of the Bible (1862–87) designed to remove the suspicions of Christians about Islam, to refute the arguments of Muslims that the text of the

35 LOYAL ENEMIES Bible was corrupt, and to demonstrate how Muslims and Christians shared common beliefs. His Series of Essays on the Life of Muhammad (1870) challenged the derogatory picture of Muhammad painted in Muir’s popular Life of Mahomet (1858–61).77 A growing number of Muslims who defended Islam in the English language visited or temporarily resided in Britain. British colonial domination in India and, after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the expansion of world trade, not only eased the passage to the East, but also increased the number of Muslims (and others) who visited the British Isles from across the Empire.78 One scholar suggested in 1897 that there were 2,700 Muslims in the UK, compared with 2,600 in France and 800 in Italy.79 Saiyid Ahmad Khan visited Britain in 1869, and scores followed in his wake— among them Indian, Yemeni and Somali lascars or maritime workers, some of whom jumped ship and, as we will see in Chapter Four, settled in London and other major British ports, and also a largely middle- and upper-class Indian Muslim intelligentsia and student population (religious qualifications for entry to Oxford and Cambridge were removed in 1871). Prominent among the latter was the Anglophile judge, ÂMuslim leader and friend of Stanley, Saiyid (or Syed) Ameer Ali (1849–1928), who also arrived in 1869. Ameer Ali’s Spirit of Islam (1891 and 1902), restated the history of Islam for both Indian Muslims and the Christian West, and asserted that Islam, ‘an active, living faith’, was superior to both Christianity (an incomplete religion, of which Islam was the final stage) and Hinduism (an idolatrous and fetishist belief system).80 While critical of the ‘defects of modern Mohammedans’, including misrule in the Ottoman Empire, Ameer Ali publicly defended the character of Muhammad, Islam and Muslims into the twentieth century.81 As the Eastern Question intensified, an Indian law student in London, Rafiüddin Ahmad, also wrote frantically to enlighten the British public on the commercial and political importance of friendship with Muslim lands and peoples.82 During the 1880s, both Ameer Ali and Rafiüddin Ahmad helped initiate explicitly Muslim political organisations such as the Anjuman-i Islam (later Pan-Islamic Society—see Chapter Four) and the Moslem Patriotic League, both of which sought to reaffirm Muslim loyalty to the British Crown whilst defending Islam and seeking equi- table treatment of Muslims affected by imperialism.83 â Alongside these Muslims stood a small core of white Britons prepared to defend Islam as a religious system. Another acquaintance of Stanley,

36 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM the Orientalist and traveller Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840–99), for example, argued publicly that, ‘the Jewish, Christian, and Muhammadan religions are sister-faiths, having a common origin’. Leitner thus expressed the hope that, ‘the day will come when Christians will honour Christ more by also honouring Muhammad [… because] [t]here is a common ground between Muhammadanism and Christianity, and he is a better Christian who reserves the truths enunciated by the Prophet Muhammad.’84 But even learned and confident men like Leitner struggled to convince a sceptical public. Leitner admitted a few years before his death that it seemed, ‘useless to teach the bigots of any religious or political creed, but it is a duty to oneself to raise one’s voice in the wil- derness till one becomes part of its dust’.85 â In 1884, Leitner had founded the ‘Oriental Nobility Institute’ in Woking, Surrey. The Institute was intended to be, ‘a place for Oriental scholars, including those natives of India of good family and position who desire to keep their caste and religion whilst residing in this country for official or professional purposes’.86 The Institute eventually contained a museum, library, publishing house, guesthouse and Britain’s first purpose-built mosque.87 It was a sign of the times that, in addition to the Institute’s students, the mosque was in demand throughout the 1890s as a place of worship for Indian, Afghan, Turkish, Egyptian and Syrian Muslims living in nearby London.88 Representatives of this loose- knit Muslim ‘community’ were, however, critical of the ‘arbitrary manner’ by which the rather arrogant Leitner gave permission to use his mosque.89 Leitner responded that the mosque was open: to Mahommedans generally in this country, in order to enable them to practise their own religion as established, not to convert Englishmen to Islam, or to introduce new doctrines into that faith, or to promote any political or religious propaganda, or to celebrate the generally unhappy marriages between Mahom- medans and Englishwomen […]. The mosque is a proof of British toleration, especially to our Mohammedan fellow-subjects, and, as such, must be used in that grateful and reverential spirit which is characteristic of Orthodox Mahom- medans of good birth.90 â It is significant that Leitner wished to avoid allegations of facilitating the conversion of Britons to Islam. With the missionary endeavour look- ing ineffective, increased religious doubt and concerns about industriali- sation and urbanisation at home, a few more Britons began, like Stanley, to look at the colonised, romantic and exotic Muslim East as a cultural

37 LOYAL ENEMIES and even spiritual tonic. Most prominent of the latter was Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, whose Catholic faith was irrevocably shaken by Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection, which contradicted the Biblical account of the separate creation of each species, culminating with the creation of humankind.91 Blunt’s first Eastern travels in the 1870s captured his imagination, and he suspected that Islam might fill the void left by his rejection of Christianity. Blunt admired Islam’s simplicity and, like Burckhardt, Burton et al. a generation or more earlier, romanticised about the ‘wise’ Bedouins with their ‘bird-like minds, their happy non- chalance, their plain materialism, their facile consciences, their lack of spiritual fancies, a freedom from all bondage religious or political, above all their practical unbelief in any but corporal life’.92 â Blunt yearned to regain chivalrous and superior leaders exemplified among the Bedouin, who were protectors of a traditional, ordered world that had once existed but was now seriously under threat in industri- alised England.93 He gave up wine and read the Qur’an en route to India in the mid-1880s, but protracted religious doubts (particularly disbelief in an afterlife), discouraged his conversion to Islam. Yet, Blunt’s emotional response to Islam did lead to profound changes in his political outlook, and during the 1880s he became involved in a number of nationalist and pan-Islamic movements, and publicly championed and defended Islam and the colonised.94 Some Britons went further than Blunt and followed in Stanley’s footsteps by converting from Christianity to Islam whilst in the East. They included hajji Alfred H./Abdullah Browne (d.1907) who,95 upon visiting Egypt in 1876, found the simple, fraternal creed of Islam to be the perfect antidote to materialism.96 Before settling in Egypt permanently in 1893, Browne made acquaintance in Liverpool with another recent convert, William Henry Quilliam, who, as we shall see in the next chapter, began propagating Islam in 1887 and facilitated the first conversions to that faith in Britain. â In the year that Quilliam began proselytising in Liverpool, the historian and philologist Canon Isaac Taylor (1829–1901) stepped up to the platform of the Wolverhampton Church Congress to discuss ‘Mahomedanism’. Taylor caused a sensation by claiming that, across much of the world, Islam was a more successful missionary religion than Christianity. According to Taylor, this was because Islam was an ‘unper- fect Christianity’ which in Africa, for example, appealed to the natives’ ‘physical’, ‘sensual’ nature. Christianity, on the other hand, was more

38 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM appropriate for the higher intellect of the British race, able to comprehend its abstract, ‘lofty’ truths.97 Taylor’s remarks generated a protracted discussion in the press about Islam and the imperial mission. Many of those who entered the debate instinctively opposed Taylor, but some— including men who had made the East their career—questioned the assumptions and imperialistic philosophies of their peers, and even Â dared question whether colonialism, European civilisation and Christianity actually benefited other peoples.98 By the end of the decade, ÂMuslims, Islam and British imperialist policy in the Muslim world and elsewhere was being publicly and privately discussed and debated with growing intensity. Overall numbers were small but, as is related further in Chap- ters Two and Three, a few more Britons had also converted to Islam. Crucially, what impact, if any, did this have on Stanley, now third Baron Stanley of Alderley and potentially a powerful political lobbyist?

Lord Stanley of Alderley: political lobbying, Islamic affairs and Islam To answer this question, it is necessary to first identify Stanley’s politics and examine the issues and causes that preoccupied him in the House of Lords. Stanley remained politically torn after his religious conversion: a youthful flirtation with socialism was replaced by a struggle between liberal principles and growing conservative predilections, leading him to sit on the cross-benches in the Lords. It is difficult to interpret how far Stanley’s religious conversion affected his political outlook, primarily because his political lobbying after 1859 was driven by a ‘whig-liberal’ conscience which predated his conversion and had always made him sensitive to instances of repression of liberty—especially in the colonised East. Perhaps his religious conversion sharpened those sensitivities. â For Stanley, the greatest injustices now appeared to be against the peoples—Muslim, Hindu and Sikh—of India. Although he maintained connections with the Hakluyt Society, editing six volumes in their series of historic travelogues between 1866 and 1881, and spoke at the Royal Asiatic Society during the 1860s,99 shortly before succeeding his father, Stanley devoted much of his time while in London to the activities of the East India Association. The latter was founded in 1866 with the object of, ‘the independent and disinterested advocacy and promotion, by all legitimate means, of the public interest and welfare of the inhabitants of India generally’.100 Its ethos neatly reflected Stanley’s approach to

39 LOYAL ENEMIES foreign policy: it was concerned with the welfare of both the Empire and the peoples of India, aiming to awaken the British to a sense of their responsibilities as rulers. Stanley remained an English patriot and, as a member of the British ruling elite and a product of his time, was wedded to the rule of monarchy and Empire. He did not, however, advocate any further extension of the Empire, and was sensitive to Britain’s obligations as rulers overseas where rule already existed. He was, indeed, part of that generation neatly described by Albert Hourani (writing principally about Blunt), as ‘pre-Imperialist’ rather than necessarily ‘anti- Imperialist’.101 Thus, in India, for example, Stanley believed that the British presence already had been and still could be a source of great benefit. However, he rejected the idea of a right to rule put forward by publicists of the ‘new imperialism’ at the end of the nineteenth century. Indeed, like Blunt, Stanley disliked the vulgarity of the aggressive imperial spirit, the product of the new England of the urban middle-class, which was threatening their own England of the countryside and the squire among his peasantry (the squire enjoyed the fruits of his position because he fulfilled its duties to the peasantry and the land); both were shocked by the arrogance and the brutality of the new imperialists.102 For example, reflecting on recent incursions into China, Stanley admitted to Blunt in 1898 that, ‘If what is called Western civilisation were to founder after a general war, as some anticipate, it would not be a bad thing for the rest of the globe or for the world in general; the scramble for Africa was bad, that for China is much worse.’103 â Stanley used his position in the Lords, and organisations such as the East India Association and the Aborigines Protection Society, to agitate for the welfare of colonised and indigenous peoples both within and outside the umma. Informed by a network of contacts in India and elsewhere, he was quick to expose the abuses of bureaucratic colonial administration, and appeal for the lawful redress of ‘native’ grievances. In relation to India, for example, Stanley frequently challenged the legal- ity of sentences passed on natives; called for the release of political prisoners; complained about alleged outrages against Indians by British soldiers; criticised corruption in the Indian justice system; and pleaded for penal reform.104 Stanley argued for the establishment of a Privy Council for India and a Court of Appeal for Indian grievances.105 He criticised the failure of the Judicial Committee (consisting of English jurists) to interpret rightly both Hindu and Islamic law, and urged for

40 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM the Committee to be strengthened by the appointment of Indian— Hindu and Muslim—assessors for the hearing of Indian cases.106 Stanley hoped that the Privy Council would be ‘the greatest authority’ on Hindu and Muslim laws: which require, for their proper understanding, a thorough knowledge of Sanscrit [sic] and Arabic respectively. Our ignorance of the vernaculars of India, though much to be regretted, is less dangerous to our rule than the disregard of the best native culture and institutions, based, directly or indirectly, on the above sacred languages. This is what so sets the people against us as such utter aliens.107 Stanley was eager to retain the Raj but fearful that British rule in India could not be sustained permanently. He therefore encouraged the Â‘Indianisation’ of the country’s core institutions, called for the introduction of the principle of representative government and came to support the emergent Indian National Congress movement to help stabilise India and ease the passage towards eventual self-government.108 â Alongside Blunt and Britain’s first Asian Member of Parliament and Âsometime East India Association president, the Indian nationalist Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917), Stanley demanded reform of the Indian civil service, which was largely closed to Indians and a hopeless proposition for reformers because of British vested interests.109 Writing to the Orientalist and traveller Francis Henry Skrine (1847–1933) in 1902, he was adamant that: The Indian Civil Service must […] be made to suffer for the poverty of India caused by Indian Civil Service administration, for which they deserve the title of Nabobs given in 1700 as an opprobrious name on account of their plundering habits.’ He also still believed passionately that the number of civil servants in India ‘should be reduced to make room for Hindus and Mussulmans.110 â Although operating in the age of high imperialism—in which patriotism was wedded to the new nationalist and imperialist ideology of the 1870s111—Stanley remained no less critical of colonial policy and exten- sions of imperial rule elsewhere in the East. He was particularly agitated by further fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire, and exasperated by Gladstone’s championing of Russia and denunciation of the Turks. Indeed, at the height of the Bulgarian agitation in 1876, Stanley was a Committee member and largest financial donor to the Turkish Wounded Soldiers’ Relief Fund, established to support the Ottoman troops, ‘who have nobly and patiently defended the territories of their Sovereign

41 LOYAL ENEMIES against the invasion of the combined Servian [sic] and Russian forces’.112 He protested through the Patriotic Association against the British government threatening armed action against Turkey in 1880, pleading that it abide by the treaties of Paris and Berlin (1878), which guaranteed the independence of the Ottoman Empire by Europe.113 He warned that if Russian intrigues and conspiracy were allowed to increase, Russia would look to occupy Constantinople: ‘Enthroned in the matchless and unas- sailable position of Constantinople, the Russian Government could conspire in safety against our road to India, our Mediterranean power, and our Eastern empire.’114 Although he considered Egypt to be an important lever in negotiating with the Ottomans to contain Russian expansion into Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean, Stanley (like Blunt) protested against British occupation of Egypt in 1882.115 Con- trary to public opinion, he supported (privately, at least) Blunt’s efforts in 1884/5 to negotiate with the ‘Mahdi’ (‘guided one’; Muhammad Ahmad ibn Sayyid Abd Allah, 1844–85), who led a revolt against Egypt in 1881 and went on to capture the Sudanese administrative capital of Khartoum in 1885. He also encouraged British engagement with al- Hamid as relations with Turkey deteriorated in the 1880s.116 â Stanley’s earliest passion, Africa, occupied him until the end of his life. From the 1870s onwards, he supported African resistance to the imposition of European rule and, in 1879, condemned the Zulu War, which the British had waged against, ‘a people who have shown a desire to cultivate friendly relations with England’.117 Stanley was critical of ÂBritish efforts to establish power and influence over the Transvaal on a firmer basis in 1899, especially since ‘India is certainly sufficient on our hands without grabbing the greater part of Africa.’118 His voice was so over- whelmed by the jingoistic fervour prior to the South African War (1899– 1902) that, despite being a lifelong Russophobe, he contemplated that the Russian government, ‘might be better than ours […] now that liberty of speech is tampered with in India, and threatened in [Britain]’.119 Though scathing about British policy and conduct in the protracted war against the Boers, in 1902 (the year before his death) Stanley admitted to Skrine that he had not been able to, ‘make the recommendations I should like to make on the side of peace. I fear when the time comes that one may speak without being stoned, it will be too late.’120 â So, how effective was Stanley’s lobbying against British imperialism in the late-Victorian period? He certainly pricked a few consciences and

42 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM aired ‘native’ grievances and imperialist injustices which might not Âotherwise have been heard in the public arena. Yet, Stanley’s gripes and views were typically considered by contemporaries to be eccentric, suspect (that is based on hearsay and the evidence of inferior ‘natives’ rather than reliable British officialdom),121 and out of line with public opinion, particularly with regards to the Ottoman Empire and Africa. Stanley’s lobbying, especially in the Lords, was not helped by weak communica- tion caused by his deafness. Lord Derby (1826–93) noted in his diary in 1880 that Stanley had been in the Lords, ‘denouncing the govt., as his manner is, in a confidential whisper: so low that [Lord] Argyll, who was to answer, had to leave his place and sit in front of the Woolsack in order to hear him.’122 Few Peers had the patience or inclination to listen to or take Stanley very seriously. Referring to a debate on Transvaal politics the following year, Derby noted wryly that, ‘the peers scattered as soon as [Stanley] began’.123 Stanley himself admitted in the Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review late in life that the journal offered him greater freedom of speech and a fairer hearing than he received in Parliament, which comprised ‘an audience that is unprepared, and […] takes no very keen interest in Indian subjects’.124 However, as a Cheshire newspaper commented after Stanley’s death, his deafness: inevitably made his speeches somewhat detached from the main course of any debate, and a certain gabbling utterance caused him to be listened to far more negligently than the shrewdness of some of his views and the wideness of his information deserved. In an impatient world he could not do himself justice. If he had done so he would have been found at once to be a genuine although eccentric intellectual member of an extraordinarily gifted family.125 Ameer Ali considered Stanley ‘remarkably shrewd, well-read and broadminded’, and believed that, ‘His eccentricity in the minds of his detractors consisted in the fact that he had avowedly abandoned the traditional creed of Christendom and had embraced Islam.’126 But, Stanley’s lobbying had only a modest impact in the short term. His passion for justice and ambition to end further imperial encroachments were ahead of their time, but proved to be morally vindicated later in the twentieth century. â Stanley devoted much time and energy to foreign policy and issues affecting both Muslims and non-Muslims overseas, but he did not at any stage—at least not in public or in his surviving private correspondence—engage with late-Victorian discourse about Islam discussed earlier. Perhaps his silence was simply a reflection of the age, with a

43 LOYAL ENEMIES range of factors—not least migration, changing family and class structure, and the mass organisation of work—shifting religion from the communal to the private sphere.127 However, given the level of debate about Islam and Muslims in the latter period of Stanley’s life and his readiness to engage with certain aspects of foreign affairs, his silence is intriguing. Stanley was certainly reluctant to be a public Muslim figure, let alone a spokesperson for Islam and Muslims. His hesitancy might have stemmed from the controversy and criticism that news of his conversion had provoked in 1859. The reaction of Stanley’s family to his apostasy from Christianity and all that formal affiliation to the Church entailed seems to have made him genuinely wary of similar accusations of ‘disloyalty’ to the Crown experienced by earlier ‘renegades’, as well as English Roman Catholics for their extra-territorial connections with Rome and the papacy.128 Ten years after Stanley’s conversion, when his marriage to Fabia was revealed, the family again attacked his ‘Moorish’ beliefs and questioned his patriotism.129 In a passionate defence of her husband, Fabia wrote through Henry (her grasp of English was poor and the words might well have been his) to his sympathetic aunt Ellin Stan- ley (d.1876) that, ‘Henry has never been a professed Moor, since that legal phrase means becoming a subject of Turkey or Marocco [sic] and abandoning one’s country with legal forms.’ Indeed, Henry had never really abandoned England—as far as he was concerned, conversion to Islam did not entail or necessitate that. Fabia continued: With respect to the belief of my husband, his belief is his own, absolutely his own, whatever it is; no one has any right to meddle with it. The Religious [sic] belief of any rite is sanctified by God; happy are those who believe in anything, and unhappy are they who have faith in nothing.130 â Although Stanley mixed with immigrant Muslims in England, until the 1880s he was isolated as a British Muslim, which made him vulnerable and probably increased his reluctance to engage with Islamic affairs or defend Islam. Nor did Stanley get publicly involved with Britain’s first Muslim political and social organisations, such as the Anjuman-i Islam or Quilliam’s Liverpool Muslim Institute, which are discussed in Chap- ters Two and Three.131 Rather, by the late-Victorian period, in addition to his ongoing activism in foreign affairs, Stanley was as much interested in domestic causes and issues connected with his obligations as a landed aristocrat. This activity reflected both Stanley’s increasing conservatism and, conveniently, his Britishness. Indeed, during the 1880s, Stanley

44 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM moved further to the political right and attended Conservative Party meetings. Like contemporaries to the right of the Liberals, he was irritated by government over-legislation, particularly measures affecting property rights, and worried by the threat of socialism.132 â So, while Blunt, Ameer Ali and others were contributing to popular, learned journals such as the Fortnightly Review and Nineteenth Century in defence of Islam and Muslims, Stanley submitted articles relating to agriculture and land, taxation and, interestingly, the Church. He asserted the benefit to the labouring classes of the gentry in rural life and, in reverse of his earlier sympathies, argued against free trade in favour of fiscal reform and the imposition of duties on imported food to protect British manufacturing and farming.133 Stanley also rallied to the Conser- vative campaign against disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales (he spent much time on his Anglesey estate), joining the Church Defence Institution to preserve the ecclesiastical, constitutional, legal and historical identity between the Church in Wales and England.134 â To contemporaries, Stanley’s public allegiance to the Church in the 1880s and 1890s seemed incongruous with his adhesion to Islam because popular belief held that the latter was antagonistic towards Christianity. Yet, despite early religious doubts and then his conversion, Stanley respected Christianity as a ‘sister faith’ of Islam and, as was expected of a man in his position, became the patron of several Cheshire and Anglesey churches. As a Muslim, Stanley did not recognise a difference between the religious and the secular, and believed firmly in the intertwining of religion, state and society; he was also pragmatic, realising that Islam would not supplant Christianity in Britain. Therefore, rather than contest the role of the Church, he worked to defend the principle of establishment, Church and State mutually reinforcing each other for the common good. It follows that he also objected to the ‘conscience clause’ of the 1870 Education Act, by which children could be withdrawn from all religious instruction in state schools. Because of his objections, the Alderley schools received no government grants, and were maintained by Stanley and his tenantry until his death. In 1876, Stanley spoke in the Lords of his anxiety that time devoted to religious instruction in schools was in decline, and both the Bible and the Lord’s Prayer were being neglected.135 Late in life, he translated a new edition of de Lamennais’s (1782–1854) Essay on Indifference Toward Religion (originally written to revitalise the papacy and episcopacy, and impreg-

45 LOYAL ENEMIES nate the state with a religious sense), believing that it contained persua- sive arguments against both disestablishment and recent ‘secular’ education policies.136 The outspoken Muslim convert, Quilliam, thought that Stanley’s opposition to disestablishment, ‘qua Moslem, is a little hard to follow, perhaps. […] Mohammedans have neither part nor lot in priestcraft, in pandering to priestcraft, or in financially shoring up the rotten edifice of an endowed Church alien to the native wishes’.137 â Stanley’s renewed public connection with Christianity in his twilight years persuaded some members of his family that he was on the verge of conversion to Catholicism before his death.138 This was undoubtedly wishful thinking on their part, but the apparent incongruity between his respect for Christianity and Islam also encouraged some British newspapers to wrongly assume that he died a Christian. The Daily Mirror commented that his death, ‘removes a very prominent Churchman from the House of Lords’.139 Stanley’s favourite newspaper, the Morning Post, was more astute, remarking that, although he had converted to Islam, he ‘remain[ed] nevertheless catholic, in the strict sense of the word, as far as his relations with members of other religions were concerned’.140 A Cheshire columnist also highlighted that: His Lordship never made any secret of his religious convictions, and it seems rather paradoxical to say, as a London paper said of him, that he died a Christian gentleman. But in all his acts towards his fellows the late Lord was a Christian in the truest sense of the word. He was a liberal supporter of Christian churches; he was generous to the poor, and many kindly acts of his, in keeping with a ÂChristian character, have been placed on record. It is not solely a man’s religious faith that makes him a good man; nor can we judge of a man as he lived and by his conduct. And if we judge of the late Lord Stanley on these merits we must conclude that he was what is generally understood to be a good Christian.141 Writing in the Liverpool Evening Express, a local Muslim argued that Stanley’s charitable nature and work for the Church should not be mis- construed—it simply showed that, like all good Muslims, he had grasped ‘the true spirit of Islamic toleration’.142

Commitment to Islam How, then, did Stanley sustain and adapt his faith, and what evidence is there to demonstrate his continued commitment to Islam? Though, as we have seen, imperial culture made it difficult to be Muslim in mid-to-late-

46 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM Victorian Britain, Stanley managed to sustain his commitment through travel in the Muslim world, contact with Muslims and sympathetic non- Muslims in Britain, and private study. When the Tunisian traveller and writer, Muhammad Bairam (1840–89), met him in about 1880, Stanley was apparently very well versed on the principles of Muslim theology, and talked of the Prophet with ‘profound love and deep respect’.143 â Because Stanley did not reject Christianity altogether after 1859, his transition to a Muslim life was not necessarily ideologically or practically difficult (and this might also help to further explain why some people thought he died a Christian). Indeed, there is evidence of continuity. For example, despite inheriting a fortune in 1869, Stanley continued to live a quiet and modest life; and although he did, as might be expected, keep alcohol in his houses, he remained teetotal. Unlike many later converts, he did not take any active part in Temperance campaigning but did close all but one of the public houses on the Alderley estate (and threatened the sole survivor—the Wizard Inn—with closure).144 His conversion necessitated some minor adjustments to his lifestyle, such as abstaining from eating pork.145 There is no evidence to prove that he did or did not engage with either the hadith (report of the sayings/doings of the Prophet Muhammad) or sunna (custom, practice of Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community, which is for Muslims an authoritative example of the correct way to live a Muslim life). However, he did find guidance for living in the Qur’an, telling his sister Kate, Viscountess Amberley, in June 1869 that it gave full directions as to how to manage the property he had just inherited.146 Stanley also sought advice from his network of Muslim friends and acquaintances. For example, Blunt noted in his diary that Stanley consulted the grand mufti (learned exponent of the sharia, ‘the path to be followed’ or Islamic law) at Constantinople for advice about his wife, who was ‘socially impossible and mad’, to see ‘whether he might avail himself of his Moslem right and put Fabia away, but he never had the heart to do so, nor would he do anything which might cause a scandal to his religious profession’.147 In terms of the five ‘pillars’ of Islam, Stanley accepted the oneness of God and acknowledged Muhammad as the Messenger of God.148 He worshipped both in church and privately in Britain, and attended mosques in Muslim countries—Bairam, for example, noted that Stanley was regular in the five daily prayers and constant at midnight prayers.149 Although there was no mechanism for contributing zakat (almsgiving

47 LOYAL ENEMIES or religious tax)150 in Britain until the mid-1890s (see Chapter Two), Stanley gave generously to local churches, helped clergy in poor parishes and regularly made charitable donations abroad, such as for famine relief and Muslim education in India. It is, however, unclear whether he observed Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting) in Britain or made the hajj (though we saw earlier that he visited Mecca as early as 1859). â Stanley’s commitment to Islam set the tone for subsequent generations of converts—it was practical and pragmatic, adapted to the circumstances of living in a non-Muslim country, and thereby necessitated compromise and negotiation. One compromise involved him succumbing to family pressure and disapproval of his Islamic marriage by remarrying Fabia according to English law at a London registry office in November 1869 (in 1874, he remarried Fabia in a Roman Catholic ceremony to ease her Catholic conscience, which further encouraged his family to believe that he was edging towards Catholicism).151 Stanley’s Britishness and continued respect for Christianity syncretised with his new faith and Muslim sensibility. This was starkly evidenced in his restoration of Anglesey’s Llanbadrig Church in 1884, which he insisted should be carried out on the condition that the new interior included elements of Islamic design. The church was thus fitted with blue, white and red geometric-designed glass windows, with a blue glass in the east window and blue tiles around the sanctuary. The empty niche, which previously held a statue of

St. Â Patrick, was filled with a mosaic of the Good Shepherd. Contrary to Islamic stipulations pertaining to religious places, the mosaic contained depictions of both humans and animals.152 â Despite the obstacles, Stanley was, to quote Blunt, ‘a sincere Moslem without parade’,153 and remained a quietly religious man through to the end of his life. As Stanley lay dying from pneumonia in December 1903, his sister Blanche, Countess of Airlie, wrote that: I do not think […] that he has been a sad man, for he has had joys of his own, being at one with his God, from whom he takes all willingly without repining, and in this submission there is great content, and he loved nature and real sport, and Oriental learning, and order and obedience, and he had a fair estate to rule over, and he enjoyed improving it in his own way. No, I think he had been a happy man.154 Stanley died a Muslim and was hastily buried so early in the morning that a Pan-Islamic Society representative dispatched from London missed the ceremony.155 Once the private burial was over, Stanley’s rela-

48 BRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM tives informed the press that, contrary to all expectations that he would be interred in the family vault underneath the chancel of Alderley Parish Church (which he had paid to rebuild some years earlier), ‘In obedience to his wishes, it was conducted according to the rites of the Mussulman religion’.156 In his will, dated 1896, Stanley was not explicit about having a Muslim funeral, merely stating that he wished to be buried in a small plantation on the Alderley estate, ‘my funeral to be conducted as simply and inexpensively as possible’.157 However, he appears to have left separate instructions with his family, who ensured that he was buried not in a customary Muslim shroud but the next best thing, a plain deal coffin, and under the direction of the imam (religious leader) to the Turkish Embassy in London. Naturally, news of the funeral fascinated the press: the Daily Express thought it ‘a weird spectacle’;158 the Alderley and Wilmslow Advertiser considered it ‘a remarkable one in many respects’, reporting the following week that, ‘Large numbers have visited Alderley in the hope of seeing something of the grave of the late Lord, but no one has been permitted to trespass in the plantation and the private grounds.’159 â Stanley’s varied, inter-faith and cross-cultural interests were evidenced by the range of tributes that followed his death: besides ‘requiem services’ held at Quilliam’s Liverpool Muslim Institute, Christian clergy remembered him in their sermons—at Llanddona Church (Anglesey), for example, the rector told his congregation that, ‘Humility was a noted feature of his character. He knew no pride unless it was the pride of doing good.’160 When Stanley’s death was announced to the Indian National Congress, the 1,800-strong assembly rose as a mark of respect.161 One admirer suggested to the Morning Post that, ‘Nowhere will his death be mourned more deeply than in India which had no truer friend in this country.’162 Indeed, a Calcutta journal considered Stanley’s death, ‘a distinct and irreparable loss to the people of India’.163 With his widow, Fabia, a devout Catholic and childless, the Muslim line within the ÂStanley’s of Alderley was quickly extinguished, and Henry was succeeded by his avowedly agnostic brother, Edward Lyulph Stanley.

49 2.âWilliam Henry Abdullah Quilliam at Prayer, c.1905. Source: Liverpool ÂFreeman, 8 July 1905, p.â11. 2

‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’

W. H.Â ABDULLAHÂ QUILLIAM AND ISLAM, 1856–1932

William Henry Abdullah Quilliam, founder of the Liverpool Muslim Institute, is arguably a more influential figure in the history of British Islam than Henry Stanley. A generation younger than Stanley, Quilliam had the confidence and ambition to defend and propagate Islam on British soil and actively encourage conversion amongst his compatriots. Like Stanley, Quilliam did not write an autobiography, but his extensive writings about Islam as well as private, public and official reflections on him and his activities help us to reconstruct his colourful life and tackle some key questions: Why did he convert to Islam and then defend and propagate his new faith? How did he seek to spread Islam in Britain? What were the consequences of those actions, especially in terms of personal belief, identity and politics, and public responses?

I. ÂQuilliam, Islam and religious conversion In contrast to Henry Stanley, Quilliam was born into a solidly middle- class, Methodist family in Liverpool in 1856.1 While his father, Robert (d.1889), immersed himself in the successful family watch manufacturing firm, his mother, Harriet (1832–1901), devoted herself to the care

51 LOYAL ENEMIES of their only child. Having once been active with the United Methodist Free Church, Harriet also dabbled with evangelical causes. These incluÂ ded the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts and, as con- sumption of alcohol reached its peak in the early 1870s, Temperance work.2 She joined the Good Templar Order in 1872 and helped establish the ‘Fairfield Lodge’, which was based in the Quilliam family home at Fairfield Crescent.3 Young William was inevitably drawn into the orbit of Methodism and its moral crusade. Indeed, in 1863 (aged seven) his grandmother took him to a Band of Hope meeting in the local United Methodist chapel, where he signed the total-abstinence pledge. The following year, he sat on the platform of a Temperance meeting at Edge Hill, captivated by his grandfather’s lecture on ‘The Advantages of Sobriety in both Worlds’. By the age of fourteen, Quilliam was secretary to the Russell Street Temperance Society and Band of Hope, the first of many Temperance groups for which he enthusiastically laboured.4 By the time he began studying law in his late teens, Quilliam was already a natural, confident public speaker and skilled debater. â After passing his final exams in 1878, Quilliam became a solicitor of the Supreme Court. Encouraged by his colleagues, he was initiated into the Liverpool Alliance Masonic Lodge.5 The Masonic ideals of non- sectarian fraternity, faith and charity especially appealed to Quilliam. In 1879, he married Hannah Johnstone at the Fairfield Wesleyan Chapel.6 Their first of four children, Robert, was born in September 1880. Although the marriage was not wholly unhappy, Quilliam soon began a long-term affair with a local chorus girl, Mary Lyon, who bore him five more children.7 Quilliam learnt to juggle his two families, living mainly with Hannah in Fairfield Crescent but also devoting time to Mary and their growing family in nearby Moscow Drive. However, the combination of work, women and fatherhood took their toll and, in 1882, an exhausted Quilliam was persuaded to take a holiday in southern Spain.

Islam and conversion Living and working as a ‘poor man’s lawyer’ in Liverpool, a vast port nestling on the Mersey estuary and a magnet for a constant but shifting population of seafarers and travellers (in 1872, the Chief Constable estimated that, at any one time, Liverpool had a shifting population of 20,000), Quilliam would have come into contact with an ethnically and

52 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ culturally diverse range of people, including Muslims.8 But it was probably not until c.1882, when he extended his Spanish holiday by crossing from Gibraltar to Morocco, that Quilliam entered a Muslim country for the first time. He later told a journalist that, onboard ship, he was, ‘profoundly impressed by the behaviour of a number of [Muslim] pilgrims, who when the hour of devotion arrived performed their ablu- tions and said their prayers on deck regardless of the curious glances of the foreigners.’9 It is unclear why Quilliam ventured to North Africa, but in southern Spain he might have been struck by the rich architec- tural and cultural heritage of the Islamic period, which compelled him to explore the nearby Maghreb. At around the same time another Eng- lishman, the theatrical scene-painter Hedley Churchward (d.1929), visited the former centre of Moorish Spain, Cordoba, whilst on a sketching holiday. Captivated by the old Moorish towns, Churchward travelled on to Morocco and then across North Africa, where he converted to Islam. Churchward married an Egyptian and eventually settled among the Cape Malay community in South Africa.10 Quilliam’s religious conversion was more protracted than Churchward’s, but he also immediately engaged with the culture and religion of the Maghreb. Back in Liverpool, Quilliam studied an English edition of the Qur’an and read some of the many Victorian tomes on Muhammad and Islam, including works by Carlyle, Urquhart, Muir and Ameer Ali discussed in the previous chapter.11 â Like Stanley, Quilliam’s experience of Islam abroad and his subsequent study of the faith accentuated pre-existing religious doubts which, for Quilliam, concerned the validity of the form of Christianity revealed to him through Methodism. The trend towards religious doubt and unbelief that began in the mid-nineteenth century rapidly increased in the 1870s, leading more people—Christian and agnostic—to believe that the Christian faith rested on less secure foundations than it had thirty years earlier.12 The historian Hugh McLeod has shown that this was caused not by a single Victorian religious ‘crisis’ but rather a series of loosely related crises. It was undoubtedly encouraged by the spread of scientific knowledge and developments in the critical study of the New Testament, which raised questions about the accuracy and consistency of the Biblical accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus. Questions were also asked about the morality of Christian doctrines, particularly those of hell and atonement. Moreover, some Victorians contended that,

53 LOYAL ENEMIES while knowledge was advancing in all fields, Christianity, through its rigid adherence to creeds, remained stuck in the past and dogmatic. Concurrently, Anglican Church membership and attendance continued to decline. This was a result of both saturation and the weakening of the social role of religion encouraged by a preoccupation with leisure and the decline of social paternalism, of which religious institutions and ideology had often been a part.13 That said, organised religious bodies continued to play a major role in public life. Consequently, as historian Jose Harris explains, in spite of some notable crises and conversions (typically within Christianity), few Victorians experienced an outright loss of faith but, rather, ‘dilution, adjustment, or diversification of religious belief into something that was often much more nuanced and nebulous than had been common in the early Victorian age’. In this pluralistic context, worshippers in all branches of rank-and-file religion began to, ‘ignore the claims of authority and to shop around among denominations and individual churches until they found the mixture of liturgy and theology that suited them best’.14 â Quilliam never explained his formal departure from Methodism but his later writings indicate that, doctrinally, scepticism about the Trinity was pivotal. Like other late Victorian Wesleyans, he might also have felt stifled by the community life of the chapels or by the basic unit of the Wesleyan connexion, the class, which had undergone radical change in the wake of complaints about repetitious meetings, inadequate leaders and the lack of mixing between different social groups.15 Quilliam sought an alternative. Although exposed to Islam abroad, in the absence of Islamic institutions, he first turned to Unitarianism, which, like Islam, seemed to encourage enquiry through reason and was something of a haven for those with unorthodox religious views.16 Quilliam briefly attended a local Unitarian ministry, which would have re-introduced him to both Muhammad and Christ alongside Krishna, Buddha et al. as teachers about God. Quilliam was urged to pledge his allegiance to Unitarianism but reputedly refused to go ‘half-way’ and, instead, soon turned to Islam.17 â Quilliam’s refusal to go ‘half-way’ indicates that he believed Christian- ity as a whole to be at fault. Pledging himself to another (albeit conflicting) denomination of Christianity was, therefore, not an option. Indeed, as his later writings and lectures further show, by comparing and contrasting Christianity and Islam, Quilliam rejected not only some of the doctrines but also the institution of Christianity. He considered that, in

54 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ spite of its doctrinal similarities with Christianity, Islam was the more reasonable, rational and practical faith, which, in the absence of priesthood, taught a simple message: ‘The belief in the existence of a supreme being, One and eternal; the brotherhood of man; an [sic] hereafter; personal responsibility for individual actions; the succession of inspired teachers.’18 Islam seemed to be less dogmatic, lacking both the incomprehensible doctrines (such as original sin) and mystery that Quilliam believed ‘priests of all religions’ had played upon ‘to make persons slaves to dogma and theological absurdities’.19 As he wrote in 1890: Anything incomprehensible or tinged with improbability must of necessity create doubt and distrust, and perhaps confusion in the mind of the seeker for truth, and most of all is this to be dreaded in the case of religious belief where issues are so momentous, and the consequences of error or fallacy so serious. What we desire to know is the great facts as to our own spiritual nature and destiny. Islam gives the answer in simple language. It teaches man to be resigned to the inscrutable and allwise [sic] will of the Deity.20 âQuilliam took comfort from the monotheism at the heart of the Qur’an and its rejection of the Trinity: ‘For the Qur’an, “God is but one God. Far be it from him that He should have a son!”’21 Quilliam believed that Christianity, which had ‘dropped or explained away’ various doctrines and split into numerous sects (Methodism alone had divided into half a dozen or more denominations and Liverpool itself was bitterly divided between its Catholic and Protestant communities),22 ‘was now, instead of being an aggressive force, simply an existing creed, requiring to be explained and apologised for’.23 In contrast, based on the ÂQur’an (believed by Muslims to be the Word of God exactly as Muhammad received it), Islam was (in theory—and certainly in the eyes of a zealous convert) a non-sectarian, virile, ‘living, aggressive faith, holding intact every one of its primitive doctrines’.24 Plainly, other established ‘Eastern’ religions did not appeal to Quilliam once he had encountered Islam—besides, whilst Theosophy (a system of beliefs derived from the sacred writings of Brahmanism and Buddhism) gained some support in Britain after 1875, the practice of Hinduism was complicated by difficulties of penetrating (and exporting) the caste system,25 and few Britons were attracted by ‘pure’ Buddhist philosophy and morality before the twentieth century.26 â Such were Quilliam’s many frustrations with Christianity, which, experience taught him, ‘demanded implicit belief without investigation

55 LOYAL ENEMIES or inquiry’. Importantly for the inquisitive Quilliam, Islam ‘courted the fullest enquiry and was agreeable to both reason and science’.27 As he later wrote, contrary to popular belief, Islam was therefore not an unnatural choice of religion for a Westerner: Those who cannot understand how “Islam can be accepted by a European”, have no proper comprehension of Western peoples. In the British Isles we are taught to be logical, and to think and reason for ourselves. Islam as a reasonable and logical faith appeals to men’s reason, and therefore is likely to be adopted by those who reflect and think and have the courage of their convictions.28 â Like Stanley, Blunt and others before him, Quilliam also found Islam to be a tonic to his growing disillusionment with Christian civilisation and its trend towards materialism and the secular state. Quilliam discovered that Islam taught a message that was relevant in the modern world. Rather than, like Christianity, preach a purely ideal moral code, Islam seemed to him to advocate a ‘thoroughly practical’ morality.29 This was clearly important for Quilliam given his Nonconformist background and social conscience.30 As a Wesleyan, he had consistently warned against the dangers of alcohol, gambling and other ‘vice’ with little avail. Quilliam believed that Islam offered a genuine remedy to these—both in sentiment and in practice. Indeed, in the Maghreb, he had been, ‘struck with the apparent sincerity of its followers, and the freedom of Moslem cities from the degrading vices so prevalent in large centres of population in Great Britain’.31 â Given his own sexual promiscuity and belief that men could love more than one woman at the same time, Quilliam also identified positive benefits in the practice of polygamy. He initially argued that, while polygamy was not prevalent in Muslim lands, ‘where it exists it prevents a degraded class springing up in the community like there is in this and other Christian lands’.32 Undoubtedly reflecting on his children by Mary, he later argued that: in the interests alike of the great number of single women, of the second wife, and of the children who at present have no legal status, a limited form of Polygamy such as is legalised in Islam, which would legitimise their position, would be a good thing for them, and for the morals of the community.33 Quilliam also admired the Muslim tradition of zakat and was encouraged by the Masonic-like fraternity and solidarity among Muslims epitomised in the concept of umma (which theoretically transcends ethnic or politi-

56 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ cal definition), and which Quilliam found lacking among Christians. Reflecting on juma namaz (Friday prayer) some twenty years after establishing the LMI, he contrasted ‘the simple cordiality of the [Muslim] congregation’ with, ‘the frigidity which usually prevails between Chris- tians. Black brothers were made no less welcome than white, whereas in a Christian Church they would probably be regarded as intruders, and as being without souls to save, though with bodies to kick.’34 â Previously stifled by the formality of chapel and church, Quilliam found the absence of priesthood, elaborate ceremony and ritual in Islam refreshing. He came to repudiate Church hierarchy and privilege and the ‘class’ character of organised Christianity (epitomised in the pew rent): ‘The religion of God should be free to all, and it is only in Islam that this principle is carried out in its entirety.’35 â When compared with a theoretical, idealised Islam, Quilliam found both Christianity and Christian society wanting. Exactly when Quilliam formally converted to Islam and took the Muslim name Abdullah (‘servant of Allah’) is unclear, but he stated in his Will of 1929 that he had been a ‘True Believer in the One only and Eternal God and in His Holy Prophet, Muhammad’ since 1882.36 He did not, however, publicly announce his conversion until 1887. On a personal level, family disapproval at his conversion (his father was especially critical) had subsided in the five years since he had found Islam.37 But, as we saw in the previous chapter, 1887 was also the year in which Canon Taylor’s remarks about Islam shocked the Church Congress and, crucially, prompted renewed, widespread discussion about Islam in Britain.

Muslim life Despite opposition to his conversion, in many respects Quilliam’s disci- plined upbringing eased his transition towards a Muslim way of life. Again like Stanley, after his profession of faith, Quilliam continued to abstain from alcohol, gave up pork and embraced the most practical aspects of Islam. He seems to have been well-versed in the hadith, but does not appear to have engaged with the sunna to any great extent. Whilst he later preached that it was incumbent upon every Muslim to pray five times a day, Quilliam’s professional commitments necessitated a more practical alternative. As we will see in the next chapter, by the early 1890s, the LMI provided for Quilliam and other Muslims the

57 LOYAL ENEMIES institutional structure to practise the ritualistic aspects of Islam and thereby sustain commitment to their new religion. Quilliam regularly led worship and prayers at the LMI, kept to fasting during Ramadan and established a zakat fund in c.1895, to which each member of the Institute was supposed to contribute one-fortieth portion of their income.38 But, even then, Quilliam’s own practice of Islam remained flexible, if somewhat contradictory in light of his rhetoric and the advice he gave to other British Muslims. For example, although Quilliam often stated publicly that he intended to make the hajj, it seems unlikely that he ever did. And, while he told fellow Muslims that they must instruct their children how to pray, he did not impress this upon his own offspring.39 Perhaps this is illustrative of a man who advocated freedom of belief, but it seems more likely that Hannah and Mary, both of whom remained Christians, resisted it. Notably, the pragmatic Quilliam only instructed his young daughters to wear a veil when in the company of their Arabic teacher, who was from overseas.40

II. ÂDefending and propagating Islam in late-Victorian Britain News of Quilliam’s conversion to Islam—the first of note in Britain since Stanley’s—might have attracted modest publicity in 1887, but, because he decided to immediately propagate his faith, it garnered international attention. A student in India excitedly wrote that, ‘According to the prophecy contained in the Koran “A witness shall be raised out of every nation.” God has raised a witness of the truth of Islam from among the English.’41 If Quilliam’s public propagation of Islam raised eyebrows abroad, at home it was first met with shock and indignation: embracing the religion of the colonised was still considered to be an inversion, but for an apparently intelligent Englishman to then advocate Islam—and on British soil—was heresy and an affront to British respectability. Indeed, Quilliam found that, ‘I was looked upon as a species of monomaniac, and if I endeavoured to induce people to discuss the respective merits of the two religions, I was either laughed at or insulted.’42 The Liverpool Review suggested that Quilliam’s efforts were doomed to failure because Islam was ‘a belief so foreign to western minds’.43 But, writing on the position of ‘Islam in England’ in 1891, Quilliam argued that: ‘Surely it is quite as justifiable for Moslems to endeavour to promulgate their faith in England as it is for Christians to

58 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ mission India, China, and Africa, to make converts to Christianity.’44 Indeed, in stark contrast to Stanley, Quilliam largely operated outside of metropolitan Orientalist circles to propagate Islam in Britain, the country with which he ultimately had the greatest affinity, in a brave and ambitious attempt at ‘converting the British nation to Islam’.45

Means and method Versed in the Nonconformist tradition of preaching and a seasoned public speaker, Quilliam naturally chose the lecture hall as the main vehicle for his missionary activity. The fusion of his talent and Britishness produced a unique method of proselytising: I […] determined that I would promulgate the tenets of Islam in an indirect way, and for this purpose whenever I was asked by my old temperance friends […] to deliver a lecture on Total Abstinence from intoxicating drink I invari- ably introduced in some form or another a reference to Mahomedanism. By this means I drew public attention to the matter, and caused enquiry upon the subject.46 â Quilliam delivered the first of these lectures, titled ‘Fanatics and Fanaticism’, in June 1887 under the auspices of the Liverpool Temper- ance League. It was the first public lecture delivered in Britain by a Briton for the purpose of propagating Islam. The lecture is a fine example and indicative of Quilliam’s measured and subtle approach. Its prem- ise was that, ‘perhaps no cause is more subjected to ridicule than the Temperance Movement.’ Quilliam spoke from personal experience, as his teetotalism had frequently provoked compatriots to label him a ‘fanatic’. However, as he revealed, many notable ‘fanatics and visionaries’ who had taken the total abstinence pledge in the past—including Quaker members of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the pioneering railway engineer George Stephenson (1781–1848)— had subsequently been elevated as national heroes. After an hour of elaboration, Quilliam subtly turned to the example of Muhammad, who, he said, had initially been ‘regarded as a madman and a fanatic’ and subjected to persecution. Quilliam briefly related the story of Muhammad’s life in Mecca through to his arrival in Medina, where he sought refuge from discrimination: He was called a fanatic, a fool, a madman, an addlepated [sic] enthusiast, a visionary. Today he is regarded by millions of people as the Prophet of the

59 LOYAL ENEMIES Living God. I am aware that there are bigoted persons in this Island of ours who, in the narrow confines of their miserable self-conceit and ignorance, regard Mahomet as a false prophet, and speak of him as such. I care not for their opinions, no true student of history can so regard him.47 â In response to the ‘bigots’ and to help legitimise his argument, ÂQuilliam quoted a favourable passage about Muhammad from Carlyle, ‘the greatest thinker this 19th century has produced in England’. He then posited as an afterthought that Muhammad was also, ‘a total abstainer from intoxicants, and gave that law to his followers’.48 Despite the subtlety of his message, it was indicative of Victorian attitudes and insecurities about Islam that a number of local Christian ministers claimed that, by publishing a verbatim account of the lecture, the ÂTemperance League itself was advocating Islam to the disparagement of Christianity. The crucial portion of Quilliam’s lecture that dealt with Muhammad was thus edited from the published account. Quilliam’s threat of legal proceedings apparently compelled the League to republish it in its original form, but his name was temporarily removed from the list of speakers by Temperance societies across Liverpool.49 â Quilliam was immediately forced on the defensive—he had to dispel some of the many established myths and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims. He later lamented that: Frequently one is absolutely wearied at the number of times stupid and manifest errors, such as that the Prophet’s coffin hangs in mid-air in a case, retained in this position by a complex system of loadstones, or that Muslims believe that women have no souls, or other similar absurdities, are reiterated, and have again for the one thousandeth [sic] time to be contradicted.50 Quilliam argued in 1895 that: These stories have now been handed down through so many centuries that from their very age they have become almost venerably respectable. They are impliÂ citly believed in by thousands of English people, and it will require a great deal of time, a vast deal of patience, and an immense amount of arduous work before Muslims succeed in eradicating such erroneous notions from the minds of the inhabitants of the British Isles.51 It was an exhaustive struggle for which Quilliam above all others was prepared to fight and, indeed, throughout the rest of his life he strongly refuted the old shibboleths about Islam and Muslims to as wide an audience as possible. As a compatriot, he appealed to ‘the Englishman’s

60 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ boasted love of “fairplay”’, and pleaded from his audience for ‘a calm and unbiassed [sic] consideration of the facts and authorities I shall marshal before them’.52 Thus, by means of comparison with Christianity (and occasionally Judaism), and sympathetic quotations regarding Muhammad and Islam from respected British authors (Carlyle remained a favourite), he repeatedly denied that fatalism and Islam were synonymous terms and rejected the idea that Islam was propounded by the sword.53 He refuted that Muhammad and his followers led sinful lives and deployed a range of justifications for Islamic codes, especially regarding divorce and the place of women in Muslim society by comparing and contrasting the social and legal position of women in Christian and Muslim lands. According to Quilliam, Islam had always provided for a wife to obtain a separation from her husband on certain grounds that had not been the case in English law until the late-nineteenth century. He concluded that, ‘the position of women under Islamic law was in no case more unfavour- able from that of many European women, whilst in many respects she occupied a decidedly better legal position’.54 â Quilliam’s Britishness enabled him to engage with indigenous audiences through a familiar discourse. As the Ceylon Muhammadan noted after a typical public lecture in 1901:

Mr. ÂQuilliam is a thorough judge of human character, and, above all, of the English character, and he knows very well how to bring home the arguments to the average Englishman. […] Mr. QuilliamÂ spoke in an eloquent and fervid manner for more than an hour, interspersing his lecture with racy and humor- ous anecdotes; he was listened to with rapt attention.55 The Sheffield Telegraph later considered that, ‘Islam could not have a more clever exponent of its principles. He made the faith appear so simple, child-like, and lovable that the wonder was all the world had not been converted to it ages ago.’56 Anxious that his many detractors would readily expose him as a crank and his religion a fraud, Quilliam presented the essentials of a theoretical Islam and was seldom critical of his faith, Muslims and Muslim societies. This was fitting of an ardent convert and missionary eager to promote the equality, simplicity, fraternity and anti-sectarianism of Islam. â In his effort to demystify Islam and encourage converts, Quilliam consistently highlighted the similarities between the three great Abraha- mic faiths.57 Turning towards his largely Protestant audiences, he emphasised the continuity between Christianity and Islam. Quilliam

61 LOYAL ENEMIES argued that Protestant views of the Trinity were based upon ‘a miscon- ception’ of the word referring to Jesus Christ in their translation of the Bible by the term ‘Son’, ‘but which could more appropriately be rendered Messenger’. He would thus substitute the word ‘Son’ in the following saying of St Paul with ‘Messenger’: ‘“God, who at sundry times in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His messenger.”’ For Quilliam, this was ‘the true Muslim doctrine’, since every Muslim recognised Jesus as one of several Prophets.58 He insisted that, contrary to popular belief, Muhammad had never claimed that Islam was a new religion: [Muhammad] simply declared [Islam] to be the original true religion given to Adam, preached by Noah, followed by Ibrahim (Abraham), taught by Musa (Moses), and practised by Issa (Jesus Christ), and purified by Muhammad from the misunderstandings and corruptions, particularly such as had crept into it among the Christian sects in Arabia.59 â Quilliam argued that since both Jews and Christians believed in the inspiration of the prophets, ‘by what logic, therefore, could they deny the inspiration of Muhammed […], whose claims to inspiration rested on a firmer and surer historical basis than any of those who had preceded him’.60 For Quilliam, Islam was the final revelation and a return to Truth without new dogma, and which, unlike Christianity (he was less sure about Judaism),61 was wholly compatible with modern scientific knowledge.62 Whilst Quilliam considered Islam to be ‘a return to first principles’, he claimed that it was ‘not an antagonistic faith towards Judaism or Christianity; it was the via media, the middle way, in which all could meet and walk hand in hand’.63 He thereby appealed to his predominantly Christian listeners or readers to, ‘throw away the idle ceremonies and man made creeds which formed part of their modern faith, and return to the primitive teaching of Christ which they would find was simply the pure religion of Islam as taught by our prophet’.64 â Conscious of a genuine fear that Islam was an aggressive faith spread by the sword, Quilliam emphasised that the Qur’an itself dictated that there was ‘no compulsion in religion’. He shrewdly impelled his audience to apply the test of reason to both Christianity and Islam: If you consider Islam is a more reasonable faith than Christianity, then why not adopt it? If, on the other hand, you are satisfied with your present creed, so be it. Islam never forces the acceptance of its creed upon any man. It offers it to all. Each one is free to accept or reject it.65

62 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ â Quilliam espoused a simple, rational message and invited those people to convert to Islam who embraced the two propositions inherent in the shahada. Within a month of delivering his ‘Fanatics’ lecture he had gained four converts, who formed a small Qur’an reading group at the Temperance Hall in Mount Vernon Street. By September 1887, the meetings were conducted in the name of the ‘Liverpool Muslim ÂInstitute’, of which Quilliam elevated himself first (and only) president. Although by early 1889 he had made around twenty converts, by his own standards his mission in the late 1880s was, ‘not very successful, most persons thus addressed flatly stating that they did not care a pin which was the true religion, and that, in their opinion, one was just as good as another’.66 Quilliam and his followers were ejected from the Temperance Hall because the landlord, ‘would not have any persons occupying his premises who did not believe and preach the saving effi- cacy of Christ Jesus’ blood’.67 Undaunted, in late 1889 Quilliam reconstituted the LMI in an old house in Brougham Terrace, facing the busy thoroughfare of West Derby Road (see Chapter Three). Quilliam also bravely widened his net, lecturing to Nonconformists and Temperance societies outside Liverpool. Demand for his lectures increased when, in 1893, al-Hamid II conferred upon Quilliam the title of ‘Sheikh-ul-Islam of the British Isles’—effectively supreme authority on Islam in Britain and leader of British Muslims (the title was subsequently confirmed by the amir of Afghanistan, sultan of Morocco, khedive of Egypt and shah of Persia).68 When Quilliam returned to Morocco in 1893, the Univer- sity of Fez also made him an honorary ‘Doctor of Mussulman Law’ and recognised him as an alim (learned scholar qualified to offer Islamic legal opinions). â Like his Nonconformist contemporaries, Quilliam realised the importance of the printed word to spread his message beyond the lecture hall. He therefore used the mainstream press and journals to undermine traditional prejudice and ignorance about Islam and Muslims.69 Quil- liam also had several collections of his lectures published, most notably The Faith of Islam (1889), of which the first edition of two thousand apparently sold out within eight months, and eventually ran into four English editions and several translations.70 Keen to have greater control over his propaganda, a printing press was installed at the LMI. Â In January 1893, the ‘Crescent Printing Company’ began publication of The Crescent, A Weekly Record of Islam in England, which was modelled on the penny

63 LOYAL ENEMIES weeklies produced by Christian organisations in the same period. Edited by Quilliam, the Crescent generally contained reports on LMI activities, lectures and news of individuals—typically written by and/or about Quilliam and his family. A second journal, the Islamic World (also edited by Quilliam), appeared in 1894 and featured more weighty articles underlying Islamic concerns in the modern world. By mid-1896, ÂQuilliam claimed that both journals were being distributed throughout the world and argued that it was, ‘one of the most important features of our work […] the printed matter we issue is read by thousands and thousands every week’. However, subscribers numbered well under 5,000 and, as he admitted, financially the journals were ‘a loss, and I amafraidÂ it will remain as such for a considerable period’.71 Despite Quilliam’s efforts, the Crescent was still losing money when it ceased publication in 1908.72 Meanwhile, the expense of supporting the Institute also came out of Quilliam’s own pocket,73 and his time and energy for the LMI and further propagation of Islam went unmatched, one critic describing him as ‘an enthusiast’ who ‘seems to me to be killing himself with work’.74 In the year from June 1896, for example, Quilliam delivered forty-three of the fifty-three LMI lectures (some of which were over 90 minutes in duration) and, in addition to his many other professional and social commitments, gave numerous lectures on Islam elsewhere.75

Responses Quilliam was naturally cheered by sympathetic coverage in the popular press. In 1896, for example, the Agnostic Journal commented that Quil- liam and his fellow Muslim’s: presence in our midst will lead to a better understanding of the Islamic faith, a better appreciation of its virtues, and a more generous feeling toward its adherents. As the greatest Muslim power in the world, Great Britain cannot afford to ignore, still less to sneer at, the followers of the crescent and the star.76 On the whole, however, public reactions remained negative. Many people simply dismissed Quilliam and, by extension, his proselytising, as eccentric. To some extent, Quilliam himself cultivated an eccentric image: he was known locally as the ‘old Turk’ for riding through the streets of Liverpool and the Isle of Man (where he had a second home) on a white Arab steed (apparently presented to him by the Ottoman sultan) and wearing a scarlet fez.77 At public occasions, such as the 1902

64 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ Coronation procession in Liverpool, he confidently donned flamboyant ‘Eastern’ robes and the many decorations presented to him by the sultan and other Muslim leaders for his missionary work.78 Perhaps this helped Quilliam renounce his Christian identity and was another form of conversion to the Other’s imaginary.79 Given Quilliam’s colourful character it seems unlikely that he aimed to normalise what was after all atypical ‘Eastern’ dress and, indeed, his costume only really served to further exoticise Islam and Muslims. â Many more compatriots were genuinely threatened by Quilliam’s presence in Britain as the Sheikh-ul-Islam defending and propagating an alien faith. These included defensive Protestant Evangelicals whose confidence in their own mission was shaken by Canon Taylor and others in the 1880s. They were also disturbed by news of the conversions of influential men in other parts of Europe and North America in this period.

For example, the Frenchman Dr PhilippeÂ Grenier (1865–1944) converted to Islam in 1894 and became France’s first Muslim Member of Parliament two years later; the Swedish modernist artist, Ivan Aguéli (1869–1917), converted in c.1898 and became known as Abdul Hadi al-Maghrabi; and, across the Atlantic, the sometime American consul in the Philippines, Alexander Russell Webb (1846–1916), formally announÂ ced his conversion in 1888 and took the name Mohammad.80 As we will see in the next chapter, it was primarily local Christians who verbally and physically attacked Quilliam and his protégés at the LMI, and the Evangelical press was particularly scathing of his proselytising and took every opportunity to publicly discredit Quilliam and Islam. For example, the Moslem World, a popular Christian missionary review, referred to Quilliam as a ‘pervert [of] unsatisfactory character’.81 Commenting a few months after the Agnostic Journal’s praise of Quilliam in 1896, the Christian Soldier remarked that, ‘Sheikh Quilliam is standing on the brink of hell and damnation.’ The following year, it argued that he was ‘possessed of a devil’ and denounced his politics: ‘Imprisonment for life is too merciful a punishment for Sheikh Abdullah Quilliam, the British representative of two kindred fiends—Satan, Sultan of Hell, and “Abdul- Damned”, his Grand Vizier on earth.’82

III. ÂPolitical engagement and divided loyalties, 1890–1908 As the Christian Soldier indicated, it was Quilliam’s championing of the Ottoman sultan-caliph (al-Hamid II) as much as his defence and propa-

65 LOYAL ENEMIES gation of Islam that upset many of his compatriots and, as we shall see, led to accusations that his loyalty to Islam and the umma took precedence over his allegiance to Britain. How did Quilliam intervene in foreign affairs before the First World War, was it effective, and to what extent did it test his loyalties and affect his position in Britain?

Defending the umma For the confident Quilliam, it was perfectly possible to be a patriotic British Muslim loyal to the caliph and umma. Evidence of these dual loyalties were manifested publicly in various ways, for example in 1897 when Quilliam celebrated Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee by having the LMI ‘specially decorated’ with Turkish flags.83 Speaking at the LMI as news of Victoria’s death broke in 1901, the patriotic Quilliam opined that, ‘As most of us are British subjects, I feel sure this news will come to us as sad intelligence. We feel that we can speak of none but her, the mighty dead, who ruled this empire so long and so well.’ A telegram ‘conveying the heartfelt condolences of the British Muslims’ was promptly sent to Edward VII, whose portrait appeared on the cover of the next edition of the Islamic World.84 But, Quilliam then published in the Cres- cent ‘A Muslim anthem’ to be sung to the tune of ‘God Save the King’: God bless the Muslim cause; Bless all who keep Thy laws And do the right. Uphold the Muslim band, In this and every land; Give them full strength to stand Firm in the fight.85 There was a definite political edge to this posturing and rhetoric, but what most aggravated contemporaries was that Quilliam continued to meet and correspond with pan-Islamists and Muslims from countries hostile to Britain and vice-versa.86 For example, when Nasrullah Khan (1875–1920), second son of the amir of Afghanistan, visited England in 1895 to establish direct diplomatic relations with Britain, he agreed to meet Quilliam in Liverpool and donated £2,500 to the LMI.87 By the end of the century, Quilliam was Persian consul at Liverpool and claimed to be the only living British subject to have had personal interviews with Âthe ‘three Oriental Monarchs’—the late shah of Persia (1889), the Ottoman sultan (1890) and the late sultan of Morocco (1893).88

66 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ â Despite Britain’s sensitive relations with the Ottoman Empire, ÂQuilliam openly courted representatives of the latter’s government, and his strongest links remained with Turkey and the sultan-caliph who, for Sunnis like Quilliam, represented universal Islamic fraternity and the grandeur and continuity of a triumphant Islam dating back thirteen centuries. Quilliam appears to have first visited Constantinople in

1890/1, at the invitation of al-Hamid II. HeÂ was accompanied by his eldest son, Robert Ahmad, who was promptly appointed to a position in the Ottoman army and bestowed with the honorary title of ‘Bey’, or General.89 Quilliam himself initially declined personal honours, ‘as he thought if he accepted any decoration, or any title from the sultan, evil- minded persons might say that he was working for Islam for his own personal aggrandisement’.90 Quilliam returned to Constantinople regularly, sometimes residing in the sultan’s Yildiz palace complex and joining al-Hamid’s entourage for prayers and meals.91 In 1894, al-Hamid selected Quilliam to officially open a new mosque in Lagos, Nigeria—an important event for the consolidation of Islam in Yorubaland and a further sign of Quilliam’s credibility within the Muslim world.92 In turn, this encouraged Quilliam to publicly criticise British attitudes and foreign policy when they threatened the integrity and prosperity of the umma, particularly the Ottoman Empire and Caliphate (the office and jurisdiction of the caliph).93 â Quilliam was first compelled to publicly defend the Ottomans in the mid-1890s, following genuine but exaggerated reports in the British press and Parliament of the massacre of ‘dissident’ Armenians by Ottoman troops. After his accession to the throne, al-Hamid II proved unable to stem the tide of Western, liberal, secular and nationalist ideas that had taken hold in the Balkans, particularly in the majority Christian provinces of Armenia, Eastern Anatolia and Macedonia. In the 1890s, this led to nationalist attacks against Muslims and equally violent counter- attacks authorised by the Ottoman government.94 To Quilliam’s indignation, less than two decades after Gladstone’s ‘Bulgarian Horrors’ campaign, the British press and public opinion, followed closely by its politicians, were quick to believe the worst of the Ottoman authorities and ignore the genuine suffering of the Ottoman Muslims. â As news of the ‘Armenian outrages’ filled the columns of the British dailies in late 1894, Quilliam used the press, lectures and addresses at public meetings to denounce those organisations he held responsible for

67 LOYAL ENEMIES spreading exaggerated stories of massacres. At an LMI meeting, he confidently positioned himself as, ‘a native born Briton and as a loyal ÂMuslim subject of Her Majesty’: As one proud of my country and its honourable traditions, I object to have its character sullied by this attempt to force the Government and the nation to prejudge a matter on an ex parte statement. As a Muslim I protest against the falsehoods which are being circulated by these so-called Anglo-Armenians reflecting upon my creed.95 Speaking as a patriot, then, like Stanley and other late-nineteenth century Turcophiles, Quilliam warned against driving Turkey away from Britain and into the arms of Russia, with the consequence of turning the millions of loyal Muslims in the colonies ‘into a phalanx of bitter foes’: ‘As Muslims our creed is our life and we cannot submit to see it insulted. The True-believers are brethren all the world over. Act unjustly to one and you thereby injure the whole fraternity.’96 Quilliam was convinced that the ‘mischievous, unjust, and ill-advised’ Armenian agitation was, like the earlier Bulgarian troubles, part of a conspiracy to defile Islam and undermine Muslim rule.97 â Amid large-scale suffering of both Ottoman Christians and uslimsM in the winter of 1895/6, Quilliam conceded that the Ottoman authorities had committed atrocities. But he also reflected on Britain’s own past to highlight the apparent hypocrisy of British reaction to Turkey. He proposed that the ‘conditions of matters in Armenia prior to the disturbance’ bore comparison with those of ‘Scotland about the period of the accession of William of Orange to the English throne; race and class set against each other in the region, like Fenianism in Ireland […] fanned with the flame of religious bigotry.’ It was thus imperative, he argued, that the Ottoman authorities despatch Turkish troops to put down the ‘revolution’ and restore order. ‘In repressing the Indian Mutiny in 1857’, he continued, ‘the British soldiers were guilty of worse atrocities than ever the Turkish soldiers have perpetuated in Armenia.’98 Almost a decade later, when the British press and Parliament castigated the Ottoman government for its heavy-handed attempt to restore order in Macedonia to drive out Balkan nationalists,99 Quilliam again deplored the hypocrisy of the Christian West. At a 1903 anti-Ottoman meeting in Liverpool Town Hall, he argued that, whilst the British government was immersed in the Macedonian question, it was silent on the ‘general ill treatment’ of Jews

68 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ throughout the Russian dominions and the widespread persecution of African-Americans in the American South: ‘Such are the strange vagaries of Christian civilization in the twentieth century.’100 â As the situation in Armenia relaxed in autumn 1896, Quilliam convened a meeting at which he condemned the ‘partisan press’ and ‘vitu- peration and personal abuse’ being hurled against the Ottoman sultan, which ‘naturally annoyed’ Muslims throughout the British Empire. It was, he said, evidence of a ‘new crusade’ against Islam, which, unless curbed and controlled, might provoke two or three continents into a bloody war.101 While one local newspaper sarcastically warned that Quilliam ‘threatens us darkly with a Jehad [lesser jihad (‘struggle’), or ‘holy war’102] if we continue to agitate in favour of the Armenians’,103 the Liverpool Evening News noted that Quilliam had played a ‘trump card’ by calling the meeting the day before Gladstone was due to speak in the city: There can be but little doubt that this speech of Sheikh Quilliam’s caused

Mr. ÂGladstone and the other speakers to be more than usually moderate in their orations at the Town’s Meeting the following day.104 â Quilliam was especially defiant in his defence of the successor to the ‘Mahdi’, ‘Abdullahi ibn Muhammad (1846–99), against British attempts to suppress the ‘revolt’ in Sudan with Egyptian Muslim soldiers (1896). In his capacity as Sheikh-ul-Islam and alim, Quilliam issued his first fatwa (legal opinion): I warn every True-Believer that if he gives the slightest assistance in this pro- jected expedition against the Muslims of the Sudan, even to the extent of carrying a parcel, or giving a bite of bread or a drink of water to any person taking part in the expedition against these Muslims that he thereby helps the Giaour [non-Muslim105] against the Muslim, and his name will be unworthy to be continued upon the roll of the faithful [at the LMI].106 Within a month (and amid partisan press coverage of the Armenian question), Quilliam issued a second fatwa, demanding that Muslim unity should override national identity: The Christian powers are preparing a new crusade in order to shatter the ÂMuslim powers, under the pretext that they desire to civilize the world. This is nothing but hypocrisy, but armed as they are with the resources of Western civilization it will be impossible to resist them unless the Muslims stand united in one solid phalanx.107

69 LOYAL ENEMIES â Whilst Quilliam was quick to point out that he had received con- gratulatory letters from Muslims abroad, others—including some Indian Muslims—were critical of his actions. The Madras Muhammadan concluded that, ‘Mr. QuilliamÂ must have allowed his religious zeal to out- run his patriotism!’108 Quilliam no longer denied such allegations, arguing that, ‘if it be a crime to place the duties of religion before those of patriotism, then I am verily guilty’: Nay, more, I glory in such guilt! Patriotism is that feeling which is engendered by affection for the land of one’s nativity. Yet the place where one first sees the light of day and breathes the air, is but the accident of one’s birth, over which the new-born infant has no personal control. Religion should be the fixed and mature conviction of the thoughtful mind, before which everything else should and must bow. The man who places patriotism before religion cannot be a sincere Muslim. […] The Muslim’s first and paramount duty and allegiance is to God, the Prophet and Islam, all other claims are of secondary and minor importance.109 â Quilliam claimed that his criticisms of the British government and Western Christian majority opinion were not a matter of politics but, rather, ‘purely and solely a question of religion’, the belief in ‘the complete union of Islam, and of all Muslim peoples’. In spite of the inevitable difficulties associated with taking such a position, as long as he was in Liverpool, Quilliam believed that his mission was no idle dream but ‘a feasible project’ because: In England we enjoy the blessed privilege of a free press, with liberty to express our thoughts in a reasonable way, and this advantageous position can be used for the purpose of promoting the entire re-union of Muslim peoples.110 However, Quilliam was constantly out of touch with public opinion and government policy in the realm of foreign affairs, and his solid defence of the sultan and the ‘Mahdists’, for example, made him few friends at home. Following his defence of Turkey at the Liverpool Town Hall in 1903, his old foe, the Christian Soldier, lamented for, ‘the days of Coeur- de-Lion when the sharp blade of the sword would have cut short the utterances of the glib tongue of the prating Sheikh and for ever silenced his discourse!’111 A few compatriots suggested that Quilliam’s first fatwa

70 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ was treasonous. However, Quilliam later admitted that, ‘Only my insig- nificance saved me from being prosecuted for High Treason.’112 â Thereafter, although Quilliam’s rhetoric remained provocative, he was largely a spent force. For example, when some English newspapers suggesÂ ted in the winter of 1896/7 that Britons should volunteer their services to help an insurrection of Greek Christians in Crete to break from Ottoman rule, Quilliam boldly affirmed that, ‘two could play at that game’: On the first imitation that such was being done, it might be his duty to call upon the Muslims in England, India and West and South Africa to volunteer to serve under the banner of the Sultan, the Caliph of Islam.113 As public opinion turned firmly against Turkey during its war with Greece over Crete in 1897, Quilliam urged for a formal declaration of British neutrality and symbolically declared that: Muslims in every land! Now is the time to exhibit to the world the unity of Islam and the brotherhood of True Believers. Let volunteers from every land offer their services to the Caliph of the Faithful. Come, true soldiers of the Crescent!114 â It is unlikely that Quilliam really expected British Muslims to offer their services to Turkey, neither did he do so himself. British and Russian intervention in the Greco-Turkish conflict ultimately forced al-Hamid to establish a new autonomous regime in Crete, which united with Greece in 1898. By 1906, when Quilliam argued for the British evacu- ation of Egypt on the grounds that it was part of the Ottoman Empire, the Daily Mirror dismissed him as a ‘Pro-Abdul Party of one’.115 Within two years, Quilliam had left Britain for his beloved Turkey. Although in Britain he had publicly offered a Muslim point of view, doggedly defended the umma and countered popular Western discourse and stereotypes of the Ottoman Muslims in particular, ultimately his intervention in the political arena did little to alter discourse or prevent the British government meddling in the Balkans and other parts of the Muslim world. Yet, while the, at times, very real conflict of loyalties between Britain (‘the country to which we owe loyal allegiance as British subjects’) and the Ottoman Empire (‘to whom we are also bound with ties of love and affection and the deepest of feelings of religious sympathies’)116 did not force his abrupt departure to Turkey in 1908, they certainly contributed towards it.

71 LOYAL ENEMIES Exile How, then, can we fully explain Quilliam’s sudden emigration? Govern- ment files and press reports published prior to his departure indicate that while Quilliam’s interjections in politics were seldom more than a minor irritant for local politicians, his general activities as Sheikh-ul- Islam subjected him to official scrutiny which made his life in Britain more difficult and exile in Turkey more appealing. â Quilliam first aroused the attention of the Foreign Office in October 1906, when he was implicated in a scam to issue a British passport to a woman masquerading as the wife of the Turkish consul at Manchester.117 At around the same time, the Turkish Embassy requested the Foreign Office to issue to Quilliam the King’s exequatur as honorary consul of Turkey at Douglas, Isle of Man. However, subsequent enquiries convinced officials that Quilliam was an unsuitable candidate for the post. The Head Constable of Liverpool’s Central Police Office, for example, told the Foreign Office that, in his opinion, Quilliam ‘would most certainly, if possible, use his official position for his private advantage’.118 The Foreign Office decided to reject the application on the grounds that Quilliam had performed the ‘illegal marriage’ of an English minor and a Moroccan man at the LMI in May 1905 (the marriage—discussed in the next chapter—had actually been performed by his second son, ÂWilliam Henry Billal, whilst his father was in the Balkans), and that he had been editing ‘a terribly low rag, vulgar without being funny’.119 Interestingly, the ‘rag’ was neither the Crescent nor the Islamic World, but a satirical journal, the East Liverpool Magazine, which Quilliam and his son Robert Ahmad had been issuing from the Crescent Printing Com- pany office since 1900 as a sideline business. Further enquiries by the Foreign Office revealed that Quilliam was Persian vice-consul and ÂRobert Ahmad was the Turkish consul-general at Liverpool, neither with the permission or formal recognition of the British authorities. Interest- ingly, while these revelations hardened the Foreign Office’s resolve over the exequatur issue, given the political situation, it was hesitant in its official response to the Turkish Embassy—the handwritten file notes record that, ‘The fact of [Quilliam] being connected to Mahommedan- ism made it rather awkward for H[is] E[xcellency] to tell the Porte that we object to him.’120 Despite support from fellow Liverpool solicitor and MP, William Watson Rutherford (1853–1927), who argued that,

‘Mr ÂQuilliam though a Mohammedan is an English subject and has

72 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ carried on his profession in Liverpool as a solicitor […] in a reputable manner’, the Foreign Office’s decision to refuse Quilliam the post was upheld.121 â Quilliam was again subject to investigation by the Foreign Office during the summer of 1907, on the grounds that he was, ‘systematically celebrating the marriages according to Mahomedan rites between ÂEnglish girls in Liverpool and Turkish subjects’.122 Although the claims were exaggerated (see Chapter Three), that Quilliam was performing marriage ceremonies ‘without conforming to the English law’, seemed to be both illegal and an affront to Christian respectability. File notes on the case advised that, ‘the existence of this system of illegal and irregular “marriage”, at any rate so far as it affects British subjects, should be immediately repressed’. Foreign Office officials trawled through the Marriage Acts and discovered that Quilliam was liable for prosecution for solemnising marriages without a special licence. However, they concluded that, ‘The Mahomedan marriages which he has celebrated are of course null and void in English law, and it might, therefore, be contended that the word “marriage” in these statutes could not extend to such ceremonies.’123 Although it was still considered to be ‘in the public interest’ for the Foreign Office to refer the case to the public prosecutor, the impetus to prosecute faded. â Whilst the pressure from official quarters increased during the first decade of the new century, and the cumulative effect of discrimination and harassment, financial losses and the stresses of balancing two families took their toll, ironically it was ultimately a bungled court case that forced Quilliam’s departure from Britain. Quilliam’s position was made Âuntenable in 1908 when he was accused of fabricating evidence in a divorce case in order to secure a decree nisi for his client, Martha Thompson. As the Liverpool dailies reported with relish in November 1908, prior to the petition, Quilliam had arranged that the respondent should be induced to ‘commit misconduct’ with a woman in Glasgow. In summing up, the presiding judge said that he had no doubt about the case at all: ‘It was’, he stated, ‘quite clear that Mrs Thompson employed Quilliam to work up a case to enable her to get a divorce from her husband’; Quilliam was responsible for obtaining the decree nisi by deceit and presenting a false case to the court. Consequently, the decree nisi was annulled, the papers were impounded, Quilliam’s conduct was reprimanded and he was ordered to pay costs.124 However, neither

73 LOYAL ENEMIES ÂQuilliam nor his client appeared in court during the proceedings. The court heard that Quilliam, ‘had left the country under circumstances which pointed to his having no intention of returning’.125 â In May 1908, the Crescent suddenly announced that Quilliam had again been ‘summoned to Turkey by the Sultan’ and, accompanied by Robert Ahmad, would ‘leave for Constantinople shortly’.126 It is possible that Quilliam had been called in response to a recent upsurge of Christian unrest in Macedonia, which had gained the support of local Greek churches. The Turkish nationalist Committee of Union and Progress argued that the renewed violence was evidence that all the peoples of Macedonia were suffering from the sultan’s oppression, and demanded the recall of Parliament to solve the problem. Consequently, in June 1908 the sultan sent several agents to Macedonia to investigate the situation and locate those who had caused the unrest.127 Rather than explain why Quilliam had returned to Turkey, the Crescent boldly claimed that: Additional Court favours are, it is understood, in store for the Sheikh, who is the Sultan’s “favourite Englishman”, and the Sheikzade [Robert Ahmed Quil- liam] will probably receive a pressing invitation to remain permanently at Yildiz, as the Sultan’s First Secretary.128 â Another article in the Crescent (probably penned by Quilliam) reported that, at juma namaz on the eve of Quilliam’s departure for Constantinople, ‘the ceremony was of a particular solemn nature’, and implied that his many detractors had plotted his downfall: the prominent part which the Sheikh and his son have taken in the promulga- tion of Islam in Liverpool has made them a target for Christian revenge, and it is quite on the cards that these disciples of charity will try to put them out of the way; at any rate the travellers have been duly cursed by the Christians, if not yet annihilated.129 The Crescent stated that Quilliam was expected to be away for just six weeks. However, while Billal Quilliam acted as imam during the week after his father’s departure, the Crescent was immediately discontinued and, as we will see in the next chapter, without its charismatic and energetic leader, the LMI rapidly declined. â Robert Ahmed Quilliam returned home in the summer of 1908, apparently to fulfil his consular duties. He soon caused another stir by leading to Liverpool’s Lime Street railway station a procession of Turkish political exiles from Tripoli, who, on hearing the sultan’s proclamation

74 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ of a new Constitution, sought to return to their homeland.130 By ÂOctober, with the court case imminent, rumours began to spread that Quilliam père had left Britain permanently. At the end of the month, Billal Quilliam told the press that his father had gone to Constantinople to arrange ‘the development for one of the Turkish Princes of certain mines in Anatolia with a London syndicate of capitalists’, and suggested that he would be returning to London to complete the arrangements ‘in the course of the next few weeks’.131 But, Quilliam did not return. A few days after the court case, the Liverpool Porcupine confirmed that ÂQuilliam was still in Turkey: where he will most probably settle down for the rest of his days. His tawny beard, which the years were already commencing to whiten, will be seen no more in the Dale Street Police Courts. The Sultan holds Abdullah [Quilliam] in high esteem. There are rumours that he intends to bestow upon his faithful servant an important office, and I heard it said the other day that he is to be the Eastern correspondent for a well-known London Daily.132 The latter job never materialised and, within a few months, Quilliam’s position and residence in Turkey were threatened by the Young Turk ‘revolution’ (1908), which deposed the sultan.

IV. Â‘A Queer Adventure in Double Identity’: Patriotism, politics and religion, 1909–32 Return of the patriot Quilliam stayed in Turkey while the dust settled over the court case. He finally broke his silence in May 1909 by writing to the Liverpool Daily Post from ‘Asia Minor’ to vehemently deny any inappropriate involvement in the divorce case which had pre-empted his departure. He asserted that reports of his involvement were yet another instance of the manner in which, since leaving Liverpool: my name has been unwarrantably associated with matters of which I had no knowledge or connection. It is bad enough and sufficiently unpleasant for me to know that wrong conclusions were drawn and erroneous constructions put upon what were perfectly innocent, although, as subsequent events proved, injudicious actions, without having my name further dragged through the gutter by it being suggested that I was in any way connected with the taking of a house to be used for disreputable purposes.133

75 LOYAL ENEMIES Less than a month later, the Statutory Committee of the Law Society formally struck Quilliam’s name off the Rolls.134 â With family and business commitments in England, and avenues closed to him in Turkey following al-Hamid’s fall, Quilliam arrived back in England in late 1909. His return might also have been prompted 135 by Âthe death of his wife of thirty years, Hannah, that November. Quilliam immediately honoured an earlier pledge to Mary by legally marrying her at a Preston register office on the last day of 1909 (they had married according to Islamic law some years earlier at the LMI).136 The marriage certificate indicates that, avoiding Liverpool, Quilliam was employed as a business manager in Preston.137 His whereabouts and activities between 1910 and mid-1913 are uncertain, but it is likely that he flitted between Liverpool, Preston and the Middle East.138 Thereafter, Quilliam was permanently based in England. He was not only older and Âwiser but had, despite his negative experiences and reverence for (Ottoman) Muslim culture, a strong emotional attachment to his homeland. In June 1913, he and Robert Ahmad attended a special convoca- tion of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of the Ordo Templi Orientis, hosted by the English writer, magician and occultist, Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), in London. The Ordo Templi Orientis was an obscure esoteric Masonic group with a leaning towards Eastern religion and philosophy, whose members believed that sexual ecstasy could lift an individual to a different plane of consciousness and spirituality.139 Then, in December 1913, Quilliam made his first public appearance on home soil in over five years, delivering a lecture in ÂNottingham under the auspices of the local Ethical Society on ‘The Ethics of Islam’. Quilliam had returned to propagating Islam on the public platform. However, he no longer wished to be identified as ÂQuilliam; at Nottingham he lectured under the pseudonym of ‘Prof. 140 H. ÂM. ÂLéon’. â For the next two decades, Quilliam led a busy life masquerading as Léon, a new identity demonstrative of both his ambiguous loyalties (a British patriot with a ‘French’ name and penchant for Turkey) and insecurities since fleeing Liverpool. In spite of increased speculation about his true identity, throughout the remainder of his life Quilliam stead- fastly identified as DrorÂ Professor Henri M. LéonÂ (occasionally adapted to Haroun Mustafa Léon), and unsuccessfully attempted to deny his connection with the Quilliam name. His new surname might have

76 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ derived from the maiden name of his second wife Mary, which was Lyon;

Quilliam also had a London-based mistress—Dr EdithÂ Miriam Léon— for the last twenty years of his life, though she might have taken the name ‘Léon’ after meeting him;141 it is also possible that a genuine

‘Dr Â(Henry Haleem) Leon’ existed and was loosely involved with the LMI in the 1890s.142 However, no ‘Léon’ was recorded as having attenÂ ded any LMI functions or prayer meetings until ‘Bro. Dr Â H. MustaphaÂ Léon’ was listed in the Crescent in March 1901. By that time Quilliam had, like a few other converts connected with the LMI who desired anonymity, certainly commenced using ‘Dr Leon’Â as a pen name and wrote numerous articles for both the Crescent and the Islamic World under that pseudonym.143 In 1901, ‘Léon’ was listed as sub-editor of the Crescent and manager of the East Liverpool Magazine. â When, after his death in 1932, it was confirmed publicly that ÂQuilliam and Léon were indeed the same man, family and friends proposed several conflicting stories for his adoption of the pseudonym. ‘Mrs. Léon’ (possibly Mary, but probably his mistress, Edith) informed the Daily Telegraph that, ‘there never was any mystery. Dr Leon,Â she said, had changed his name in Turkey. It was well known that he had done so, she added, and everything was perfectly in order.’144 One of Quilliam’s daughters, Harriet, claimed that her father had changed his name some twenty years earlier to conform to conditions laid down in a will through which he was the beneficiary.145 Helping the Daily Sketch to glean ‘the full story of the queer adventure in double identity’, an old ‘friend’ of Quilliam also suggested that, whilst in Turkey, ‘“Quilliam became friendly with a Frenchman, Dr MarcelÂ Leon, who ultimately died in his arms, following a sudden illness. Quilliam decided to take the name and identity of Dr Leon,Â and years later came to England to lecture under that name”.’146 â The reasons for Quilliam’s choice of ‘Léon’ remain uncertain, but it is clear that the adoption of a new persona was the result of his negative experiences in England before 1908 and a desire to live a quieter, more settled but stimulating life thereafter. He thus edited his Who’s Who entry to list only those publications written under the pseudonym of Léon, oddly changed his birth year from 1856 to 1855, and removed any reference to his conversion to Islam and work as Sheikh-ul-Islam and LMI president. Yet, the list of his many official decorations and titles betrayed past sympathies with al-Hamid and other Muslim leaders.147

77 LOYAL ENEMIES â Quilliam initially secured relative anonymity and led a rather eccentric life in cosmopolitan London. Settled in Bloomsbury with Edith, several cats and a monkey by 1915, each morning he donned a fez and milked the goat he had tethered to the railings down to the basement of his townhouse.148 However, his life became increasingly complicated by enquiries about his true identity, stimulated by Léon’s close physical resemblance and many other similarities with Quilliam.149 In 1922, Billal Quilliam made the national headlines when he was implicated in a major case of fraud (see Chapter Three), which generated renewed interest about the whereabouts of his notorious father. Responding to press allegations that he and Quilliam looked remarkably similar, Léon told the Daily Express that his first wife was the half-sister of Billal’s mother, ‘“and therefore I suppose that I am a sort of uncle of 150 Mr. ÂW. ÂH. B[illal]Â Quilliam, although he never called me uncle”.’ In 1926, the national press reported that, following the conclusion of a lecture over which he had presided, Léon was asked by a member of the audience if he was Quilliam, or whether it was pure coincidence that a new edition of Who’s Who had an almost identical entry to that of Sheikh Quilliam twenty years earlier:

Dr ÂLeon showed manifest signs of impatience, and he said that he could not tell them whether he was Sheik [sic] Quilliam, and that, anyway, it was nobody’s business. “Even supposing I was Sheik Quilliam, what of it?” he shouted. “I do not owe anybody any money. Ask my solicitor.”151 A Morning Post reporter reflected that, ‘In all fairness it should be 152 pointed out that nobody looks less like a Sheik [sic] than Dr Leon!’Â

Dr ÂLéon, Islam and the First World War Notably, Quilliam appears to have renounced the title of Sheikh-ul- Islam on his return to England in 1909 and, once on home soil, directed his energies away from purely Muslim concerns towards a long-standing interest in philology. By June 1913, he was ‘secrétaire général’ of the ‘Société Internationale de Philologie, Sciences et Beaux-Arts’, which, he claimed (its origins are obscure), had been founded in 1875 for ‘the advancement and encouragement of all branches of Philology, Science, Literature, Music and the Fine Arts’ by means of non-sectarian and apolitical lectures and debates.153 In December 1914, Quilliam and the Société moved from Nottingham to London.154

78 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ â Robert Ahmad was officially the société president, but the latter sapped much of Quilliam’s time and energy in London, particularly the job of editing its official journal, the Philomath. Quilliam also acted as Dean of the London College of Physiology (‘founded for the special study of physiology and the kindred sciences’)155 and, from late 1916, edited its journal, the Physiologist. Above all, as his Who’s Who entry alone reveals, Quilliam continued to research, write and publish exten- sively on a wide range of topics, including philology, Manx studies and Persian poetry.156 â While Quilliam made a conscious decision to diversify his interests in London, he maintained a practical commitment to Islam, such as observing Ramadan, and continued to propagate the tenets of that faith under the pseudonym of Dr Léon.Â The paper he delivered at Nottingham in December 1913 was typical of Quilliam—namely a bold attempt to dispel some of the misnomers about Islam prevalent in the West. He argued that, in common with other moral creeds, Islam possessed, ‘the eternal heritage of universal truth. It was the most democratic of faiths, appealed to the conscience of humanity, and asserted the absolute equality of all mankind before a universal ruler and controller.’ Reminiscent of Quilliam’s oft-ignored message some twenty-five years earlier, he attempted to disprove the myth that Islam encouraged fatalism, challenged the idea that Muslims believed women had no souls and confidently informed his audience that, ‘probably no religion in the world so inculcated the pursuit of knowledge as Islam’.157 â Although he occasionally attended meetings of Orientalist organisations such as the Central Asian Society (CAS) and the more progressive African Society, and became involved with Islamophile groups and the more numerous Muslim communities to be found in the Edwardian metropolis, Quilliam seldom pursued his defence of Islam or Muslim leaders as vigorously as he had prior to 1908. This is not to suggest that he was not tempted or involved in those organisations that were active as the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed. Indeed, in December 1914, he contributed a poem to the British periodical, Islamic Review and Muslim India, published by the Woking Muslim Mission, and delivered a lecture on Islam at the first public meeting of an affiliated organisation, the British Muslim Society (BMS), of which he had become a member 158 (see ÂChapter Four). The following year, he delivered sermons at both Woking and the WMM’s central London venue, spoke on ‘Temperance

79 LOYAL ENEMIES

3.âDr ÂHaroun Mustafa Léon, c.1915. Source: The Islamic Review and Muslim India, Vol.â3, No.â4 (1915), Frontispiece. and Islam’ (an old favourite) to the Islamic Society in London, and attended eid al-fitr (feast to end Ramadan) at Woking. He also contributed several articles to the Islamic Review in 1915, generally emphasising (again, classic Quilliam) that Islam was a rational, simple, fraternal faith which encouraged enquiry and advocated Temperance.159 However, although he continued to attend some of its festivals, after 1915

ÂQuilliam distanced himself from the WMM. PerhapsÂ he was uneasy with its Indian Muslim leadership or controversial Lahore Ahmadiyya connections, which are discussed in Chapters Four and Five. Quilliam was certainly anxious to avoid the sectarianism he had encountered in Christianity and, latterly, parts of the Muslim world. Consequently, unlike most other British converts connected with the WMM/BMS,

80 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ during the 1920s, he also attended several functions at the new London Mosque, built by the rival Qadiani Ahmadiyyas (see Chapter Four).160 Preoccupied with the Société, then, after 1915 he rarely wrote for the Islamic Review and, in fact, seldom contributed to the growing number of English-language Muslim and Orientalist periodicals.161 â Quilliam’s interest in Turkey and his defence of the Caliphate were further legacies of his past life, though his stance on both relaxed and modified in the wake of the Young Turk ‘revolution’. Moreover, with Britain pitted against Turkey by the end of 1914, he was more anxious than he had ever been at Liverpool to demonstrate his loyalty to Crown and country and, in fact, repudiated his earlier rhetoric about religion taking precedence over patriotism. For example, in August 1914, Robert Ahmad Quilliam sent to the Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (1862– 1933) and several national newspapers a copy of a resolution signed on Âbehalf of ‘Léon’ and other representatives of the ‘British Muslims Association’, which expressed their indignation at threats made in the German press to incite Britain’s Muslim subjects to rise in revolt against imperial rule. The resolution was, they argued, ‘passed in the hope of warning Moslems against German mischievous intrigue and stimulating a feeling of loyalty amongst Musselman’s [sic] in general, and the Moslems in British dominions and possessions in particular.’162 It stressed that the notion of any disloyalty among Muslims resident in England was, ‘an impudent and dastardly libel. Our Holy Faith enjoins upon us to be loyal to whatever country under whose protection we reside’: Words cannot be found to express the anger we feel at Germany daring to proclaim that British Islamic subjects would prove false to their religion and cowardly enough to attempt to take a mean and contemptible advantage of the country whom they owe allegiance and which has accorded them civil and religious liberty and protection.163 â Meanwhile, ‘Léon’s’ efforts to appear wholly loyal to Britain were undermined by his vice-presidency of the Anglo-Ottoman Society (AOS), founded in 1913, to defend the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate.164 In November 1914, the AOS published a pamphlet in which it, in the words of a Foreign Office official who was compiling a report on the Society’s ‘undesirable activities’, criticised: the attitude of England towards Turkey; give it as their opinion that the crisis which led to war was created not by Turkey but by Russia [… and] conclude

81 LOYAL ENEMIES with an appeal to influence others against the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire and for the restoration of peace with Turkey.165 Quilliam had been voicing similar sentiments since the 1890s but, in the context of the European war and anxious not to be branded a dissident again, he sought to disassociate himself from them. ‘Léon’ thus promptly wrote to Grey to pledge his absolute loyalty to the British Crown and offer his services to the government by ‘assisting to promote loyalty amongst the Muslims throughout the Empire’.166 He also enclosed dupli- cates of letters apparently written to the AOS hon. secretary, Arthur Field, which recorded that Léon had resigned the vice-presidency: No one in the Society loves Turkey and the Turks more than I do, and I would do anything in my power to promote by legitimate means the welfare of the Ottoman Empire, but, at this juncture, I am convinced that a most terrible error has been committed by those who have control of the destinies of Turkey. It would appear from what I am able to glean from trustworthy sources of information, that […] the most extreme members of the “Committee of Union and Progress”, have delivered themselves over, body, heart and soul, to Ger- many, and by so doing are most effectively paving the way for the utter ruin and downfall of the Ottoman Empire. For over twenty years, I have championed the cause of Turkey and Islam, on the platform and in the press, and it is heart-rendering to me to see a noble race dragged by the indiscreet action of a few foolish, young and headstrong men, into a quarrel, in which it has no interest, and made the eatś-pau [sic] of Germany. To-day, Great Britain and France are in death-throes with Germany, and I feel that nothing should be done by me to add to Britain’s troubles.167 â Notably, in a second letter to Field, Léon wrote that he had only joined the AOS Committee on the understanding that it was, ‘non- political, it being a part of the terms of my engagement with the [Société], that I am not to take official part in anything seeming of a purely political or sectarian character’.168 Despite these efforts, however, Léon’s offer to help the government was rejected. â Seemingly in response to Léon’s resignation, the AOS reorganised for the course of the war, ‘on a basis that can unite the membership on a non-political footing’. To that end, it proposed a new motto for 1915— ‘For Peace and a Better Understanding’. It aimed to restore peace with Turkey, ‘on terms which shall assure the independence and development of the Ottoman nation’, and to promote ‘the establishment of pacific

82 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ relations, and a sympathetic understanding between Turkey and Great Britain’. It also stressed that, ‘the peace objects will enable all members and sympathisers to remain associated with safety and satisfaction, those objects being incapable of interpretation as illegal or unpatriotic’.169 Unable to resist labouring for better relations between Britain and Turkey, Léon again wrote to Grey, informing him that he proposed to attend a meeting of the reconstituted AOS and, ‘if the Society is re-organized on such a basis, as is not opposed to British interests’, he would co-operate with the Society to help restore peace between the two nations: and also, so far as I can, to restrain any political fire-brands from utilising the Anglo-Ottoman Society for the promotion of their individual views, and not hampering the British Government in bringing hostilities to a safe, speedy and satisfactory conclusion.170 â Léon kept a low profile for the duration of the war, though one of many tales that surfaced after his death suggested that he had carried out, ‘valuable secret service work for England’ during the conflict.171 Although he continued to court a number of influential British and foreign Muslims at Société functions, some of whom—we will see in Chapter Six—were antagonistic to the government, this seems unlikely in light of the Foreign Office’s reluctance to employ Léon in 1914, and the fact that, throughout the war, he was preoccupied with editing both the Philomath and Physiologist, and tirelessly lecturing across Britain.172 â At the end of the war, Léon’s efforts to ensure that a defeated and humiliated Turkey received a fair hearing occasionally threatened to undermine his attempts to appear loyal to Britain. For example, his name cropped up again at the Foreign Office in 1919 when the British High Commission in Constantinople reported that a recent speech by Léon was illustrative of a wave of pro-Turkish writings by English ÂTurcophiles being published in Constantinople. The intelligence report concluded that: Professor LEON though strongly pro-Turkish, is not himself believed to be Anglophobe, but his speech on this occasion is capable of use in the pernicious Pan-Islamic campaign now being carried on, the object of which is to excite world-wide Muslim sympathy for the Turkish cause and to encourage in Turkey an attitude of defiance by assuring the Turks of the support of the Muslim world.173 â Largely through his renewed association with the AOS, Léon called for Britain to reaffirm its pre-war commitment to the principle of pres-

83 LOYAL ENEMIES ervation of the Ottoman Empire and, thereby, ensure that the authority of the sultan as caliph be fully re-established and maintained. Shortly after the Allies drafted their terms of peace with Turkey in February 1920, he presided over a provocative meeting of the pan-Islamic Indian Khilafat (or Caliphate) delegation at Woking Mosque. The head of the delegation was Mohamed Ali (1878–1931), who had helped establish the Khilafat Movement in 1919 to protest against the harsh terms imposed by the Allies—especially Britain—on the defeated Ottoman Empire.174 Ali appealed for the British government to listen to its ÂMuslim subjects who, he argued, were ‘devoted to the Caliph of Con- stantinople, and […] all urge that the temporal power of the Caliph should not be reduced, nor should the Turkish Empire be broken into bits’.175 The following year, Léon himself formed part of a deputation of ‘English friends of Turkey’ at the Near Eastern Conference in London, where they recalled the British government’s 1918 pledge to guarantee Turkey, which had been repudiated after its ‘unprovoked’ entry into the war.176 Thereafter, however, Léon was unable to keep apace with events. In 1922, the Turkish president, Mustafa Kemal (‘Atatürk’, 1881–1938), suddenly and unexpectedly abolished the Ottoman sultanate, which set in motion the formal dissolution of the Empire (see Chapter Six).

Death of a Muslim Masquerading as Léon, Quilliam remained active in London until his death. He lectured on Islam, Islamic history and Muhammad’s life for organisations such as the London ‘Anjuman-i-Islam’, which aimed to unite Christians and Muslims ‘for their mutual benefit and progress’,177 and, though dogged by ill-health, was an enthusiastic vice-president of the BMS in the late 1920s. A constant defender of Islam, he wrote to the editor of the Daily Telegraph a few months before his death in an attempt to correct a report which had described the Woking imam as a ‘Priest’ and ‘the Reverend’. Whereas, thirty years earlier, Quilliam himself had drawn similar direct parallels between aspects of Christianity and Islam to help accommodate the latter in Britain, he now considered the terminology to be ‘inappropriate and incorrect’. This was, perhaps, evidence that a somewhat less accommodating approach to the propagation of Islam was necessary in the heyday of the WMM, which is discussed in Chapter Four. But, the letter also indicates that Quilliam’s own

84 ‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’ mission to explain and defend Islam and Muslims in Britain remained a struggle—indeed, his letter was not published by the Telegraph, but found a welcome home in the pages of the Islamic Review, whose editor sadly reflected that, ‘its non-publication arose from the disinclination of the [Telegraph] editor to admit the crass ignorance on Islamic matters’, and opined that it might also have been proof of ‘a general conspiracy, rife amongst practically all English journals, to keep the British public in ignorance of the fundamental truths of Islam’.178 In a sense, then, little had changed since Quilliam had commenced propagating Islam in the 1880s. â Having attended eid al-adha (feast of sacrifice celebrating the end of the hajj) at Woking a few weeks earlier, Quilliam died in London from a failed operation for intestinal obstruction and enlarged prostate in April 1932. Both his death certificate and will confirmed that William

Henry Quilliam of Liverpool and Dr HenriÂ Marcel Léon of London were the same person.179 Quilliam’s last will and testament of 1929 points to the strength of his commitment to Islam through to the end of his life: I declare that I die as I have consistently lived my life since my acceptance of the Faith of Islam in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty two a True Believer in the One only and Eternal God and in His Holy Prophet, Muhammad, and I desire to be buried as a Muslim.180 â Following a service at Woking Mosque, its deputy imam led prayers at the burial in the Muslim ground of nearby Brookwood Cemetery. Taking their lead from the chief mourner, BMS President Lord Headley (1855–1935), and out of respect for their patriarch, Quilliam’s sons and grandsons donned fezzes at the graveside.181 As the Daily Mail highlighted, alongside them wept ‘two women, both in widow’s weaves […] There were only two wreaths; one, a crescent and a star, bore the name “Miriam”. On the other, a circlet, was the inscription “Mary”.’182 â The press dedicated numerous columns to Quilliam’s death and recalled his unorthodox life. Quilliam’s conversion to Islam seemed to the media to be indicative of his rather eccentric character, and his earlier agitation as Sheikh-ul-Islam was largely forgotten. Above all, the newspapers were preoccupied with the fact that Quilliam had masquer- aded under a pseudonym for so long, with sensational headlines such as ‘Solicitor who Turned Sheik: Two Lives Lived in One’, and ‘Abdullah

85 LOYAL ENEMIES

183 Quilliam’s Secret Out: Dr LeonÂ was the Sheikh’. Some months later, when Quilliam’s country retreat on the Sussex Downs was mysteriously burnt to the ground, Quilliam briefly returned to the spotlight before slipping into relative obscurity.184 Commenting on the fire, theEast Sussex News noted that, rather appositely, ‘one of the last things to fall into the flames was the star and crescent sign which always hung over the front porch’.185

86 3

‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’

THE LIVERPOOL MUSLIM INSTITUTE AND BRITISH CONVERTS, 1887–1908

Despite his faults, Quilliam was undoubtedly a pioneering bridge- builder between Muslims and non-Muslims, and his greatest success was establishing and running the Liverpool Muslim Institute. Yet, surpris- ingly little has previously been uncovered about its structure or activities,1 and even less about those Britons who converted to Islam through the LMI—members of whom comprised the first indigenous British Muslim community. â Institutional records for the LMI have not survived. Instead, the lives of Quilliam’s British Muslim converts are recovered through contemporaneous sources, including press reports and a database primarily informed by The Crescent and Islamic World, as well as other books, pamphlets, death certificates, wills and burial records.2 This enables us to address the following key questions: How did the LMI operate as a missionary organisation, encourage Britons towards Islam and sustain their conversion? How many Britons converted to Islam as a result of Quilliam’s proselytising and through the LMI? Who were the converts and what was their socio-demographic background? And, why did they convert to Islam? Reflecting on the post-conversion lives of these ÂBritons, how did discrimination and other socio-cultural factors affect

87 LOYAL ENEMIES their commitment to both the LMI and Islam? Finally, what was the fate and legacy of the LMI and its Muslim community?

I. ÂThe Institute It is no coincidence that Quilliam established the LMI in Victorian Liverpool: a major global seaport, Liverpool was the gateway to the Empire and new world; it was a ‘contact zone between different ethnic groups with different needs and intentions as transients, sojourners and settlers’.3 As well as settled Chinese, European Jewish and Irish communities, the cosmopolitan city had a growing Indian (including Indo- Muslim) presence, and a much bigger but shifting population of Muslim sailors, traders, students and travellers not only from India but also the Ottoman Empire and North and West Africa. Quilliam therefore had a guaranteed constituency of foreign-born Muslims but, as we saw in the previous chapter, his aim was to ‘convert the British nation to Islam’. For Quilliam, converting his white British compatriots was the surest means of bridging the cultural and ideological gulf between Christians/Chris- tianity and Muslims/Islam, and thereby establishing Islam on a secure footing in Britain. It follows that when Quilliam found a permanent home for his Institute in 1889, the building was situated some distance from the city’s docks. Crucially, the premises provided a space for ÂQuilliam and his initiates to socialise, discuss, practise and propagate their new faith, but how was this achieved in practice?

Brougham Terrace At first sight, number eight Brougham Terrace was a conventional town house. However, the notice-board outside, containing the shahada and advertising the times of the Institute’s morning and evening ‘services’, suggested otherwise.4 Inside was to be found a library and reading room, a museum displaying rocks, bones, curiosa and geological and mineral- ogical specimens (intended to prove the compatibility between Islam and modern science), a small lecture hall and a chess and draughts room. As Quilliam revealed in 1891, towards the rear was situated a ‘pro-mosque’, curtained off from the lecture hall and with capacity for up to 200 people: It is a long room, with wainscotting [sic], the only ornamentation being several pairs of rich Burmese curtains, and to strangers what appears to be a curious

88 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’

4.âThe Interior of the Main Lecture Hall, Liverpool Muslim Institute, 1896. Source: Religious Review of Reviews, Vol.â1, No.â3 (1891), p.â160. board projecting at an angle from the wall, on which in Arabic characters, is inscribed “La Allaha il-allah, Mohammadar-rasul Allah” [“There is no god but God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God”], the English translation also being given underneath the Arabic. On the floor are generally spread a number of Indian duries, or prayer-mats. At one end of the Mosque is a small platform with a reading-table, surmounted by a cushion, on which rests a copy of the Koran.5 â Quilliam explained that membership of the Institute was free to all Muslims, and that they alone were permitted to use the ‘pro-mosque’, which was open daily for worship. To the astonishment of passers-by, from the balcony muezzins6 incongruously called their fellow Muslims to prayer (adhan) in both Arabic and English. Although, as we will see, their cries quickly provoked an angry local backlash, Quilliam was Âconfident that he had found a long-term base for nurturing Islam in Liverpool and beyond.

‘Services’ and innovations Central to the Institute’s proselytising activities were weekly social eve- nings for its members and their friends, evening classes for instruction in

89 LOYAL ENEMIES Arabic (the language of the Qur’an), Persian, Turkish and Hindustani, and, as the external notice-board boldly announced, Sunday morning and evening public ‘services’. The latter, which were regularly advertised in the local press (‘Strangers welcome’), became the most effective public vehicle for Quilliam’s propagation of Islam. They generally consisted of lectures (usually delivered by Quilliam) that encompassed subjects and peoples familiar to the mainly Christian audience, but also offered an Islamic point of view and managed to convey the principles of Islam in a liberal and rational form.7 The services were often enlivened by magic lantern slides to accompany the lecture or musical recitations, such as prior to Quilliam’s 1893 lecture on ‘The Moslem Conquest of Spain’, when the audience was treated to ‘a sacred solo’ sung by Quilliam’s first convert, James Jones/Djem Ali Hamilton.8 â Quilliam exploited the fact that Church attendance was in decline, particularly among the working classes, whose sense of identification with the nation, county, borough or parish was indeed generally weaker than their middle- and upper-class compatriots in this period.9 He thereby ensured that the Institute and its programme of activities was tailored to meet the needs of a predominantly local, white, Christian working-class audience who would rather non-discriminately seek shel- ter, warmth and ‘entertainment’ at a range of religious institutions on the Sabbath.10 The Institute itself was, as the Pall Mall Gazette noted, ‘unromantically situated, and is not imposing. It has no grand dome, no graceful minarets. It is a converted mansion, and has a poor-law establishment as a near neighbour.’11 John Yehya-en Nasr Parkinson (1874– 1918), a Scottish Muslim who joined the LMI after his private conversion in c.1901, also later recalled that, ‘No special Mosque was erected, because the majority of the members, if not all, were working men, not millionaires.’12 Mindful of his discourse, Quilliam welcomed ‘worshippers’ to ‘services’ at the Brougham Terrace ‘cathedral’. â The financial donation from the amir of Afghanistan in 1895 (Chap- ter Two) enabled Quilliam to develop the Institute’s facilities to tempt more curious locals through its doors. Having paid off the mortgages on the recently acquired numbers eleven and twelve Brougham Terrace, improvements were made to the buildings, including the installation of chemical and electrical laboratories for innovative public science demon- strations, and an extension to the lecture hall featuring exotic ‘Moorish arches’ and ‘stained glass windows with appropriate Moslem emblems’.13

90 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ At around the same time a harmonium was installed to one side of the main lecture hall platform (see Plate 4). Hymns were the most universally popular art form in Victorian Britain, and their exposition and accompaniment by the harmonium was another way of making the Institute’s Anglo-Muslim public services appear ‘familiar’ to its Christian audience. Indeed, as Thomas Omar Byrne, LMI hon. secretary, confirmed in 1896: These people had to be brought gradually into the faith: consequently in order to make them feel more at home at our missionary meetings we held a service something like the one they had been accustomed to in “the days of their ignorance”. Instead of their chants in praise of the trinity, the blood-atonement for sins, and such similar foolishness, we opened our meetings with the Fateha [fatiha, the opening sura (chapter) of the Qur’an], rendered into English, and got those enquiring Christians who were feeling their way out of the darkness of their won creed into the light of Islam.14 âDuring the public services, Quilliam would substitute a reading from the Bible with one from an English edition of the Qur’an. He also compiled a ‘hymn book’, in which, Byrne continued, were ‘placed many suitable hymns, eliminating objectionable verses from them and making their whole tone Unitarian and Islamic’.15 The hymns were mainly taken from English Evangelical poets, with selections confined to those which denoted the unity of the Godhead, but altered and adapted accordingly: ‘My God, my Father, whilst I stray’, for example, became ‘My God, great Allah, whilst I stray’.16 â As a result of these efforts, the Institute attracted a steady stream of intrigued nominal and practising Christians from across Liverpool and beyond. Some commented favourably on their experience, such as Judge Bushman, who, though a convinced Christian, wrote that, ‘I am bound to say that the services of the Mosque are very refreshing, as well as instructive […]. Muslims, like barbers’ poles, are not half so bloodthirsty as they are painted.’17 But Quilliam was not complacent, and constantly deployed new methods to attract non-Muslims. For example, Muslim festivals celebrated at the Institute usually culminated with an enticing firework display; and, in 1895, Quilliam expanded the range of evening classes for both Muslims and non-Muslims with the aim, ‘First and foremost, to carry out the cardinal principles of Islam, to do good deeds to all, irrespective of sex, creed, race or nationality […], to demonstrate to the world that our faith [is] the patron and not the enemy of science,

91 LOYAL ENEMIES literature and art.’ Above all, Quilliam hoped to, ‘widen the sphere of our influence and remove prejudice’ and, if possible: to induce those who might join these classes to take an interest in this institution—to let them see what manner of people we [are]—in the hope that the spirit of enquiry might be engendered in their breasts, and from the study of science, natural history, and languages they might be brought to think of the All-Powerful One, who created the heavens and the earth.18 Over the next decade, members of the Institute were mobilised to teach a range of ‘modern’ subjects, including photography, chemistry, electriÂ city, astronomy and even occult science.

A ‘feeble parody’? Unsurprisingly, Quilliam’s many critics lampooned both him and his Institute. As early as January 1890, the Liverpool Review concluded that the Islam being propounded in Brougham Terrace was ‘a feeble parody’: ‘What else could it be? It is an exotic which, though it may be artificially nurtured like some tropical plant in a hothouse, can never have the vitality it has on its native soil.’19 Christian Evangelicals hoped that the Liverpool Review was right, but were so alarmed by claims in the Indian press that Quilliam had already made up to 500 converts in Liverpool, that several of their missionaries visited the city to investigate. Although biased, the missionaries’ accounts offer scarce non-Muslim insights into the workings of the LMI as a missionary enterprise. For example,

Dr ÂH. ÂMartyn Clark attended a Sunday evening ‘service’ in 1891: “The thing was done almost exactly as an evangelistic service amongst Chris- tians would be. The Moslems wore fez caps; three women (who formed the choir) sat by the organ, others were dotted about amongst the men. There was no attempt either at veiling or segregation of the sexes. […] There was no particular reverence shown for the Coran [sic] (or reverence of any sort for that matter); in fact, while singing, Mr. QuilliamÂ had his copy of the Coran at his feet on the platform, on a small reading-desk.”20

â Another missionary, John J. Pool,Â who visited at the invitation of Quilliam in late 1891, noted that the public prayers were such, ‘as is heard doubtless every Sunday in a Unitarian Church, with the exception of the clause in it which asked for the blessing of Allah specially to rest upon his gracious majesty the Sultan of Constantinople’.21 The missionaries were, inevitably, unwilling to identify value in Quilliam’s prag-

92 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ matic efforts to demonstrate the commonalities between Islam and

Christianity. Indeed, H. U.Â Â Weitbrecht Stanton (yet another visitor in 1891) concluded that the Sunday ‘services’ and pew-like seating inside the Institute made ‘the whole thing […] a farrago of Moslem and ÂChristian elements’.22 â These investigations caused alarm amongst some Muslims in India and encouraged their leaders to issue disavowals that the LMI was advocating and practising a ‘true’ representation of Islam.23 The general-Â secretary of the Society for the Propagation of Islam in the North-West Province produced a Moslem Guide (1891), which outlined the doctrine and principle tenets of Islam specifically for his co-religionists in Liver- pool.24 However, when misinformation about the nature of ‘services’ aroused renewed criticism from abroad in 1896, Byrne was quick to point out that the Sunday ‘services’: are not and never have been considered by us as Muslim services, or used in substitution for the regular prescribed prayers of Islam, neither are they held in the Mosque, nor is it incumbent upon any True-Believer to attend them unless he or she so desires. They are simply and only Muslim missionary meetings in the fullest extent of the word, and are held in the Lecture Hall of the Institu- tion, specially erected for that purpose.25 Byrne affirmed that Quilliam and the other British Muslims practised the ‘Hanifee’ (Hanafi) school of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (the dominant creed in the Ottoman Empire) in the ‘pro-mosque’, and resolutely denied claims that the harmonium was used in the private Muslim services.26

Ethos and the place of women Bonded by their newfound faith, Quilliam and his initiates found community identity and solidarity within the walls of the Institute. Theoreti- cally, its ethos was to provide an Islamic environment free from sectarianism and bolstered by fraternity. Although the LMI was dominated and run by British converts, and Quilliam’s mission was to attract Britons to Islam, its cosmopolitan environment was assured by visits from foreigners passing through Liverpool, including scores of sailors and other Muslims from the Ottoman Empire, India and North and West Africa in particular. On the occasion of the anniversary of al- Hamid II’s accession in 1899, for example, a number of Indian seafarers

93 LOYAL ENEMIES attended for prayer. The Crescent reflected that the Indians’ ‘dusky coun- tenances stood in happy contrast with the fairer visages of their British brethren, and bore evidence to the reality of the great bond of Islamic fraternal unity’.27 This genuine ethnic mixing in late-Victorian Liverpool startled the many reporters who visited the LMI. ForÂ example, the ÂLiverpool Review noted in 1891 that: had a stranger been there he would have possibly thought that he had been transplanted to the vicinity of the ancient Tower of Babel, as he would have decidedly heard a confusion of tongues, the languages spoken in addition to the vernacular being Gujerati, Urdu, Arabic, Turkish and French.28 TheDaily Express later commented that the Institute, ‘perhaps enjoys the most cosmopolitan congregation in the country. Negroes, Hindus, Chinamen, Arabs, and Englishmen are to be seen praying to Allah side by side.’29 Quilliam also invited ‘respectable’ Muslims to act as imam or deliver a Sunday evening lecture, including the influential Indian scholar and Empire-loyalist Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1872–1953).30 â Besides its essentially religious and missionary function, the Institute had an important social dimension to attract, nurture and retain members. In an attempt to establish a British Muslim collective identity, Quilliam initiated a cricket club, amateur dramatic society, annual ‘Muslim picnic’ and a debating society which addressed topical issues as varied as ‘Socialism’ (1895), ‘Is Capital Punishment Expedient?’ (1900) and, ‘The Gospel of Life According to Ruskin’ (1903). The generally well-attended regular meetings, Muslim wedding ceremonies and Islamic festivals were also social as well as religious occasions. During festivals, separate evening receptions were organised for Muslims and their guests—for example, eid al-adha in 1903 culminated with, ‘an Oriental conjuring entertainment, Oriental music, refreshments and other entertainments’.31 â Quilliam was always keen to point out publicly, such as to the Daily Express in 1904, that, contrary to popular opinion, ‘Women are admitted on terms of equality with men, and they sit on the committee which governs the mosque.’32 Women were indeed encouraged to convert to Islam, join the LMI, and partake in its religious and social activities. Quilliam’s second convert, Francess Elizabeth Murray (later Cates), became the Institute’s first treasurer. Compared with their general position in wider society, British Muslim women fared reasonably well at the

LMI. ÂBoth sexes prayed in the same room, though as Clark noticed

94 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ during his visit in 1891, women stood behind the men.33 The pragmatic Quilliam did not expect women to veil within or outside the LMI, and the press were often surprised that the female converts were, according to one periodical, ‘dressed as ordinary Englishwomen, and [sit] with their male friends quite unrestricted’.34 The absence of discussion in Quilliam’s journals about veiling, dress and mixing between the sexes suggests that the community did not tend to engage with these issues beyond Victorian expectations that both women and men should dress and behave modestly. However, this was occasionally undermined by Quilliam himself, such as in 1898 when his ambitious (and ultimately unsuccessful) plan for a purpose-built ‘Cathedral mosque’ included ‘a gallery for the exclusive use of the female sex’.35 Moreover, few articles in the Crescent were written by women, they seldom lectured at the LMI and, contrary to Quilliam’s statement to the Express, female converts became increasingly marginalised as the Institute’s male membership increased. Indeed, after Cates relinquished her position in the mid- 1890s, men filled most of the main Committee and administrative posts. Women were typically concentrated on the Committee for the Institute’s orphanage, the ‘Medina Home’, which was opened at number twelve Brougham Terrace in 1897, ‘for the purpose of receiving young children, and training them in Islamic principles’.36 Women also filled suitably ‘domestic’ roles—for example, they knitted clothes for the orphans and provided refreshments during Ramadan and at the Institute’s annual reception for the poor on Christmas day, ‘the reputed birthday of the prophet Christ’, whom the Muslims respected as a prophet.37

II. Â‘Converting the British Nation to Islam’: an assessment Although constantly financially stretched, the LMI remained a vibrant organisation, which, under Quilliam’s direction, attracted and retained a number of converts. But, how successful was Quilliam and the Institute in ‘converting the British nation to Islam’ in practice? Considering the widespread unpopularity of Islam and Muslims in Victorian Britain, Quilliam’s aim seems implausible. Estimates of the numbers of converts achieved through his proselytising remain speculative in the absence of reliable reportage or institutional records. The source of the rumour circulating in India in 1890 that the Institute had made 500 converts is elusive, but that figure was certainly an exaggeration. In fact, as was

95 LOYAL ENEMIES noted in Chapter Two, in early 1889 Quilliam himself claimed to have just twenty ‘members’, not all of whom converted to Islam.38 Clark eagerly reported that his enquiries in the neighbourhood in 1891 revealed that LMI membership did not exceed twenty-eight, while Pool estimated later that year that it stood at fifty-two, of whom fourteen were women.39 Unsurprisingly, both missionaries concluded that Islam presented no great threat to Britain. Clark was satisfied that, ‘England is in no danger; Liverpool is still unconverted to Islam.’40 Pool similarly felt that Islam was ‘a lost cause’ in Liverpool and, having studied ÂQuilliam’s movement ‘on the spot’: I consider that the world-wide fuss made over it is altogether beyond its deserts. Apart from the President, I do not think the Institute contains any mental strength or sign of vigorous life. In my judgement the movement which

Mr. ÂQuilliam has inaugurated is a forlorn hope. Islam in England may drag on for some years a feeble existence, but then it will probably die a sudden death.41 â In the short term, a defiant Quilliam encouraged a steady but very modest number of mainly local Christians to convert. He claimed to have made twenty new converts from Christianity in the year from August 1892, though as would continue to undermine his mission, the actual number of converts/members of the LMI was offset by death and emigration. Indeed, in the same period, Quilliam admitted that he had made a net gain of just eleven ‘converts’, some of whom were born Muslims from overseas.42 Fourteen converts from Christianity were apparently made in the year 1895/6, though several also died in the same period, raising the total number of deaths of British Muslims since 1887 to twenty-three. Quilliam admitted that the deceased represented ‘a very large percentage indeed’ of the total number of British Muslims, and attributed this to most converts being ‘persons of mature age’.43 â Other converts simply drifted away from both the Institute and Islam. In 1896, Quilliam suspended a British Muslim who had apparently converted while living abroad, ‘but who by actions—which ever speak louder than words—had shown that the lip-profession of our faith was strangely inconsistent with her conduct’. He hoped that the community would, thereafter, be ‘one united family together in fraternal bonds [… because] Islam is on its trial in England, and the slightest mistake will be made much of by its enemies’.44 â Quilliam stated that twenty-seven converts were made in the year 1898/9, most of whom (sixteen) were, again, male. He claimed that

96 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ those conversions increased the total number of converts in the ‘member’s allegiance book’ to 182 since 1887. While most were originally Christians, a few had converted from Judaism.45 However, with further deaths and emigrations, Quilliam became gradually less sanguine about his chances of converting the nation. By 1902, he argued that: We seek not mere numbers […] but we do seek for the adhesion of thinking persons. I would rather labour ten years and only succeed in converting one sensible man or woman to Islam than secure the adhesion of a hundred thoughtless persons in one day.46 Later that year, Quilliam said publicly that there were 200 Muslims in Liverpool, and claimed that twenty converts were made annually.47 While there may well have been approximately 200 British Muslims connected with the LMI by 1902, the annual average of conversions generally fluctuated below twenty and, in fact, just eight adult conversions were made in the year from April 1902. As was admitted in the Crescent: Some persons might consider this as but slow progress, but [Quilliam] was not of that opinion. Islam was not an emotional religion that reaped converts by appealing in an hysterical manner to their feelings; it was a logical faith, which appealed to the reason and to the intellect, and as such it was not likely to attract the attention of the masses of English people, the majority of whom never gave an intelligent thought to religion, but who simply followed a creed or belonged to a religious sect because their progenitors had done the same, and they had been born and bred in that particular atmosphere. In addition to this, there was amongst Christian people an ancient and deep-rooted antipathy to Islam, which was generated in Western Europe at the time of the Crusades, and had been carefully fostered and pandered to by the clerical element ever since.48 â Given these constraints, Quilliam privately abandoned hopes of Âconverting the nation in his lifetime. But publicly he began to make exaggerated claims about the number of converts made through the

LMI. ÂThe realistic figure of 200 converts by 1902 suddenly doubled to

400 in 1904, and 500 in 1905. In January 1906, ‘H. MustaphaÂ Leon’ asserted in the Crescent that nearly 600 converts had been made in less than nineteen years, and that just ten people in Britain had converted to Islam without the aid of the LMI.49 â Though not conclusive, the database of the nstitute’sI British Muslim ‘congregation’ is suggestive of the number of converts made between 1887 and 1908. Although a total of 498 individuals are listed as having visited the LMI during that period, many of them simply attended a

97 LOYAL ENEMIES lecture or another event out of curiosity (as Quilliam intended) but, like some ‘members’, never converted to Islam. More reliable data is based on those individuals who took Muslim names and/or whose conversion was recorded in either of the Institute’s journals between 1893 and 1908. A total of 243 individuals (almost half of those listed in the database) fall into one or both of those categories.50 Of those, 193 (79 per cent) took Muslim names.51 Sixty-six conversions were listed in either the Crescent or Islamic World,52 but given the erratic reporting of conversions it is not possible to identify reliable trends of conversion between 1887 and 1908. That said, of those sixty-six converts, all adopted Islam between 1887 and 1906, with the greatest number of conversions in a single year being thirteen in 1896, followed by eight in 1897. As we saw in the previous chapter, Quilliam attracted most public attention during those two years as a result of his intervention in Britain’s foreign affairs. Prior to 1896/7 and, thereafter, the total number of reported conversions ranged from one to seven in any given year. Based on Quilliam’s own figures and those of the database, then, it seems likely that the total number of converts gained through proselytising and affiliated with the LMI was no more than 300—half of Leon’s 1906 estimate.53 Although this represented a sizeable community of British Muslims and, in the circumstances, was an achievement of sorts, it was not sufficient to convert the city of Liverpool to Islam, let alone the British nation.

III. ÂSocio-demographic characteristics of British Muslims The LMI database also points to common socio-demographic characteristics of these British Muslims, which enables the first tentative profiling of this pioneering community.

Previous religion, sex and age distribution Quilliam’s claim that most converts were originally Christians is confirmed by the LMI database—of the small number of individuals whose former religion is known (twenty-four people), all previously belonged to a range of broadly Christian denominations.54 Of the 243 British Muslims, 75 per cent (181) were male, and 25 per cent (sixty-two) female. The mean age of conversion among the twenty-six adults whose date of birth and date of conversion is known was forty-four years old,

98 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ which affirms Quilliam’s comment in 1896 that many British Muslims were ‘persons of mature age’. Whilst the mean age for men was forty-five and that for women slightly lower at thirty-nine, the age of conversion was spread across the adult range. Indeed, the youngest known adult to convert was nineteen-year-old Francess Murray (later Cates), and the oldest was James Lawrenson, who converted aged seventy-nine. â In short, the British Muslims were typically former Christians, male and middle aged. Interestingly, though studies of contemporary British converts to Islam indicate that most are from Christian backgrounds, the consensus is that more women than men (possibly a ratio of 2:1) convert to Islam in modern Britain.55 The higher proportion of men within the LMI community might be attributed to the fact that women had less access to the social networks that led to discussion about and conversion to Islam; it is also the case that fewer local women converted to Islam as a precursor of marriage to a born Muslim than has been the case since the 1950s (see Chapter Four), perhaps because of vociferous public disdain for such unions. The mean age of conversion among Ali Köse’s sample of British Muslims in the 1990s (to date, the most comprehensive primary study of converts in modern Britain) was also notably lower (29.7 years), and the age range of converts narrower (fifteen to sixty-one years), than those of their Victorian predecessors.56 The older age of converts continued to be problematic for Quilliam’s mission— many of the twenty-seven British Muslims (nineteen men and eight women) who died before May 1908 (11 per cent of the total ‘congregation’ and one or more death every year between 1891 and 1908, with the exception of 1898), were elderly. James Lawrenson, for example, died aged eighty, just a year after converting.

Family Equally disturbing for Quilliam and his hopes for Islam in twentieth- century Britain was the low level of children born to converts, with just four children listed in the database as offspring of British Muslims with Muslim names.57 The reasons for this are unclear, but it again seems likely that widespread prejudice against Islam and Muslims in this period discouraged parents from raising their children as Muslims, especially when, as was common among members of the LMI, the partner of a convert remained a nominal or practising Christian.58

99 LOYAL ENEMIES â Though numbers were never substantial, Islam was, however, something of a family affair for some locals. For example, Quilliam’s third cousin, John Owen/Omar Quilliam, converted in 1891, and his sons occasionally attended the Institute in the mid-1890s. After her conversion in 1887, the newly married Fatima Cates encouraged both her husband and sister to convert to Islam. At around the time of her conversion in 1891, Fatima’s sister, Clara, met and later married an Indian Muslim student studying at Liverpool University. The couple eventually settled in India, where they raised two children, presumably as Muslims.

Fatima’s husband, H. HaschemÂ Cates, died suddenly in 1895, followed by Fatima five years later at the age of just thirty-two. In line with instructions set out in Fatima’s will, the Cates’ only child, Hubert ÂHaleem, was raised as a Muslim under the guardianship of Quilliam.59 The Winter’s are an example of a rare nuclear British Muslim family:

W. ÂG. ÂIsmail Winter, sometime LMI Committee member, married a fellow British Muslim, Leah/Leylah, according to Islamic law at the LMI in 1891, and their two Muslim children continued to attend the ÂInstitute after their father’s death in 1904.

Place of residence It is clear that the converts were, in the words of the Pall Mall Gazette, overwhelmingly ‘Liverpool folk, born and bred’.60 Yet, in 1902, Quilliam began to refer to the Institute as comprising the ‘British Muslim Asso- ciation’ and, in 1905, the LMI became known as the British Muslim Institute, which is suggestive of a more national membership. The database confirms that the converts were generally Liverpool-based throughout the Institute’s history, but it also indicates that there were some affiliated converts scattered across Britain. The largest single concentra- tion was, as might be expected, London, with at least eight converts.

The first of these was W. ObeidullahÂ Cunliffe, who (like Lawrenson) converted the year before his death (aged sixty in 1893). As was noted in Chapter One, it was in London during the 1880s that immigrant Muslims began to meet and organise collectively as Muslims. Wary of Leitner and the conditions attached to using his mosque at nearby ÂWoking, in the mid-1890s a group gathered at a makeshift mosque near Regent’s Park, led by the imam of the Turkish Embassy and hajji Mohammed Dollie, a white South African convert. With the encourage-

100 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ ment of Quilliam, lectures about Islam were delivered at the mosque. These public events attracted a few local Christians, some of whom subsequently converted. Alfred Charles Ashton was one: he formally converted in 1896 by forwarding to Quilliam a form affirming his adhesion, and later visited the LMI.61 Unfortunately for Quilliam’s mission, however, in the short term most British Muslims outside of Liverpool were isolated individuals—primarily in the north of England, Scotland and abroad—and, therefore, lacking the direct personal (or ‘affective’) bond necessary to encourage them to organise as Muslims.

Employment and education Because Quilliam deliberately sought to attract local working-class folk, many of the converts were, indeed, as Parkinson noted, working men and women. The missionaries who visited the Institute in the early 1890s were particularly eager to condemn the converts as, to quote the missionary Clark, ‘“very ordinary people […] drawn, generally speaking, from the lower ranks of life—persons, as a whole, neither of education nor position […] hopelessly ignorant of Islam”.’62 Quilliam did not deny that many converts were working-class, but was keen to point out that the missionaries’ sentiments would: no doubt amuse the British Muslims, seeing that the converts include a Justice of the Peace, two solicitors of the Supreme Court, a professional analyst, an artist, a fellow of the London Society of Science, a schoolmaster, several proÂ perty-owners and tradesmen, a member of the Executive Committee of one of the largest Trade Unions in the British Isles, an accountant, an ex-clergyman of the Church of England &c.63 â Using occupational information as a measure, the database underlines that the majority of the sixty British Muslims whose occupation is known were of working-class origin.64 But it also confirms that a minority were from the lower ‘old’ middle-classes, mainly occupied as small shopkeepers and proprietors of other modest businesses. Moreover, a few were, as Quilliam claimed, well educated and widely travelled— individuals from the disparate ‘new’ middle-class. These included solicitors, teachers, an architect, two former Wesleyan preachers, a prominent trade unionist, and a provincial politician and Justice of the Peace, Robert/Reschid Stanley (1828–1911). Some were academic men, notably Professor H. H.Â YeyihaÂ Johnson, who was an Oxford graduate, for-

101 LOYAL ENEMIES mer Church of England minister and sometime English master at the Imperial College in Constantinople.

IV. ÂConversion motifs and motivations Why and how did these Britons convert to Islam in this period? As is evident in the cases of both Stanley and Quilliam, religious conversion was—and is—a complicated process dependant upon individual circumstances. Explaining conversions by way of Quilliam’s proselytising is made more difficult by the lack of convert testimonies published in either of the Institute’s journals and, when such accounts exist, discern- ing personal motivations from the editor’s (Quilliam’s) propaganda. Yet, the occasional letters to Quilliam and profiles and obituaries of prominent converts published mainly in the Crescent are the only reasonably reliable sources of information for conversion motifs and motivations among late-Victorian British Muslims. By treating the latter with caution and drawing upon Lofland and Skonovd’s descriptive system of conversion motifs discussed in the Introduction, commonalities and patterns can be ascertained for the first time. â Since all of the British Muslims affiliated with the Institute converted through free choice there is no evidence of the coercive (‘brainwashing’) mode of conversion. Nor can any cases of either revivalist (managed or manipulated) or mystical (‘born again’) modes of conversion be detected. There is, however, strong evidence of the ‘affectional’ mode of conversion in the cases of some converts. Indeed, the affective bond forged through personal contact with Quilliam and affiliation with his Institute was pivotal for pre- and post-converts (including those who corresponded from across the UK and abroad), and emphasises how Islam can grow against the odds when a charismatic leader such as Quil- liam and an institutional structure such as the LMI are in place to nurture belief and sustain commitment. This is true even of those few more educated and worldly converts who first encountered Islam before learning about Quilliam and his Institute, and whose conversions are more indicative of the ‘intellectual’ and ‘experimental’ modes. For example, similar to his contemporary Henry Stanley, Robert/Reschid Stanley (no relation) became a committed Turcophile through the example of Urqu- hart. As Mayor of Stalybridge during the Bulgarian agitation in 1876, Stanley halted a town meeting to condemn the Turkish atrocities because he thought that it would:

102 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ only have the effect of weakening the influence of the [British] Government in the councils of Europe […], encouraging the Serbians to continue their unjust war, and also tempting the Russians to interfere in the affairs of Turkey in such manner as to bring about a general war.65 â Although he was a Turcophile for most of his adult life and familiar with the Qur’an, Robert/Reschid Stanley probably did not convert until after he met Quilliam at the LMI in 1904.66 John Parkinson, on the other hand, was drawn to Islam through a hankering after truth and fresh knowledge stimulated by reading contemporary scientists and philosophers such as Charles Darwin (1809–82) and T. H.Â HuxleyÂ (1825– 95), and, although he studied Islam and Islamic history for some time, was also persuaded to convert only after meeting Quilliam.67 Professor

H. ÂNasrullah Warren, a scientist and, like Quilliam, a former Unitarian, sought a faith which was genuinely compatible with modern science. Although he was wooed by Quilliam’s claim that science and Islam were identical and the latter encouraged scientific research, he apparently did

5.âJohn Yehya-en Nasr Parkinson, c.1914. Source: The Islamic Review and ÂMuslim India, Vol.â2, No.â2 (1914), Frontispiece.

103 LOYAL ENEMIES not convert until Quilliam proved this in practice by accepting Warren’s invitation to present a science-based lecture at the Institute.68 â Given their generally low socio-economic status, only a few pre- converts initially experienced Islam and Muslims firsthand through overseas travel. Rather, most first encountered Islam at the Institute’s public ‘services’, which exposed them to Quilliam’s propaganda, and introduced them to other Muslims. Since Liverpool was a magnet for foreign Muslims, a few working-class locals might also have encountered Islam through personal relationships with Muslim immigrants. While, as in the case of Fatima Cates’ sister, Clara, marriage was sometimes a Âmotivation for conversion, of the twenty-one marriages between ÂMuslims and Christians known to have been solemnised according to Islamic law at the Institute, none were between local women and ÂMuslim seafarers, which, as we will see in the next chapter, was common in other British port towns in the same period. Again, this seems to be related to the infrequency of permanent settlement among foreigners in Liverpool during these years. In fact, of those marriages conducted at the Institute that involved a Christian partner, the trend was for unions between typically middle- and upper-class London women who visited Liverpool with their Indian or Arab Muslim fiancés (who were usually medical doctors or lawyers) specifically to marry them. Not all of these women converted to Islam, and nor is this necessary in Islam when a Muslim man marries a Christian or Jew. The only known exception to this was the union in 1905 of Mohammed Ben Belkhassan, a Moroccan acrobat on tour in Britain, and Clara Casey, a seventeen-year-old music hall singer and dancer from Salford. According to Billal Quilliam, who married them at the LMI while his father was abroad, the couple visited the Institute twice after the ceremony and promised to return after a trip to Morocco. But neither returned: Belkhassan was imprisoned in Tangi- ers for assaulting the British vice-consul, who had been investigating claims that Belkhassan had ‘abducted’ his young wife; and Casey, informed by the vice-consul that her LMI marriage certificate was not legally valid, returned to her worried family in Salford.69 â Quilliam himself admitted in 1896 that a minority of converts were mere opportunists who, similar to their early modern predecessors, sought material gain: At the inception of Islam [in Liverpool] we were visited by all sorts and conditions of men. The curious came to gratify their curiosity; the lover of novelty to

104 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ seek for something new; the faddist to air his particular crank; some came because they thought there was money to be made out of it—we quickly unde- ceived them on that score; others thought it a step-ladder by which they might mount to fame, only to find that their schemes of personal aggrandizement were incompatible with the teachings of Islam.70 Whilst the novelty and exoticness of Islam, Muslims and the LMI undoubtedly appealed to new converts, many, like Quilliam, also harboured genuine pre-existing doubts about contemporary Christian doctrine and dogma, and concern about the failure of Christianity to act as a stabilising factor in modern industrial society. Writing in the Crescent in 1893, Cunliffe argued that the apparent decline of belief amongst the working-classes was unsurprising, since: They will not accept the second-hand diction of any school, and much less the unproved, uncorroborated dogmas of biblical teachings and creed, rendered doubly doubtful by anonymous and illiterate authorship, contradictions, impossibilities, and untruthfulness.71 â Many converts found the principle tenet of the Trinity perplexing. Quilliam’s first convert, Hamilton, recalled that he met Quilliam at his Â‘Fanatics and Fanaticism’ lecture in 1887, and they walked home together: I asked [Quilliam] questions about Muhammed and Islam. I had always felt there was a considerable puzzle about the question of the Trinity: I could not understand how there could be one, and one could be three. The more I learned about Islam, the more I liked it.72 Frank/Djaffar Mortimore similarly explained in 1905 that, ‘The idea of three Gods in one seems a very Pagan belief. How three rulers can govern on fixed laws I cannot understand; two Kings rule not alike, three minds cannot be the same.’73 In the late-Victorian climate of doubt and enquiry, he began to, ‘grapple with the contradictions of the Old and the New Testament Scriptures and the multitudinous interpretations placed upon them’.74 Quilliam persuaded people like Hamilton and Mortimore that, in the absence of a Saviour, each individual had to bear responsibility for their own actions. Mortimore was pleasantly surprised to learn that Islam was, ‘a purely monotheistic religion, with no intermediary between man and God; every Muslim is his own priest; no ritual but prayer and precept’.75 Quilliam showed Mortimore and others that Islam—the example of Muhammad and the uncorrupted Qur’an—

105 LOYAL ENEMIES offered Muslims rule and order; it provided them with a simple and rational social code for living developed from the familiar Abrahamic tradition which guaranteed rights to all, and preserved the institutions of marriage and the family.76 Particularly important in this respect, and a further salient attraction for many converts (especially considering that Quilliam targeted Temperance societies), was Muhammad’s advocacy of Temperance. Several British Muslims wrote and lectured on Temper- ance, and joined the Quilliam-led Criterion Lodge of Good Templars, which met at Brougham Terrace.77 Alcohol, they argued, had driven scores of their compatriots to the workhouses, gaols and asylums. It followed that all religion should oppose alcohol but, Islam, they argued, was the only true religion of Temperance.78 â Troubled by Christian sectarianism and the principle of salvation, which excluded non-Christians, many new Muslims respected Islam’s fraternity and advocacy of ‘brotherhood’ to all God’s children, which was visibly evident at the LMI.79 James/Djemal-ud-deen Rankin, for example, had become ‘dissatisfied with the tenets of Christianity’ some years before his conversion in 1900, and felt exasperated by contemporary Christianity in practice, particularly with regards to the social impact of drinking, gambling and usury. Rankin, ‘knew absolutely nothing about Islam until I came to [Quilliam’s] meetings. At first I came through curiosity, but I soon became interested.’ He was intrigued by Quilliam’s exposition of Islam as a religion teaching and practising ‘total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors’, an issue which, he thought, the Christian Church had lost sight of. Rankin was thus enticed by Quilliam’s con- demnation of ‘vice’, and ‘struck with the brotherly feeling’ that existed among the ‘congregation’ in the lecture hall.80 A few converts, such as Robert McPherson, who had served with the British Army in both India and Egypt, confirmed in the Crescent and at LMI meetings that one only had to look to Muslim countries to see that, in contrast to the modern, urban West, religion was a primary force in society which underpinÂ ned Âmorality and was a fundamental part of wider culture. Similar to Quilliam, at the time of his conversion in 1897, Macpherson recalled how he had been, ‘struck with the absence of drunkenness amongst Muslims, and with the sincerity of their belief, and in Egypt I found the Muslims particularly straightforward and truthful’.81 â A combination of affectional, intellectual and experimental motifs clearly characterise the narratives of these late-nineteenth- and early-

106 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ twentieth-century conversions. Personal relationships with Muslims, and concerns and doubts about contemporary Christianity and Western social ‘progress’, made these individuals susceptible to conversion to an alternative perspective. However, a reluctance and fear of converting to a misunderstood and unpopular religion meant that few rashly opted for Islam. In fact, like Quilliam, many pre-converts tested other Christian denominations and religions, and/or tentatively experimented with Islam before formally converting by repeating the shahada and signing the LMI ‘member’s allegiance book’ (or, if they lived outside of Liver- pool, returning to Quilliam a form affirming their adhesion to Islam).82 Although Rankin, for example, found refuge from his spiritual doubts and moral anxieties at the LMI in 1899, he converted only after attending the public lectures for twelve months.83 Mortimore attributed this hesitation on the part of his co-religionists to a feeling that there seemed to be not simply a fear and dislike of Islam in England but, an ‘atmosphere of antipathy to other faiths, naturally imbued from the cradle of western teaching’.84

V. ÂConvert lives Discrimination The experiences of British Muslims connected with the LMI show that, despite modest reappraisal within mainly intellectual circles, Mortimore was correct in asserting that popular attitudes towards both Islam and Muslims in Britain remained largely negative and oppositional. Cunliffe wrote from London in 1893 that, ‘There is, probably, no subject upon which more ignorance has been displayed, nor any that has been approached with less candour or more prejudice than [Islam].’ He believed that most Christians blindly regarded Muslims as, ‘an unculti- vated barbarian and heathen, and as filthy, ignorant and most vicious’.85 The following year, Cunliffe noted that, ‘I was, during the past week, told by one amiable Scotchman that he would like to hang me and a large number of others for a slight divergence from his own personal opinions.’86 British Muslims in Liverpool also experienced sustained threats and discrimination. This was hardly surprising for a marginal and provocative group in a city which had been persistently disorderly throughout the nineteenth century and, in its final decades, was strained

107 LOYAL ENEMIES as a result of growing poverty, rising immigration and appalling public health. The use of collective violence was common, especially at a local level, during elections, in trade disputes and as an expression of sectarian loyalties within the city’s Irish, Welsh and Scottish communities.87 â Interestingly, the converts’ experiences contrast with those of the American, Alexander Russell Webb, who, inspired by Quilliam (with whom he corresponded), returned to America to propagate Islam in the 1890s. While Webb encountered some hostility back home, Americans did not tend to find his faith or his mission inherently discordant with American culture, or an intolerable addition to its pluralistic landscape. In fact, and in contrast to Quilliam’s reception in Britain in the same period, the different American experience of Islam (with its historical and geographical distance from the most denigrated and feared Muslim countries) meant that the American press did not question Webb’s patriotism or loyalties, instead dubbing him ‘the Yankee Mohammedan’ who remained a ‘Yankee’ in their eyes.88 That said, just like Quilliam, Webb himself came to feel that the press played a crucial role in destroy- ing his short-lived movement—not through hostility, but by exaggerated accounts about his mission’s finances, which sowed discord among the converts.89 â Like both Henry Stanley and Quilliam, British Muslims in this period often first experienced hostility to their religious conversion within their own families. Fatima Cates recalled that her Christian family intercepted letters from Quilliam to prevent her from attending LMI meetings, and threatened to burn her copy of the Qur’an: I was continually scolded and threatened with all kinds of punishment if I continued to read such a book, but all to no purpose; for I persisted in reading it, and finally I had to carry the Koran about with me, or during my absence it would have been destroyed.90 When Cates died in 1900, Quilliam remembered that, ‘every member of her family was bitterly opposed to her attending the meetings, and were horrified at the thought that she should have rejected Christianity’. Strangers also physically assaulted her—on several occasions horse manure was rubbed into her face as she left the LMI.91 Quilliam’s earliest convert, Hamilton, recollected that, given public opposition, it ‘required some considerable courage’ for the first British Muslims to assemble for weekly ‘services’: ‘Sometimes we had the room full of [up to one hundred] Christian roughs. They used to come here to interrupt our meet-

108 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ ing; they used to shout and stamp on the floor, and try to drown the speaker’s voice.’92 As they left the Vernon Street and, later, Brougham Terrace premises, the Muslims were pelted with missiles of bricks, cab- bages and offal.93 Professor Johnson, the former Christian minister who converted to Islam in 1891, was so anxious about his conversion being made public that he insisted in October of that year that the Liverpool Daily Post publish ‘an absolute denial to the report recently circulated that he had joined Mahommedanism’, and soon after left England for permanent residence in Egypt.94 â Letters to Quilliam from Britons who converted to Islam in the colonies (who were mainly Christian men whose experiences abroad opened their minds to alternative religious/cultural beliefs), reveal that residence abroad was no guarantee of a sanguine Muslim life. William Richard/ Abdullah Fazil Williamson (1872–1958), for example, converted after reading Quilliam’s literature while working for the Aden Police in 1892. He resigned his post and temporarily left the city. Upon his return later in the year, Williamson was arrested and told by the Political Resident to leave for Bombay because he ‘had disgraced the Christians by becoming a Moslem’. Williamson recalled that, after leaving the port, ‘I was told I could get no cabin, as the other passengers had heard that I was a Moslem, and did not care to associate with me.’95 Two years later Cecil/ Abdul-Hamid Le Mesurier was dismissed from his post in the Ceylon civil service after publicly announcing his conversion to Islam and Islamic marriage to a fellow British Muslim. Le Mesurier was advised that, although he had twenty years’ service with the Ceylon civil service, he had no legal remedy for his dismissal without a hearing because the government was above the law and not bound by its own rules and regulations. Discredited and disgraced, Le Mesurier was forced back to Eng- land, where he visited the LMI before emigrating to Australia.96 Of the few British women known to have converted abroad, most married local Muslims and, as far as can be ascertained, fared a little better than their male compatriots. They included the daughter of a ‘nabob’ who converted to Islam before marrying a Hyderabadi Nawab, and several ÂBritish teachers based in India and Turkey who also converted before marrying and settling with local men.97 â Back in Britain, many people believed that the Liverpool Muslim community aggravated the situation by ‘flaunting’ their alien religion. When fireworks and other objects were thrown into the LMI in 1891,

109 LOYAL ENEMIES for example, the Liverpool Review considered that the muezzin’s adhan from the balcony: was doubtless the red rag that aroused the mob’s active antagonising, for such a glaring advertisement in England, by the outside showman of the performance inside, cannot escape ridicule, and naturally tempts thoughtless and excitable opponents to resort to practical joking and violence. […] [T]he warning voice that fitly sounds from the midst of Eastern minarets and mosque towers is ridiculous from the balcony of a three-storey house in Brougham Terrace. Here it is most incongruous, unusual, silly and unwelcome, and the man who stands howling on a first floor balcony in such a fashion is certain to collect a ribald crowd, anxious to offer him a copper to go into the next street, or even ready to respond to his invitation with something more forcible than jeers.98 The Liverpool Review called upon the local Muslims to ‘suppress their balcony business’: Let the infatuated believers in Mohammed refrain from publicly advertising their creed, and the English public will, no doubt, willingly allow them to stand on their heads, or play any antics they choose, inside their makeshift Temple in Brougham Terrace. But the showman on the balcony-rostrum cannot fail to arrouse [sic] antagonism and riot.99 â Although the Liverpool Review seemed to reflect public opinion, a few lone voices were raised in defence of the local Muslims. A non- Muslim, for example, wrote to the Liverpool Review to protest against the ‘intolerance and bigotry which shone so conspicuously forth’ in its article.100 It was, however, generally left to the Muslims themselves to defend their beliefs and activities. George Khalid Smith, then LMI hon. secretary, was permitted a response in the Liverpool Review. Smith confidently highlighted the double standard inherent in the article, ques- tioning whether the newspaper’s correspondent understood why the muezzin performed adhan, and pondering whether the reporter objected to the tolling of a church bell.101 However, it was Quilliam who usually took the lead in publicly defending Islam and his Institute. This was partly through choice, but became increasingly necessary as more British Muslims were silenced through intimidation and discrimination. Stones continued to be thrown through the Institute’s windows and ‘irate Christian bigots’ heckled the speakers during public ‘services’.102 On one occasion a trip wire was put across the entrance to the Institute and, on another, broken glass was scattered across the floor and the carpet in the ‘pro-mosque’.103 Special policing arrangements

110 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ were apparently made to protect the Muslims from indiscriminate attacks inside the LMI but, in January 1894, A. Â Hassan Radford was pelted with sharp stones encased in snow by ‘a mob of Christians’ as he performed adhan.104 At the subsequent criminal trial, one of the culprits (a local Protestant apprentice baker), told the judge that he could not leave the Muslims to worship God in their own way because, ‘They are heathens, and don’t worship God.’105 â By the beginning of the new century, there were signs that prejudice was easing. Professor Warren considered, in May 1900, that the fact that only two windowpanes had been broken in the past month was evidence that, ‘a better opinion of Islam was being formed in the minds of the general public’.106 But, it seems more likely that a decade after settling at Brougham Terrace, the community were, in the words of Sheffield’s ÂSunday Telegraph, ‘now regarded with kindly tolerance, or perhaps one had better say indifference’.107 This seemed to extend to the authorities in Whitehall, who, though anxious about Quilliam, ignored other Brit- ish Muslims. The Institute itself also managed to avoid the gaze of Whitehall until 1905 when, seizing an opportunity offered by the Belkhassan-Casey affair, the Foreign Office put an end to LMI Islamic marriage ceremonies.108

Commitment to the Institute and Islam The shared experience of discrimination and prejudice helped bond the British Muslims and did not necessarily stop individuals from converting to Islam. However, as the case of Professor Johnson suggests, it also made many converts wary of publicising their conversion and undoubtedly affected their commitment to the Institute and/or their new faith. This might explain why many British Muslims listed in the LMI database only attended the Institute on a few occasions. On the other hand, these Muslims might have been nominal in their religious commitment in the first place. Having been fed a diluted, syncretic Islam via the public ‘services’, new converts might well have struggled to digest and adapt to the more orthodox Muslim religious practice and way of life Quilliam expected of British Muslims. But, even some of the most active and apparently committed Muslims suddenly disappeared. Perhaps this correlated with the inevitable waning of their initial zeal as religious converts. Professor H. HaschemÂ Wilde, for example, held numerous

111 LOYAL ENEMIES posts at the Institute until 1901, when his name was abruptly removed from the list of Committee members. He might simply have left ÂLiverpool, but it is striking that his departure was not mentioned or explained in either of the Institute’s journals (as was customary of British Muslims who moved away from the city), and nor was his name referred to again. For reasons unknown, he might equally have made a conscious break from the LMI, and perhaps even Islam. â In the absence of reliable source material, gauging the true commitment of even the staunchest British Muslims is difficult. It is clear that, as long as they were associated with the Institute, all local Muslims were able to practise a syncretic form of Sunni Islam with familiar ‘Christian’ elements, and partake in its socio-religious activities. Indeed, as we saw in the previous chapter, Quilliam himself actively encouraged fellow Muslims to develop their faith through a combination of prayer, fasting and festivals. The dates and times of these were published in theÂCr escent, and special arrangements were usually made for observing Ramadan.109 The Crescent Printing Company also published a short guide written by one of the converts, which explained the correct time, mode and practice of performing salat, a ritual prostration. It affirmed to some uncertain new Muslims that, ‘It is usual to pray without boots’, but conceded, ‘if one is sure that the boots or shoes one is wearing are absolutely clean, they may be worn during the service.’110 â Quilliam also attempted to educate the few children born to local Muslims. By 1893, he had established a ‘Moslem College’ for Muslim boys, and later in that year opened a separate school for girls or, as Quil- liam saw them, the Muslim wives and mothers of the future: ‘if the mothers are able to teach their children Moslem prayers and Moslem rules of life, from the first moment that the child is able to lisp a sentence, or understand the difference between right and wrong, then the future of Islam in England is assured.’111 Other initiatives included the formation of the ‘Osmanali Regiment’, a uniformed organisation similar to the then popular Boy’s Brigade, but linked to Islam, rather than Christianity, with the spirit of a curious Ottoman-British patriotism.112 In 1895, the financially-stretched College offered, ‘a high-class English education to the children of Mahomedan parents’. As well as teaching Arabic, Turkish and Persian, the curriculum included Latin and the Classics, as well as Mathematics.113 However, as with many of Quilliam’s ventures (the girls’ school and Osmanali Regiment included), the Col- lege was financially unsustainable and soon closed.

112 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ â Meanwhile, to the frustration of Quilliam, attendance at LMI prayer meetings was often poor. This was primarily because, like Quilliam, most British Muslims had to find a balance between their busy working lives and their religious obligations. Many thus attended the Institute only when it was practical to do so—most frequently, as they would have done as good Christians, on a Sunday. Their commitment to the ritualistic aspects of Islam was also essentially pragmatic. Since many British Muslims were teetotal before their conversion, most simply continued to abstain from alcohol; some (but, certainly not all) also gave up smoking, gambling and pork; a few also contributed to the Institute’s zakat fund, but the majority could not afford to do so. It was also probably inconceivable to most local converts that they would ever perform the hajj and, indeed, only those who had experience of living in Muslim countries—notably hajji Browne and Abdullah Williamson—appear to have done so before 1908. Williamson was also circumcised after his formal conversion. Although he, ‘knew that circumcision was not obligatory […], all the same I wished to conform with all outward as well as inward signs of Islam’, while living in the Middle East.114 â Some of the many local converts who died before 1908 wanted to be buried as Muslims, signifying a resolute commitment to Islam. How- ever, few of them appear to have stipulated their wishes in writing, which meant that the mode of their burial was dependent upon the attitude and empathy of their grieving families. Indeed, the burial records of eight of the British Muslims who died between 1899 and 1908 indicate that two were interred in consecrated ground under the direction of Christian ministers.115 One of them was an old friend of Quilliam, James B./Djemal-ud-deen Bokhari Jeffery, whose requirements appeared to cause some confusion and occasioned three separate entries in the Anfield Cemetery order books for September 1903. The initial order of a Church of England burial was cancelled and arrangements were made for interment in the Nonconformist plot. However, the latter was also subsequently cancelled and, though a committed Muslim, Jeffery was eventually accorded a place in consecrated ground. Quilliam’s first convert, Hamilton, was also buried according to Christian rites, but Quilliam later read Muslim prayers over his grave. According to an article in the Crescent, when Muslim prayers were read over the grave of Michael Hall in a suburban churchyard in 1891 (the year after his conversion to Islam), ‘The people of Garston gazed in silent wonder

113 LOYAL ENEMIES at our little company who all wore Tarboosh [fezzes]; but no attempt was made to molest us or to prevent our performing this important 116 and Ânecessary duty.’ However, the event prompted a letter of com- plaint in the Liverpool Daily Post from ‘an indignant PRO BONO CHRISTIANO’ who was eager to refute that Hall had converted to Islam, alleged that Quilliam had, ‘marched boldly into the churchyard in Garston without so much as asking for leave or permission’, and urged that, ‘such a piece of cool impudence should not pass unchal- lenged’.117 Quilliam replied in the Crescent that the writer had, ‘made a mountain out of a mole hill’, since not only had Hall converted to Islam before his death, but the short Muslim service was conducted with the written consent of his widow.118 â In the absence of a dedicated Muslim burial ground, six of the eight British Muslims were buried, as might be expected, in Nonconformist or unconsecrated ground. Quilliam conducted five of the burial services. Reflecting on one of these in 1891, the Liverpool Review considered that, ‘It looked rather strange to see the member of the congregation who officiated as the Imaum [sic] clad in a suit of light tweed, and for the presiding Mollah [mullah, a Muslim religious man/leader] to be attired in a light blue tie and light kid gloves.’ The proceedings created confusion: A lady, evidently a stranger to Moslem customs but probably a friend of the deceased, placed a little floral cross upon the coffin amongst the many wreaths of flowers that were already laying there. One of the zealous moslems [sic], however, stooped down and snapped the crossbar in two, returning the flowers on to the coffin in its mutilated shape.119 â It is unclear whether Quilliam or other Muslims were able to prepare Âthe bodies of the deceased according to Muslim tradition, which requires ritual washing and shrouding.120 Given practical constraints and Victorian burial regulations, the converts’ graves were not aligned towards Mecca, nor would it have been possible to bury them in a customary shroud. However, referring to Fatima Cates’s burial at Anfield Cemetery in 1900, Quilliam emphasised that, ‘The body is recumbent, as in a Christian burial, only the coffin is as thin as possible in order to hasten the return of the body to the dust from which it was made.’ Cates’s coffin had a suitable green pall, ‘with embroidered silver crescent and star’.121 â Although Quilliam himself largely self-funded the Institute through to 1908, the other British Muslims contributed to the mission in a num-

114 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ ber of ways. Only a few were able or prepared to advocate and defend Islam and Muslims in the public arena. Indeed, as was indicated in the previous chapter, Quilliam was often a lone voice at the many local public meetings convened to discuss the Eastern Question—for example, when he defended Ottoman governance of Macedonia at Liverpool Town Hall in 1903 (Chapter Two). Although many British Muslims felt aggrieved at Britain’s deteriorating relationship with the Ottomans, their sensitivity to the tension (real and/or perceived) between their national and religious identities undoubtedly made them wary of speaking out publicly against British policy. Their silence was also probably encouraged by Quilliam’s autocracy within the Institute and his claim to speak on behalf of all British Muslims. Consequently, only Parkinson came close to matching Quilliam’s energy and drive for both the defence and public propagation of Islam in Britain. He wrote about Islam and Mus- lim issues regularly in the Crescent and Islamic World, and lectured and officiated at the LMI on the few occasions when he left his native Scot- land. Parkinson also bravely fended off ‘scorn and other revilings’ in a public defence of Islam and the caliph in his home region of North Ayrshire.122 His first series of essays on the history of Islam, written under the pseudonym of ‘Ingomar’, was published in the Ardrossan and Salt- coats Herald shortly after his conversion in 1901. A local reporter later commented that, ‘one never knows where human nature may break out; Âbut it is strange, none the less, to find this Moslem Sheik [sic] in Kilwinning, one of the most matter-of-fact Christian communities’.123 â Notably, the few other British Muslims who wielded their pens to protest against Britain’s foreign policy tended to be individuals scattered across Britain and abroad (some of whom probably never visited the Institute), and whose conversion to Islam might even have been politically motivated. Like Quilliam, they generally supported the pre-existing British Empire, were particularly concerned about their government’s interference in the Ottoman Empire and its repercussions in India and, thus, argued that they had the best interests of Britain in mind.124 How- ever, they deplored popular attitudes regarding Islam, and some attacked the partisan press and exposed the hypocrisy of British foreign policy towards Turkey. Henry Yute Jones Taylor of Gloucester, for example, wrote several articles and poems for the Institute’s journals which articu- lated his despair at British and European treatment of the Ottoman sultan.125 At around the same time, William Davidge Halliday of

115 LOYAL ENEMIES ÂScotland denounÂced the ‘exaggerated or concocted’ claims in the British press regarding Ottoman government in Armenia, accused Christian missionaries of sowing ‘the seeds of discontent’ in the minds of ÂArmenians and argued that, following the Treaty of Berlin, ‘Englishmen of high position’ had, ‘aided and abetted the seditious movement, as they had also supported the slave owner’s cause in America’. Halliday concluded that, ‘What the Armenians have been incited to strive after is an autonomous Government under British suzerainty for the sake of John Bull’s own aggrandizement’.126 The only notable voice on British foreign policy within the Liverpool Muslim community was Mortimore, who, in 1904, blamed ‘the Christian clergy and their flocks’ for the political unrest in the Balkans and ‘the misrepresentation which is so general regarding the sympathy of Islam and her friendship and support’. The integrity of Turkey, he argued, was: a vital point to the interest of England, to our Eastern possessions, and the peace and goodwill of over 100 millions of British Muslim subjects in all parts of the world. Let us hope if further troubles arise in Macedonia or Armenia the British press will remember that the white and grizzly bear, Russia, is not far off.127 â Two years later, Parkinson attempted to quell fears among the British Muslim community that, in the press’s opinion, support for the Ottoman sultan was disloyal to Britain. Parkinson also believed that, in fact, the future stability of India and the British Empire depended on securing the loyalty of its Muslim subjects. For Parkinson, who ‘had so many vulgar epithets launched at my head by opponents that my system has become inured to the process’, their duty was: now, and always has been, the principle of the British Muslims not only to establish harmony between the mother country and her Islamic subjects, but to bring about friendlier relations between Britain and the various Muslim States. And we claim that this principle is sound policy in the interests of and for the unity of the Empire.128 â However, most British Muslims were still unprepared or unable to engage with politics, let alone intervene in the public arena. The LMI database reveals that a few of the more literary British Muslims contributed to the Institute’s journals (thirty-nine individuals, or 16 per cent of the 243 converts, including nine women), and also published occasional articles and poetry on Islam and Muslim affairs elsewhere, especially for Indian journals.129 Hajji Browne, Abdullah Williamson

116 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ and Cunliffe also contributed to Alexander ussellR Webb’s American journal, the Moslem World, in the 1890s.130 While thirty-four British Muslims (14 per cent; just two of them women) gave lectures on Islam or related topics at the Institute,131 only three (1 per cent) of those listed in the database are known to have spoken publicly about Islam and Muslims elsewhere. However, many more converts, particularly those local to Liverpool, worked out of the public gaze to help ÂQuilliam run the Institute on a day-to-day basis. For example, although Quilliam’s cousin, John Omar Quilliam, was ‘no orator’ and, indeed, never delivered a lecture at the Institute, he was ‘a shrewd businessman’ and, therefore, became hon. secretary and registrar of the ‘Moslem College’ and had a seat on the Institute’s Executive Commit- tee at the time of his death in 1897. Around a third of the British Muslims listed in the database (eighty-one individuals) also held an official position at the Institute, ranging from a one-off commitment to several over many years.132

VI. ÂFate and legacy What was the fate of the LMI and its Muslim community when ÂQuilliam abruptly left England in 1908? Interestingly, conscious of the inactivity of a still sizeable proportion of the British Muslims, and with an eye to the future of the Institute and Islam in Britain, Quilliam had begun to address the role and commitment of his protégés in the early years of the new century. In June 1905, he reminded them that, ‘Their position was that of pioneers. They had to smooth down the barriers and obstacles raised by the prejudice and bigotry of those of other faiths, through their ignorance of Islamic principles and history.’ Quilliam thus defined a ‘sacred jehad [sic] in the British Isles’, which was, he maintained, ‘a mighty work [that] rests upon not one, but all of us […]. The duty is as much yours as it is mine. I shall not be with you always.’133 These sentiments were echoed a few months later by a representative of the Muslim Education Society in Bengal (Indian Muslims continued to take a keen interest in the LMI), who, casting some doubt on the commitment of the Liverpool Muslims, advised Quilliam that: Your duty is now not to preach, but to train a band of workers who will show more zeal, earnestness, and spirit of self-sacrifice in the spreading of the faith than what has hitherto been exhibited; your duty has now become that of a supervisor.134

117 LOYAL ENEMIES â Quilliam published the letter in the Crescent, commenting that it was ‘well worthy of the serious consideration of the British Muslims’.135 But, the message seems to have been largely ignored, partly, perhaps, because Quilliam himself showed little sign of relinquishing control of the ÂInstitute. Only Parkinson, who had recently been appointed LMI vice-president, responded by urging his fellow Muslims to explain the principles and ethics of Islam to their compatriots to assure the survival of Islam in ‘the West’.136 A skilled orator and writer, and some twenty years Quilliam’s junior, Parkinson was an obvious successor. However, as ÂParkinson himself admitted, based in Scotland, ‘this bleak and barren northland, with its rolling lowlands and magnificent scen- ery, I am perhaps too far removed from the busy heart of the Muslim World to be in touch with the actual life and central movement of the system.’137 When Parkinson finally left Scotland for Liverpool, just a few days after Quilliam’s emigration to Turkey in May 1908, he headed not for the Institute, but to the city’s docks, from where he sailed to Belfast to visit relatives before journeying onward to employment in Burma (Myanmar).138 â In the absence of both its energetic president and gifted vice-president, the Institute rapidly declined during 1908. Upon reading that the

Institute was still functioning in 1911, J. F.Â HewittÂ of the Liverpool Church Missionary Society visited number eight Brougham Terrace. To his relief, Hewitt found the premises in a sorry state of repair: A single-fronted, three-storied house, rateable value at £30 at the most, empty, unpainted, dirty, with broken windows. The sign of its past history is a notice- board suspended between the two windows of the second story, with a tiny crescent affixed to each corner.139 Hewitt was hopeful that Quilliam’s ‘disappearance’ and the closure of the Institute signalled the end of Islam in the Christian West: ‘We shall not be troubled much by Islam in Liverpool, or England, or America, if its energy and progress are correctly symbolised by this deserted, depress- ing dwelling place.’140 â Indeed, lacking an institutional base, the majority of Liverpool converts appear to have either lived out their days as nominal Muslims, or drifted from Islam.141 When the Indian Muslim missionary, Maulana Sadr-ud-Din (d.1981) visited Liverpool from the new WMM in c.1915,142 he found ‘only one house where a lady still professed Islam’.143

118 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ Quilliam’s hopes for a second or even third generation of British ÂMuslims to secure Islam on a permanent footing in Britain thus seemed dashed in Liverpool.144 â However, a minority of the most committed British Muslims continued their charitable work, and met informally for several years after 1908. In 1911, Parkinson, who was temporarily living back in Belfast, reported to the Indian Muslim journal, the Review of Religions, that Mortimore had been speaking ‘a word of comfort, cheer and hope’ to sick and dying Muslim seafarers confined to Liverpool’s Christian missionary homes.145 A year later, the Crescent’s former London correspondent, Bertram William/Khalid Sheldrake (1888–1947), also noted that, ‘the cause of Islam is still upheld in Liverpool by a devoted band under

F. ÂDjaffer Mortimore, aided by Prof. [Nathan/Nur-ud-Din] Stephen, Hasan Arcuilli and Reschid Stanley’.146 As we saw in the previous chapter, Robert Ahmed Quilliam also continued to meet immigrant Muslims in Liverpool under the auspices of the ‘British Muslims Association’ until c.1914. At around that time, Mortimore, Stephen (one of Quilliam’s oldest friends), Parkinson and Sheldrake all drifted towards the recently inaugurated WMM. InÂ the next chapter, we will see how, to the despair of people like Hewitt at the Church Missionary Society, these former LMI Muslims encouraged the development of the WMM, which quickly became the new centre of British Islam and Muslim missionary activity in Britain. â Whilst Quilliam also became closely involved with the WMM under the guise of ‘Léon’, his family—which was still largely concentrated in Liverpool—disassociated themselves from Islam. During his visit to Liverpool, Sadr-ud-Din found that the Quilliam family were apparently, ‘no more demonstrative of their faith’.147 The exception was Quilliam’s eldest son, Robert Ahmed, who remained Muslim after his father’s death. In 1933, Robert wrote to the WMM’s Islamic Review that he now considered it his ‘duty and privilege to uphold the banner of Islam in Liverpool’, but, ‘Owing to business occupation, I have been unable to devote so much time as I would desire to this object.’ He explained that, with the help of some other ‘British Muslims’, a small prayer group had been formed, plans were afoot ‘to make fresh converts’, and, ‘in time we hope to have a Muslim Reading Room in Birkenhead [a town on the Wirral Peninsular, facing Liverpool] and a place for Nimaz [namaz, worship/prayer]’.148 But, no further news of these activities was reported

119 LOYAL ENEMIES in the Islamic Review, suggesting that Robert’s plans for the revival of Islam in Liverpool petered out. Robert was still based in Merseyside some twenty years later, when he acted as election agent for an Indian Muslim candidate in a local Parliamentary by-election. Anecdotal evidence suggests that he still adhered to Islam, but was no longer vocal about his religious beliefs.149 Little is known about the adult life of ÂQuilliam’s ‘foster’ child, Hubert Haleem Quilliam-Cates, except that he also continued to use his Muslim name until at least the early 1920s, when he was an Associate of Quilliam’s ‘Société’.150 â The rest of the Quilliam family, on the other hand, soon shook off their Muslim identity. Billal Quilliam qualified as a solicitor and worked for the family firm until the First World War. Thereafter, Billal led an almost as eventful life as his father, though he no longer identified with Islam. In 1921, he was implicated in a plot to buy arms for Venezuela, and in the following year fled to France after defrauding a company of which he was a director. In the mid-1920s, Billal made a small fortune through property development on the Riviera, but lost it in Nice, where, to add to his woes, he was charged and imprisoned for manslaughter following a road accident. Back in England, he was again involved in conspiracy to defraud, which landed him in jail for two more years; he died in a Watford nursing home in 1965.151 Quilliam had hoped that when his youngest son, Henry Mahomed, moved to Canada in 1905, he would plant ‘the Islamic banner’ in that Dominion. However, Henry apparently disliked both his father and Islam, and died a non-Muslim in Canada some fifty years later.152 One of Quilliam’s daughters, Lilian Ayesha, died a spinster just three years after her father, though, unlike him, there was no reference to Islam and she did not express a wish to receive a Muslim burial in her will.153 Quilliam’s other daughters married non-Muslims—although they had come under the influence of Islam, none of them adhered to it during their adult lives, nor were any of their children raised as Muslims.154 â Quilliam’s second wife, Mary, outlived her husband by two decades and, like her predecessor, Hannah, remained a Christian through to her death in 1952.155 Curiously, in 1956, a certain ‘Edith Miriam Leon’— presumably Quilliam’s mysterious London mistress—died at the grand age of ninety-one and was buried in the Muslim section of Brookwood Cemetery by the imam of the Woking Mosque.156 By then, the number of Muslims in Britain was swelling with immigration from Britain’s

120 ‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’ former colonies. In Liverpool alone, the Muslim population had increased to around 3,000 by 1960, which led to calls for the city’s first purpose-built mosque.157 The Institute’s Brougham Terrace premises, meanwhile, were purchased by the city council and used for the registry of births, marriages and deaths until 2002. Mindful of the importance of their Muslim predecessors and heritage, a small group of Liverpool’s estimated 20,000 Muslims organised the unveiling of a commemorative plaque outside number eight Brougham Terrace in 1997. In 2005, the group, which became the ‘Abdullah Quilliam Society’, officially launÂ ched a campaign to acquire and convert the Brougham Terrace premises (now Grade II listed) into the ‘Abdullah Quilliam Heritage Centre’ for Islamic education and cultural purposes.158 A patron of the conversion fund was the Bishop of Liverpool, something which would have been quite inconceivable to Quilliam and other British Muslims a century earlier, yet evidences greater cooperation and understanding between the faith communities in contemporary Liverpool, which has its roots in the activities of their Victorian Muslim predecessors.

121

‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’

BRITISH CONVERSIONS, 1908–1953

The remaining chapters of this book focus on British Muslim converts in the early-to-mid-twentieth century, from the fizzling out of the LMI in 1908 and foundation of what became the Woking Muslim Mission in 1912, through to the dawn of the New Elizabethan Age in 1953. Before examining the lives and loyalties of these converts in Chapters Five and Six respectively, here we draw on a greater body of primary source material than is available for Victorian Muslims to consider in detail for the first time how and why Britons converted to Islam in this late-imperial period. â Although institutional records for early-twentieth-century Muslim organisations have not survived, some official documents have, and comprehensive reports of individual British conversions are also recorded in the journals of the pioneering WMM and its rival, the ÂLondon Mosque Mission. This chapter draws upon those sources, supplemented with the private papers of individual converts and their many publications, contemporaneous press articles and government documents. It also teases out trends and draws conclusions from a specially constructed database of converts connected with the WMM.1 Reflecting here on the twentieth century, why and how did Indian-led Islamic missions—proactive proselytising organisations with dedicated staff

123 LOYAL ENEMIES modelled on the Christian missionary movement—assume the work of the LMI in Britain before the First World War? Concentrating on the WMM and also considering the LMM, how did a new breed of missionaries facilitate British conversions? Moreover, what motivated people to convert to Islam within and outside of these organisations, and how did conversion motifs and motivations compare and contrast with those identified in the nineteenth century? Maximising the more thorough documentation of conversions in this period and reflecting on analysis of the WMM database, which records individual adhesions by date, did events during this turbulent forty-year period produce identifiable patterns of conversion? Finally, how many individuals and what type of people converted through the WMM and LMM in this period, and which Muslim missionary organisation was most successful?

I. ÂIndian Muslim missions and conversion Arrivals and beginnings By the early twentieth century, transient and permanent communities of Muslims, mainly comprising Indian and Arab seafarers, students and intellectuals, were scattered throughout predominantly urban Britain. Older stalwarts of the British Empire like Ameer Ali, who retired to Britain in 1904, were joined by less apathetic Muslims such as Abdullah Suhrawardy (1870–1935) and Mushir Hussain Kidwai (1878–1937), who were agitated by Britain’s wavering support for the Ottomans and hoped to stem the decline of the umma by pursuing broadly pan-Islamic objectives. In 1903, Suhrawardy merged the London Anjuman-i Islam (Chapter One) into a new Pan-Islamic Society to, ‘safeguard and represent all Islamic interests of as many Muslim peoples and countries as possible without any distinction of sect or colour or race or country’.2 By 1913, the Islamic Society, as it was renamed in 1907 (and then ÂCentral Islamic Society [CIS] in 1916), had around 300 members comprising mainly Indians, Egyptians and Ottomans as well as some Britons, including Quilliam/Léon, Parkinson (who had returned to Scotland), Ahmad Browning of the LMI and Dudley Wright (1868–1949), a London-based Islamophile who had written for the Crescent.3 â Although the Society was not intended to be missionary-focused, Suhrawardy himself made a few converts in London, most notably in 1904 Khalid Sheldrake (later, the Crescent’s London correspondent), and

124 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ another young enthusiast, Henson/Omar Flight. Encouraged by Suhrawardy and Quilliam, and helped by Browning and Flight, Sheldrake founded the short-lived Young England Islamic Society in c.1906 to propagate Islam, ‘by the circulation of Islamic literature and the holding of debates upon Islamic subjects’.4 Sheldrake explained and defended Islam on public platforms and in the press, and was rewarded in 1912 with joint vice-presidency of the Islamic Society. Writing in the Indian Review of Religions, he argued that the Society did, ‘splendid social work by keeping the Muslim elements together and by providing a centre for the keeping of the fasts and festivals of our Holy Faith’, but lamented the absence of a purpose-built mosque in the capital.5 Since the death of Leitner in 1899, the mosque at Woking had fallen into a state of disre- pair. Suhrawardy had attempted to buy it from Leitner’s son and heir, Henry, but failed to secure sufficient financial backing.6 Meanwhile, also reflecting on the need for a mosque in the capital, Ameer Ali established a London Mosque Fund Committee in 1910, which secured donations from Muslim leaders in Turkey, Persia and India.7 In the interim, Ameer Ali and the Committee’s other Trustees—India Council member, Abbas Ali Baig (d.1932), and the Orientalist, Thomas Walker Arnold (1864– 1930)—made a formal agreement with Henry Leitner in 1912 which secured Woking Mosque and the adjoining domestic building known as the Memorial House for the use of the growing Muslim community.8 â In October 1912, Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din (1870–1932), a lawyer and Muslim writer and missionary from Qadian in India’s Punjab province, arrived in England on legal business. Kamal-ud-Din was a convert to the Ahmadiyya, an unorthodox Muslim sect founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (c.1835–1908). Following a series of visions in the 1880s which drew upon the Islamic belief that a Messiah and a Mahdi would come to lead Muslims against the unbelievers, Ahmad had personally assumed both roles. In 1889, he inaugurated the Ahmadiyyat (Ahmadiyya community) by accepting the allegiance of his first followers—namely those who affirmed standard matters of Islamic belief and swore specific allegiance to Ahmad.9 Though, by the twentieth century, their primary aim was to remove popular misconceptions about their own beliefs, the Ahmadis were missionary-inclined and, within a year of Ahmad’s death in 1908, devised a strategy which involved the publication of Ahmadi propaganda in what was considered to be the more universal language of English, and the training and dispatch of missionaries.10 An Ahmadi

125 LOYAL ENEMIES mission to England, the heart of the British Empire, was likely following a vision in which Ahmad saw himself: standing on a minaret in London and elucidating the truth of Islam in a very argumentative discourse in the English language. After this I caught a large number of birds that were sitting on small trees. They were of white colour and of about the size of a partridge. I inferred from this vision that though I myself would not go to England, […] my writings would be circulated among those people and many upright Englishmen would fall prey to the charms of Islam.11 â Once in England, Kamal-ud-Din abandoned his legal career and took it upon himself to promote a fairer hearing of Islam through propaganda written and inspired by Ahmad. In doing so, Kamal-ud-Din was keen to downplay the differences between Ahmadi and orthodox Islam. As he argued at the Indian Convention of Religions the year before his arrival in England: The [Ahmadi] sect does not differ from other Islamic sects in any cardinal principle of Muhammadanism but in one thing. Our Holy Prophet Muham- mad promised a Messiah who was to come to revive religion in days to come, and we accept the fulfilment of these prophetic words in the person of our Master, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement.12 â Like Ameer Ali and other middle- and upper-class Indian Muslims, Kamal-ud-Din was familiar with the British and their social and cultural mores. He therefore used public meetings and lectures, ‘at homes’, gath- erings at fashionable London restaurants and hotels, the press and journals to spread his message. He addressed Muslim student societies, metropolitan Oriental and literary circles, and unorthodox, but broadly sympathetic, religious groups such as Quakers, Theosophists, Unitarians and Spiritualists. Kamal-ud-Din was not antagonistic towards Christianity or Christians and, having studied Christian theology in a Christian missionary college in Lahore, was able, like Leitner and Quilliam, to elucidate the similarities between the ‘sister faiths’ and justify Islamic religious and social codes and practices. Within a few months of arriving in England he had, for example, defended the institution of polygamy to an audience at Cambridge, attributing the apparent rarity of ‘bastardy’ in Muslim countries to the fact that polygamy, sanctioned by the law, removed the stigma of illegitimacy;13 demonstrated the ‘equality’ of women in Islam to the women of the Lyceum Club and, while lamenting the militancy of the suffragettes, accepted their claims and offered

126 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ them a welcome home in Islam;14 and, as the Folkestone Express reported, told the local Theosophical Society that: As Theosophists they were bound to make no distinction between one religion and another. They were really bound to the Koran, which was the last of all the sacred books […] A true Theosophist could not […] make any distinction between the religions. If they knocked at the door it would be open to them.15 âKamal-ud-Din was initially careful to affirm Indian Muslim support for the Raj, not least because, as long as the British ruled India, the determinedly apolitical but, from the orthodox Muslim point of view, apostate Ahmadiyya, were largely safe from discrimination.16 In February 1913, Kamal-ud-Din began to manipulate the English cultural scene by publishing the Muslim India and Islamic Review from his home in Kew, south-west London. The first issue affirmed that, ‘the British Raj [is] a blessing to India. We do believe that our community is better off under the present regime,’ but warned that, ‘the British Empire, as a healthy Imperial organism, depends for its vigour and stability upon a complete fusion of its various components.’ Kamal-ud-Din suggested that Euro- pean ‘misrepresentation’ of Muslims and Islam threatened the stability, lamenting that, ‘in this cosmopolitan town, an average Londoner is more ignorant of the Islamic world than many Englishmen are of the Arctic zone.’17 The prominent Orientalist, Edward Granville Browne (1862–1926), had recently met Kamal-ud-Din and wrote a letter which applauded the latter’s intentions but warned that, ‘the mass of English people […], so dazed by restless domestic legislation [… and] so scantily supplied with unbiased information about foreign affairs’, would not be interested in reading about India, let alone Islam.18 â As sometime assistant for the Review of Religions, Kamal-ud-Din knew the work of prominent British Muslims and, realising early on the importance of propagating Islam through the example of ‘native’ converts, invited them to contribute to Muslim India and Islamic Review. Conse- quently, Parkinson wrote in the June 1913 issue about ‘Islam and the World’—the same title and gist of his final contribution to Quilliam’s Islamic World, in which he criticised Christianity’s ‘energetic and system- atic crusade against Islam’. He urged that, ‘the whole Muslim world, for purposes of defence, should be in touch, not only linked together by one ÂFaith, one religion, but united in thought and action, supported 19 and Âmaintained by a virile, energetic and scholarly press.’ Djaffar

127 LOYAL ENEMIES ÂMortimore, another Quilliam protégé, gave his ‘Impressions of Islam’ in subsequent issues.20 Other British Muslims connected with the LMI, including Stephen, Sheldrake, Wright as well as Quilliam/Léon, also became contributors.

Kamal-ud-Din and the Woking Muslim Mission Kamal-ud-Din quickly made a name for himself in England as a skilled, moderate defender of Islam. In August 1913, he accepted an invitation from Baig to move into the Memorial House at Woking and take charge of the mosque to help educate the British public about Islam and provide religious and social support for Muslims.21 It is unclear if, in 1913, Baig or the other Trustees intended Woking to become a centre of missionary activity. However, in a move that would have Leitner turning in his grave, Kamal-ud-Din did just that by reconstituting what was left of the Oriental Institute into what became formally known during the First World War as the Woking Muslim Mission. â Kamal-ud-Din had already made a few converts in Britain before moving to Woking by, to quote the Manchester Dispatch in 1913, ‘simply [laying] a true, plain, unvarnished account of Islam before the people, and [leaving] their own hearts and consciences to do the rest’.22 His first British convert was Fátima Violet Ebráhim, whose Indian Muslim husband had invited Kamal-ud-Din to their home in late 1912. Ebráhim wrote in 1913 that, Kamal-ud-Din’s ‘logical arguments in favour of Islam and his comparisons of Islam and Christianity were most interesting and convincing. […] My eyes were beginning to open in favour of Islam and gradually I found that I was Moslem at heart.’23 â With an institutional base, Kamal-ud-Din sought to educate and convert more Britons to Islam. He was joined at Woking by a generally competent band of predominantly Indian Ahmadi missionaries, among them Maulana Sadr-ud-Din (Chapter Three), who became imam when Kamal-ud-Din temporarily left England in 1914. From the start, they downplayed their Ahmadi origins and, in contrast to the Christian Church, promoted the Mission as non-sectarian and apolitical. Their propaganda exploited Edwardian insecurities, brought about by unparalleled industrial conflict and social discord over issues such as Ireland and women’s suffrage.24 They seized upon the continuing decline in Church membership and adherence in this period, but were also sensi-

128 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ tive to the fact that this dip did not necessarily imply any diminution of Âthe search for stable and absolute systems of belief and practice. Kamal-ud-ÂDin and his staff presented Islam as a secure, progressive, tolerant moral force in the face of increasing materialism and secularity. Like Quilliam, the missionaries promoted a rational, liberal, syncretic form of Anglo-Islam which caught the attention of enough Britons to spur them on. Most of the Mission’s business was conducted in English by staff who, with the exception of Kamal-ud-Din, tended to wear familiar, respectable Western clothes. Similar to the LMI, during the Mission’s early years, the Qur’an was referred to as the ‘Islamic Bible’ and the mosque the ‘Muslim Church’, which ‘welcomes Non-Muslims as well. Collections are dispensed with and healthy criticism is encouraged.’25 As was the case at the LMI, the Muslim custom of removing shoes at prayer meetings was overlooked as long as the shoes were clean.26 Potential converts were constantly reminded of the Qur’anic principle, ‘There is no compulsion in religion’;27 that they pledged their allegiance to Muhammad and all other prophets including Jesus; and converted to Islam rather than the Ahmadiyya/Ahmadiyyat. The Christian missionary Weitbrecht Stanton, who had previously condemned the LMI, nevertheless wrote in the Calcutta Epiphany that, ‘the form of Islam which is propagated in the Woking mission is very far from being the accepted orthodox kind’. He exposed Kamal-ud-Din as an Ahmadi, part of a movement which, he justly considered: represents an endeavour to reconcile Islam to a certain extent with modern thought, so as to turn the edge of the chief objections to it on the part of Christians. Islam is represented as the religion of toleration and as being the rational form of religion best suited to the enlightenment of the 20th century. The idea of the Fatherhood of God, which is utterly contrary to the teaching of Mohammed, is frequently brought in. Polygamy is represented as temporary and partial, as a concession to the needs of human nature. The existence of slavery in Islam is bluntly denied.28 â Evangelicals like Weitbrecht Stanton were not only disturbed to find foreign Muslim subjects propagating Islam on English soil, but alarmed that they had courted some of Quilliam’s associates and, moreover, made fresh converts—most notably, at the end of 1913, a peer of the realm.

129 LOYAL ENEMIES Lord Headley’s conversion The peer was Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn, fifth Baron Headley. Headley’s reasons for conversion are worth dwelling upon because, as is discussed below and in the next chapter, he proved to be Kamal-ud-Din’s best catch. Headley’s conversion is, moreover, the best documented of all the British Muslims discussed in this book, and his motivations exemplify those of many others both before and during the twentieth century. â Allanson-Winn succeeded his first cousin as Lord Headley, fifth Baron Allanson and Winn of Aghadoe (County Kerry), eleventh Baronet of Nostell (Yorkshire) and fifth Baronet of Little Warley (Essex), in January 1913. Although Headley often travelled, he called London home, but never had a seat in the Lords because he did not seek election as an Irish representative peer.29 Like many before and after him, Headley’s journey to Islam was fuelled by longstanding religious doubts. As Headley described in Thoughts for the Future, a short book published anony- mously just before his conversion, he had never lost faith in God, but: The dogmas of the Christian Church—I care not whether Roman Catholic or Protestant—have repelled me ever since earliest childhood, and I don’t know whether my boyish distrust of the creed as laid down by St. Athanasius was less strong than is my contempt today for the man who lays down the law from a pulpit and consigns millions of his fellow-men to everlasting perdition because they don’t agree with him.30 â Headley was repelled by the Christian fear of hell. Moreover, he believed that centuries of corrupt sacerdotalism rendered organised Christianity unfit for the age of reason and was appalled by the sectarian bigotry he had experienced firsthand in Ireland.31 This disillusionment and doubt persisted for many years and came to a head while Headley was grieving for his third son, who died at just a year old in 1904, followed soon afterwards by his only legitimate daughter. Headley’s anxieties were heightened by the existence of an illegitimate daughter, born when he was aged twenty and with whom he was not reconciled until old age.32 These stresses led to a nervous breakdown, and Headley continued to battle depression for the rest of his life. But, despite doubt and personal crisis, Headley still sought comfort in religion. However, he found none in the Low Anglicanism in which he was raised. â Unlike many other British converts to Islam, Headley did not have to look far to find a tonic. Islam, which he had directly encountered while

130 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ working as a civil engineer in India in the 1890s, made a profound impression on him. As he admitted in Thoughts for the Future: visits to the East have filled me with a very deep respect for simple faith of Mahomedans, who really do worship God all the time and not only on Sunday, like so many Christians. Their beautiful trust in their Almighty and Merciful Creator, who is never absent from them for a moment of the day or night, awakens feelings of the keenest sympathy in my heart.33 He continued to take an interest in India after his return to England and was introduced by a friend to Kamal-ud-Din in 1912. Headley later reflected that he was ‘much impressed’ with Kamal-ud-Din’s ‘quiet dig- nity and gracious manner’, and bowled over by his explanation of Islam as a simple, non-sectarian and tolerant faith.34 He was comforted by Kamal-ud-Din’s claim that Islam would arrest the drift towards atheism and make the country easier to govern. A staunchly conservative, ‘plain

6.âLeft to right: Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Lord Headley and Abdul Muhy in Mecca during the 1923 Hajj. Source: Al-Hajj Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Islam and the Muslim Prayer, Seventh Revised Edition, Lahore: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1960; First Published in 1914.

131 LOYAL ENEMIES Englishman with [four] sons who will some day have to be provided with wives’, he happily learnt that Islam would counter moral degeneracy in British society and facilitate a ‘return to that Early Victorian modesty’: I love modesty in a woman and, though it is the fashion to laugh at the Easterns for keeping their women veiled and secluded from the vulgar gaze, I think they are to be admired for wishing to shield and protect what they hold so sacred. […] Some of the modern costumes for women are, to my mind, far worse and more suggestive than absolute nudity.35 â In October 1913, the Muslim India and Islamic Review published an extract from Thoughts for the Future entitled ‘How to be Free from Fear and Grief’. The article outlined Headley’s admiration for the spirit of Islam and ‘the fact of the real presence of God’ among Muslims, which, as Kamal-ud-Din had taught him, created a fearlessness of death.36 Headley had accepted Islam, for it had given him, ‘happiness in misery and strength when the forces of evil seemed about to overwhelm me’.37 As he later wrote: It was no sudden conversion, because from childhood’s earliest days my whole nature had been in revolt against the ruthless cruelty of the Supreme Being as represented by the Christian God, an almighty and omnipotent ruler of the universe who was so like a tyrant that he required heavy bribes before he would save one from perdition.38 â Headley outlined his motivations for converting in two articles published in the subsequent issue of Muslim India and Islamic Review. In the first, ‘Simplicity in Religion’, he welcomed Islam as a simple, monotheistic and, above all, classless faith without leaders and bodies bidding for temporal power. Islam, he argued, was: free from sacerdotalism with its attendant dogmas and greed for power, [so] we must concede that the government of a nation or empire would go on more smoothly if such a peaceful religion were universally adopted. […] The spirit of Islam soars far above petty jealousies and the racial distractions of East and West.39 Headley claimed in his second article, ‘The Religion of the Future’, that: Freedom from the weird dogmas of the various branches of Christian Churches came to me like a breath of pure sea air, and on realising the simplicity, as well as the illuminating splendour, of Islam, I was as a man emerging from a cloudy tunnel into the light of the day.40 â Kamal-ud-Din formally announced Headley’s conversion to Islam during an Islamic Society meeting at London’s Waldorf Hotel in

132 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ November 1913.41 The news quickly spread throughout Britain and the Empire. The Muslim India and Islamic Review for December 1913 enthusiastically reprinted reports of Headley’s conversion from around eighty British dailies and weeklies.42 The Guardian argued that, ‘in days when the spirit of indifference is felt to be the deadliest enemy of faith, we incline to think that any serious consideration of religious questions, even when it leads to lamentable error, has value of a kind.’43 Most newspapers and journals showed less mercy, prompting Headley to respond with scores of letters and essays explaining and defending his motivations and beliefs. In a passage reminiscent of Quilliam, Headley argued in the London Budget that, ‘In England we pride ourselves on our love of fair play, and it does seem to me as unfair to condemn the tenets of any particular religion without knowing anything about them as it would be to condemn an accused man without hearing his defence.’44 He told the Observer that, ‘there has never been any desire for notoriety or publicity on my part; but in this case, if my action is the means of making people tolerant and broad-minded, I am quite prepared to put up with every kind of ridicule and abuse.’45 Responding to accusations that he was an ‘apostate’, Headley later argued that, ‘since I had never believed in the baptisms and creeds of the Christian religion as being necessary to salvation, it can hardly be argued that I deserted a Faith which never appealed to my intelligence or my heart.’46 â Many people considered Headley to be a romantic and idealist. Per- haps these are inevitable attributes of a religious convert, especially to a maligned religion like Islam, in order to justify conversion to oneself and others, and present the new faith as an improvement upon the abandoned religion. In one exchange, a correspondent to the Daily Mail argued that Headley was wrong to condemn Christian intolerance of other religions because: If a Moslem in any really Moslem land were to do as Lord Headley has done and announce his conversion to Christianity his life would not be worth a day’s purchase, and his death would be justified by the express teaching of the Koran. Such is Moslem “toleration”; converts are only allowed to live where the strong arm of Christian justice can protect them.47 In the spirit of Kamal-ud-Din, Headley retorted that: To refute the idea that true Moslems would murder a brother so foolish as to renounce the faith of Islam, I may quote one line which appears in the Holy Koran immediately after one of the most beautiful and impressive passages in the Book: “Let there be no compulsion (no violence) in Religion.” No true

133 LOYAL ENEMIES Moslem would have any feelings but of deepest pity and sorrow for a deserter from the fold presided over and tended by our Gracious Shepherd and King.48 â The cornerstone of Headley’s argument, and one he pursued doggedly for the rest of his life, was (again in the vein of Quilliam and Kamal-ud- Din) that the original teachings of Christianity, Judaism and an unchanged Islam were ‘sister religions, only held apart by dogmas and technicalities which might very well be dispensed with’.49 Among the latter were atonement which, Headley argued, was unnecessary in Islam ‘because God can directly and instantly forgive transgressions when we ask Him with true repentance’; salvation, which Islam did not deny ‘to those who do their duty to God and their neighbours, whatever they may think on other subjects’ (that is ‘the atonement, a belief in the Divinity of Christ, the sacraments, and the Trinity’); and intercession, which was not recognised in Islam ‘because we feel that, belonging to God, we are ever in His hands at every moment of the day or night’.50 Headley, therefore, claimed that, ‘I am just the same in my beliefs as I was twenty years ago’ and, in an inversion of Leitner’s argument of the 1880s (Chapter One): ‘I consider myself […] a far better Christian than I was before.’51 As he explained in a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette: I have only one [religion]—surrender and submission to God, and beneficence to all His creatures—for this is the meaning of the word “Islam”. It seems to me that Christ also taught this, which explains why it is impossible to be a good Mahommedan without also being a good Christian.52 This was vigorously rebuked, especially by clergymen, to whom Headley responded at length. For example: I affirm that you can be a most excellent follower of Christ’s teaching and obey it in the spirit without ever having heard of baptism or the Lord’s Supper, and without believing in the Divinity of Christ or the Trinity. Surely, it is far more important to carry out in your life those divine precepts enjoined by Christ than to rely on a mere form like baptism for salvation? […] I feel sure that half the people who outwardly profess these opinions merely do so for appearance sake. […] To my mind the real Christian is the man who tries to show it in his life by obedience and submission to God and endeavouring to do his duty to his neighbours, and by avoiding anything of the nature of a lie.53 â Such were the comparisons between the two faiths that, as Headley later told the Egyptian Gazette, he felt that he had been: a Moslem at heart for fifty years, but at one time it would have been unkind— in fact, cruel—to declare his belief. In 1913, however, all the old people whom

134 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ he had had to consider had gone, and he did not care a penny for what the young people thought, so he felt it was time for him to come out and declare his true colours.54 Keen to propagate the idea that Christianity and Islam were worlds apart, Weitbrecht Stanton retorted in the Moslem World that: It is sufficiently obvious that a nominally Christian Deist who is ready to swal- low the historical contradictions of Islam, has but a very short step to take in order to become a Moslem; and having already emptied the Christian faith of its specific content, he may regard himself, as Lord Headley professes, to be still a Christian after he has embraced Islam.55 â Kamal-ud-Din was nevertheless enthused by Headley’s conversion and the example it set others. Indeed, several people, including ‘three highly respected members of the nobility’, apparently followed Headley into Islam in late 1913, and the Mission office was ‘flooded […] with inquiries about Islam’.56 This was, according to Kamal-ud-Din: Nothing to be wondered at. It was to happen so one day. Liberal education has been paving the way of Islam here. Science, so fatal to Christianity as bas- tardised by the Church, could not destroy the human craving for religion. It only killed credulity, and left no room in the cultured heart for the religion which demanded the immolation of intellect—that God-given gift which dif- ferentiates man from dumb animals who have not been given discretion and have to follow others.57 â Wrongly believing that Headley had a seat in the House of Lords, Kamal-ud-Din told one reporter that the conversion of a few more men in Parliament, ‘would be the best thing for our rule in India’, because representation would ease Indian Muslim suspicion about the British. He boldly asserted that if Headley went to India, ‘he could do more for you by one visit than ten Viceroys could do in all their lives. All who embrace Islam are our brothers. Races, boundaries, nationalities do not count.’58 The Jewish World similarly felt that: there is, in view of the large Oriental interest of the Empire, a certain fitness in having the Faith of Islam represented in the House of Lords. For ourselves, we only wish it were well and strongly represented in the House of Commons too. There is a very widespread tendency in these “tight little islands”—as the Aliens Act [1905] and the spirit which inspired it prove—to forget that England is not the British Empire, and while the home population is comparatively homoge- nous in race and creed this does not apply to the Empire at large. The British Empire is a conglomerate of many faiths and peoples; and if the presence of

135 LOYAL ENEMIES Mussulman peers in Parliament keeps that fact before some of our insularly- minded fellow-countrymen it will be a point gained.59

Proselytising at Woking and the British Muslim Society Despite his enthusiasm for Headley’s conversion and its publicity, Kamal-ud-Din was dismayed that the press still ‘advertised a terrible ignorance of Islam’.60 Consequently, with increased financial support from India, Kamal-ud-Din and his staff developed new methods to encourage Britons towards Islam. They were motivated by the belief that, as Headley explained in the Observer in 1913, ‘There are thousands of men—and women, too, I believe—who are at heart Muslims, but convention, fear of adverse comments and a desire to avoid any worry or change conspire to keep them from openly admitting the fact.’61 Clearly reflecting on the fate of the LMI, the following year Parkinson urged fellow Muslims that Kamal-ud-Din and his Mission must be supported ‘financially, physically, and mentally’: ‘The appointed hour has come, the time for action is now. Do not delay. Cast aside all lethargy and indifference, and buckle on the armour of Islam. […] The flag of Islam has been planted in the heart of England, keep it there.’62 â In the first instance, the title of Muslim India and Islamic Review, which had reached a circulation (largely gratis) of some 3,000 in ÂEngland and India,63 was changed to Islamic Review and Muslim India in 1914, highlighting a shift in emphasis towards broader Islamic concerns (in 1921 it became the Islamic Review). Around the same time, Ameer Ali encouraged Kamal-ud-Din to organise ‘Friday Sermons’ after prayers (in Arabic and English) at the Mission’s London home in ÂLindsey Hall, Notting Hill Gate. In addition, Sunday evening public lectures similar to those inaugurated by the LMI commenced at Wok- ing. By 1915, these attracted, ‘a fairly good gathering of the thinking and religiously inclined people of the town itself, and sometimes visitors from other towns also come to the Mosque sermons and lectures’.64 The press were invited to attend public events and were also encouraged to take photographs. One local reporter noted in 1914 that Kamal-ud- Din’s new assistant from India, Chaudhrey Fateh Muhammad Sayal, ‘avoided contentious polemics, and nothing was said that could possibly offend the religious susceptibilities of anyone. The lecture from beginning to end was an attempt to summarise in as lucidly as possible a manner the actual teachings of Islam.’65

136 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ â In October 1914, eid al-fitr was celebrated at Woking. The Surrey Herald reported that, ‘the Mosque proved too small for all, and carpets were spread on the steps and in the courtyard’. During the main ceremony, prayers were recited in Arabic, and Sadr-ud-Din delivered a ser- mon in English, which quoted both the Qur’an and the Bible. Money was then collected for the poor, an Englishwoman publicly converted and Indian dishes were served on the lawn. While Kamal-ud-Din and others made a celebratory procession through the streets of Woking (imitating the traditional Sunday School procession), Sheldrake gave a talk in which he, ‘explained misrepresentations and objections raised against Islam, and appealed for those present to investigate for themselves’. Upon his return to the mosque, Kamal-ud-Din delivered a lecture in which he justified Britain’s recent action against Germany, ‘and said that the present material and physical civilisation, not being constructed upon a pure religious basis, was responsible for the terrible war’. Several visitors stayed after the lecture to take afternoon tea with the Muslims.66 By the end of the year, the Mission reported that, ‘many English ladies and gentlemen have embraced Islam’, and reiterated that, ‘there are innumerable people in England who are Muslims without knowing that they are such. This inference is based upon a stream of letters that is pouring in every week, and personal interviews in which people affirm that Islam is in unison with human requirements and instincts.’67 Kamal-ud-Din took the opportunity to clarify the simple ‘method of initiation’: Either a person sends a letter to avow that he or she will believe in the Unity of God and the universal brotherhood of man, as preached by all the prophets from Adam and Abraham down to Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad; or a person calls to make a declaration at the Mosque, Woking, or at Lindsey Hall.68 â Early on, the WMM was, ‘receiving calls nearly every day for interviews, which can do in a short time what cannot be done by many lectures or books. Some seekers after truth stop with us as guests, and thus have a thorough peep into what we are. This is a very useful and cau- tious way of going in for a thing.’69 The number of converts swelled sufficiently during 1914 for Kamal-ud-Din to establish the British ÂMuslim Society (later renamed the Muslim Society of Great Britain [MSGB]) under the presidency of Headley, with Parkinson his vice- president and Sheldrake the hon. secretary. Recently returned from

137 LOYAL ENEMIES Turkey, Quilliam/Léon was among the Society’s thirty (mainly convert) founding members. As Headley explained at its first public meeting in December 1914, the Society’s first objective was, ‘to show all those we come in contact with that our religion is not exactly antagonistic or hostile to […] Christianity’ and, secondly, to: give most careful attention to the very difficult and delicate task of showing that a universal adoption of the Faith by Western nations is possible without seriously interfering with the manners and customs of the West or the spirit of the teachings we find in the Quran. There is so much adaptability in Islam that we may hope to surmount any difficulties which may arise.70 â Writing from Scotland, Parkinson hoped that the BMS would: keep us in touch with each, though separated by miles of land; bind us together in one great brotherhood; help us along the Islamic pathway; and strengthen each and all of us to play our part in the battle of life and the defence and exposition of those eternal principles of human conduct and Islamic religion and doctrine for which we are fighting.71 As we shall see, the BMS became a vital social-religious network for British Muslims. However, by the time it first met publicly in late 1914, Parkinson’s hopes for Muslim unity at home and abroad and, moreover, the very legitimacy of the WMM’s non-sectarian message, were being threatened by events in India.

Ahmadi sectarianism and the rise of the London Mosque Mission The Indian-based Ahmadiyyat, from which Kamal-ud-Din and Sayal emerged, grew rapidly under the leadership of Ahmad and his successor, Hakim Nur-ud-Din (1841–1914). But, when Nur-ud-Din died in 1914, pre-existing divisions within the community (caused mainly by concerns about its future leadership), led to a formal and terminal split among Ahmadis worldwide. Two distinct sects emerged, known as the ‘Lahoris’ and ‘Qadianis’ by virtue of their geographical bases. In short, following orthodox Muslim belief, the more liberal Lahoris believed that Muhammad was the final prophet, but recognised Ahmad as a ‘renewer’ of the faith. In contrast, the more conservative and numerous Qadianis believed that Ahmad was a prophet who had claimed that his successors would also have the gift of prophecy. The Lahoris refused to pledge allegiance to Nur-ud-Din’s successor as the khalifa (spiritual leader), the

138 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ Qadiani Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad (1889–1965), and moved towards the mainstream of Islam.72 â Since the days of Quilliam and the LMI, a few British converts had shown an awareness of the primary division within Islam between the Sunni and the Shi’a, but these issues were seldom discussed or written about publicly (also see Chapter Five).73 On the rare occasion that individual converts referred to the different branches of Islam, they identified themselves as Sunnis,74 and there is no evidence before 1914 to suggest that sectarianism really affected or shaped their choice of Islam. The events in India in 1914 changed this, though differences between and within the two major branches of Islam were still seen as remote to the lives of most British Muslims. Rather, the split within the Ahmadiyyat dominated discussions about sectarianism because, in 1914, Kamal-ud-Din aligned himself firmly with the Lahoris, while his assistant Sayal supported ÂNur-ud-Din’s successor and left Woking to establish a Qadiani jama‘at (community) and mission in London. Less than two years after its inception, the WMM had a rival in what became known as the London Mosque Mission. The main English language Ahmadi journal, the Review of Religions, immediately became a Qadiani (LMM) journal, leaving the Lahoris (WMM) with the Islamic Review. Though, as we will see, sectarian disputes between and within the WMM and LMM escalated in the interwar years and had a profound effect on some British Muslim lives, both organisations operated freely and competed to gain new converts. â Sayal began lecturing in London and southern England with the object of educating and encouraging conversions to the Ahmadiyyat. Having worked at Woking, his style and methods differed little from those of Kamal-ud-Din. Indeed, Sayal courted Theosophists, Unitarians and other Nonconformists. He compared and contrasted Islam and Christianity, ultimately criticising the latter as both a faith and a ‘civilisation’. As a Qadiani, however, Sayal (and his fellow missionaries) emphasised the special characteristics of the Ahmadiyya, which made it distinct from either orthodox or liberal Islam.75 A Londoner who asked for clarity about ‘the association of Ahmad with general Islam’ was thus told that: Islam, and Ahmad, were synonymous, as the elimination of Ahmad meant the withdrawing of life-principle from the body of Islam for it was the timely appearance of [… Ahmad] that saved Islam, from a total wreck and gave it a new lease of life, while the absence of such master spirits from the body-politic of other religious systems indicated an absence of vitalising force.76

139 LOYAL ENEMIES â To avoid confusion amongst potential converts and prevent confron- tation with other Muslims, these distinctions were soon toned down and Qadiani Islam presented simply as ‘true Islam’. Converts were nevertheless still encouraged (or duped, according to the WMM)77 to sign the bai’at (initiation) form, a traditional pledge of allegiance to both God and Ahmad which was forwarded to the khalifa in Qadian.78 Despite their advantageous location in the capital, however, the Qadianis struggled to attract converts in Britain. In 1915, for example, only seven of the estimated 3,000 new Qadiani converts worldwide were made in England and not all were necessarily of British origin.79 When Sayal left ÂEngland to return to India in 1916, another missionary, Qazi Muhammad Abdullah, took control and settled into new premises in Bloomsbury, where he led prayers, celebrated eid, gave lectures and made a few converts.80 Sayal resumed control of the LMM in 1919, securing its future by relocating to ‘a large residence at Putney, pending the erection of a Mosque’, in 1921. Around fifty ‘English’ converts attended the opening ceremony of the temporary premises.81 â Another important change in leadership occurred in 1924 when the khalifa visited London and laid the foundation stone for the purpose- built mosque in Southfields. The khalifa appointed his private secretary, Abdur Rahim Dard, to lead the jama‘at in England, and transferred the Review of Religions editorial office from Qadian to London.82 The Qadiani ‘London Mosque’ was officially opened in 1926, with capacity for around 200 people and a separate hall where Sunday evening lectures were delivered in competition with those at Woking.83 Although the lectures and Islamic festivals celebrated at the London Mosque were never as well attended as those at Woking, a number of influential Muslims and non-Muslims participated in the early days, including Yusuf Ali, the writer and poet Ikbal Ali Shah (1894–1969), the recently retired ÂLieutenant-Governor of the Punjab Sir Michael O’Dwyer (1864–1940), and Orientalists such as Thomas Walker Arnold and Harry St John Bridger/Abdullah Philby (1885–1960). Because of the increasing rivalry between the Ahmadis, few Muslims connected with the WMM attended functions at Southfields—besides Philby (see below), notable exceptions were Sheldrake and, as we saw in Chapter Two, Quilliam/Léon.

140 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ Fig.1 British Muslims converted through the Woking Muslim Mission by year of conversion, as reported in the Islamic Review, 1913–53.

30 Number 20

191319151917191919211923192519271929193119331935193719391941194319451947194919511953 Year

Total MenWomen Unknown

II. ÂConversion motifs, motivations and trends, c.1913–53 Having documented the development of Muslim missions in early twentieth-century Britain, we can turn to the question of why people converted to Islam within and outside of those organisations through to the mid-1950s, and consider whether motifs and motivations for conversion compare with those identified for the late nineteenth century. â The WMM source material—the Islamic Review and other official publications, which are the most detailed and comprehensive records of individual British conversions to Islam that survive for this period— hints at the number of converts that the organisation secured over forty years. The WMM database also provides useful quantitative and qualitative data for a total of 483 British Muslims—260 male, 220 female and three unknown gender—who converted through the WMM between 1913 and 1953. The database denotes the year of conversion for 398 of the 483 British Muslims (219 women, 176 men and three unknown gender),84 which raises a further question: was the rate of conversion affected by events, not least two world wars, during this forty-year

141 LOYAL ENEMIES period? Drawing on these data, fig.1 shows that the WMM alone reported new British converts every year between 1913 and 1953. On average, the details of less than ten conversions were announced publicly per annum, but there are noticeable above average peaks and troughs, and an increase in the early 1950s. These trends are suggestive, but the data they are based on are reasonably reliable because, unlike Quilliam’s erratic, over-inflated estimates of new adhesions, the WMM sources document a steady, modest and realistic number of Britons who converted, often accompanied by a photograph of the individual and personal reflections about why they chose Islam. Yet, as a propagandist publication, the Islamic Review and other missionary sources do make separating ‘true’ motivations for conversion from official or authorised narratives difficult. Personal sources such as memoirs and private letters from converts, which are a little more plentiful for the twentieth century, offer alternative, less formal and institutionalised insights.

Common motifs and motivations Lofland and Skonovd’s conversion motifs again help to draw out general observations about how and why individual Britons converted to Islam in this period. What is immediately clear from surveying the WMM convert database, conversion testimonies and other material is that, as was inferred in the discussion of Headley’s conversion in 1913, Britons who converted to Islam in the first half of the twentieth century had similar motifs and motivations to their predecessors at the LMI. Since,Â like the LMI, neither the WMM nor the LMM used coercive or revivalist tactics, and reports of other conversions contain no reference to these methods, such motifs do not characterise early-to-mid-twentieth-century British conversions to Islam. Rather, the testimonies and other evidence of people who converted in Britain and abroad reveals a range of cross- cutting affectional, intellectual, experimental and, occasionally (unlike at the LMI), mystical conversion motifs, with a combination of individualistic religious/spiritual, cultural, socio-political and, sometimes, material motivations for conversion. Indeed, the testimonies and stories of British Muslims in this forty-year period affirm that no single, isolated motif wholly explains an individual’s journey and conversion to Islam. â Affectional motifs continued to strongly characterise British conversions in this period. As in the cases of Kamal-ud-Din’s early converts,

142 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’

7.âWoking Muslim Mission Conversion Declaration Form, c.1940s. Source: Author’s Collection.

143 LOYAL ENEMIES Ebráhim and Headley, many British Muslims encountered Islam through contact with charismatic leaders, most obviously Kamal-ud- Din himself and later imams such as Sadr-ud-Din and Abdul Majid (1896–1977) at the WMM, and Sayal and Dard at the LMM, and nurtured through the institutional structure and support provided by their missions. So, while Ebráhim already had an evolving personal attachment to a Muslim in the form of her Indian husband, it was only through discussing faith with Kamal-ud-Din that she was drawn to Islam as a viable religion. Although Headley had also encountered ÂMuslims and Islam before meeting Kamal-ud-Din, he only converted after developing a close and supportive relationship with the latter and other Muslims in Britain. But, while the affectional motif is central to the conversions of Ebráhim, Headley and many others, most converts also studied Islam first, which points to the equally important intellectual motif. As we have seen, Headley certainly harboured pre-existing religious and spiritual doubts connected to a general disillusionment with British society and, therefore, examined Islam in relation to Chris- tianity before converting. Study was often a protracted process, involving visits to a mosque and attending religious services and lectures on Islam to meet, listen to and observe Muslims, which is suggestive of the experimental conversion motif. â The predominance of affectional, intellectual and experimental motifs tends to negate the mystical, which, as we saw in the Introduction, is characterised by high subjective intensity and trauma involving little social involvement. The only British conversions suggestive of the mystical motif in this period are among Qadianis, some of whom (like Ahmad himself) experienced revelations through visions. An anonymous ‘British Ahmady Lady’, for example, wrote in 1937 that she had recently converted from Christianity after having visions which revealed Islam to be ‘intensely ALIVE and VIRILE […], a living religion’.85

Abdullah R. ScottÂ had also apparently seen a vision of the Promised Messiah;86 and, at the time of his acceptance of the Ahmadiyyat in 1945, Bashir Ahmad Orchard (1920–2002) had a vivid dream in which he met and received advice from the khalifa.87 â Most British converts were, as in previous decades and as would be expected, practising or nominal Christians.88 While some converted as a direct result of forming a personal attachment to a Muslim (usually an imminent spouse), like Headley, many others were drawn to Islam as a

144 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ direct consequence of their discomfort with aspects of Christian theology, doctrine and dogma—especially the Trinity, atonement and salvation—and the Church’s failure to act as a stabilising factor in society. As Joan Fatima Dansken wrote in 1930, the year after converting through the WMM: That it was necessary for an innocent man like Jesus to come to the world and give his life to save it from sin, as the Christian dogma would have us believe, is beyond my comprehension. Further, the Crucifixion has not made the world any better (except, perhaps, the few who tried to be like him). The world, on the other hand, it seems to me, is worse than it was in Jesus Christ’s time.89 â ‘Ameena’, another ‘English Muslim lady’, echoed Quilliam and other late Victorians in her criticism of the scriptural basis of Christianity: The Bible is the result of a collaboration of dozens of different authors. Science and geology prove that the Beginning, as described in Genesis, is an utter impossibility. We have also the proof that King David never wrote the Psalms, and that various other parts of the Bible attributed to different people were not written by them.90 Having studied Christianity for thirty years, Muhammad Ashraf found that, ‘Reason had no place in the so-called Christian theology. What was wanted was faith—blind, ignorant, almost stupid faith. My mind revolted against such blasphemy.’91 John Omar Fisher claimed that, ‘On several occasions having asked a Christian priest a certain question, I have been answered thus, “I cannot tell you, but you must believe it, that that is where ‘Faith’ comes in!”’92 â Again, like Headley (and, earlier, Quilliam and others), these and scores more Britons were attracted to an Islam presented by the missionaries as simple and rational, giving, to quote ‘Ameena’, ‘correct guidance, not only for spiritual life, but for the every-day life of this world also. By stopping drinking, gambling, and prostitution in its adherents it saves them from the three greatest curses of European countries.’93

Major John W. B.Â Â Farouk Farmer (1897–1966) echoed many of his fellow converts when he explained in 1939 that: First, Islam is a practical religion, a religion free from mystery and superstition, a religion that can be easily understood; it is a religion that contains nothing irrational and is unencumbered by theological subtleties. Secondly, it is a religion that deals with fundamentals. It gets right down to the basic laws of nature. It knows of no split between science and religion but recognizes that

145 LOYAL ENEMIES religion is the greatest of all sciences, the science of good and successful living. Thirdly, it offers a complete code of living for all spheres of man’s activity on this earth.94 â Many, especially converts from the decorative and ritualistic High Church, admired not only the relative simplicity of Islam’s theology but, also, its basic lack of ritual and priesthood. As Walter H. WilliamsÂ explained at the time of his conversion in 1933: the Muslim prays regularly each day individually, either in a Mosque or in the privacy of his home, and even when Friday prayers are said in congregation this individuality is still retained, each Muslim praying independently to Allah without the need of any intermediary or elaborate ritual.95 Converts were attracted by claims that Islam was, in contrast to dogmatic Christianity and despite Christian efforts to modernise theology, based upon reason. Dudley Mohammad Sadiq Wright claimed shortly after his conversion in 1916 that: in Islam there is a lofty idealism conjoined with a rationalistic practicability. It does not ignore human nature, nor does it entangle itself in the tortuous path- ways which lie outside the domain of the actual and real. It makes religion part of a man’s life, and not a garment to be worn on special occasions and taken off when there is any real work to be done.96 â Moreover, and just as significant, these people saw beyond popular negative attitudes and discourse to recognise Islam as an essentially com- passionate, fraternal faith that invited rather than forced new adherents.

The Qadiani convert, Abdullah R.Â Scott, for instance, welcomed Islam as ‘tolerant and broadminded’, without a ‘colour or caste bar’.97 Salim

R. Âde Grey Firth converted through the WMM after working in Africa, where he ‘was ashamed to notice the way in which the coloured population was treated by the Europeans, and to find that the Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of man was so completely ignored’.98 A number of both male and female converts wrote that they were delighted that Islam sought the emancipation of women, though the degree of emancipation they (and Islam) desired was rarely defined. Ebráhim, for example, argued in 1916 that Islam appealed to women because it, ‘brought man and woman on an equal footing. Islam gave such rights to us which no religion, philosophy, or civilization could hitherto give. […] What the Suffragist movement can legitimately demand from man has already been awarded by Islam to woman.’99 Another WMM convert,

146 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ Dorothy Eady, wrote loftily in 1932 that, ‘especially do I admire the laws relating to women, which seem to be the kindest and fairest ever made for our much maligned sex!’100 â Despite Islam’s advance on an apparently corrupted Christianity, as in the late-nineteenth century, British Muslims in this period were ultimately comforted in the knowledge that their new faith had familiar Abrahamic roots. Parkinson reminded converts that, ‘Jesus was in the broad sense of the term a Muslim, a predecessor of the Prophet, working in the same direction and with a similar aim, to sweep out idolatry and purify the god [sic] idea from polytheistic and other pagan attributes.’101 Amina Bamford affirmed that Islam teaches ‘the best principles of Chris- tianity’, whilst James William/Habeeb-Ullah Lovegrove (1867–1940) highlighted that the Qur’an, ‘recapitulates all the old truths revealed to all other inspired teachers of humanity and comprises of “Pure pages, wherein are all the right books”, with additional truths to meet all human requirements.’102

Conversion and the First World War Reflecting on the peaks and troughs of conversion identified in fig.1, the first noticeable increase of reported British conversions to Islam at the WMM was during and after the First World War. The annual number of new converts increased from four in 1914 (all women) to fourteen (equally divided between men and women) in 1916, peaking at twenty- two (sixteen men) in 1923. New conversions then petered out in the mid-1920s, with the next noticeable rise at the beginning of the Second World War, peaking at twenty conversions in 1940 (twelve men). Although the samples are small, these data tentatively suggest that the experience of war might have encouraged spirituality and, in some cases, led to conversion.103 Indeed, a consideration of the conversions of two high-profile British Muslims connected with the WMM illustrate that the First World War shattered illusions in the belief of Christian ÂEuropean civilisation and the continuity of its own progress.

Lady Evelyn Cobbold Lady Evelyn Cobbold (1867–1963), first came into contact with Muslims and Islam whilst wintering with her parents in Algeria and Egypt, where

147 LOYAL ENEMIES she accompanied her father, Charles Adolphus Murray, seventh Earl of Dunmore (1841–1907), on sorties into the desert. In Algeria, she learnt to speak Arabic and delighted in escaping from her governess to visit local mosques with her Algerian friends. She much later considered that, ‘unconsciously I was a little Moslem at heart’.104 Though the adolescent Lady Evelyn forgot Arabic and her Muslim friends, in 1889 she wrote a poem in Cairo beginning thus: I stood on the roof in the still of the night And looked my last on my Eastern home. The stars above shed their radiant light Those stars w[oul]d be with me where’er I roam: And their weird radiance was as soothing balm. That filled my soul with an infinite calm.105 â Two years later, Lady Evelyn returned to Cairo to marry the Suffolk brewer John Dupuis Cobbold (1861–1929). However, the marriage quickly turned sour. Feeling trapped in the Cobbold family home near Ipswich, influenced by her traveller father and perhaps encouraged by romantic tales of her great-aunt Jane Digby el-Mesreb (Chapter One), Cobbold yearned to escape Suffolk and the ‘restlessness and mad endeavour of modern life’ by returning to the ‘changeless East’ and its desert regions, where ‘all pettiness drops to ground, and the spirit 106 seems Âto break the bonds which hold it’. In 1911, she set out with an American friend, Frances Gordon Alexander (d.1931), on a comfortable three-week round trip from Cairo to the Libyan Desert. The diary of their uneventful journey was published in 1912 under Cobbold’s name in London and Frances’ in New York. The two texts are almost identical but Cobbold’s is more enthusiastic for Islam as a simple, democratic, living faith: There is something very impressive in the desert prayer. To believe in Allah and his Prophet, to await without fear or impatience the inevitable hour of death, this is the simple faith of Islam.107 To the Arab his religion is a living thing, ever present in his daily life; a power to console in sorrow, a faith enabling him to face trouble with resignation, death without flinching. Truly is Islam a powerful and great force.108 â Cobbold continued to travel in the Middle East before the First

World War, stumbling across the soldier and writer T. E.Â LawrenceÂ (1888–1935) near Petra in February 1914.109 By then, her emotional

148 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ attachment to Muslims and Islam had developed into a private, philo- sophical engagement more suggestive of the intellectual conversion motif. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and a European conflict looming, Cobbold’s admiration of Muslims and Islam developed an increasingly political dimension and, by the time she met Lawrence again in Egypt the following year, she had renounced Christianity for Islam and taken the Muslim name Zainab (‘scented flower’). Although Islam seemed to offer an antidote to modern Western society, she only began to fundamentally question her religious identity after a chance meeting with the Pope: When His Holiness suddenly addressed me, asking if I was a Catholic, I was taken aback for a moment and then replied that I was a Moslem. What possessed me I don’t pretend to know, as I had not given a thought to Islam for many years. A match was lit […].110 Further study of the exotic faith she had first encountered as a child persuaded Cobbold that Islam was the religion, ‘most calculated to solve the world’s many perplexing problems, and to bring to humanity peace and happiness’.111

Marmaduke Pickthall Marmaduke Pickthall, a High Churchman and son of a Christian minister, also found that his faith was devastated by the effect of the war. Like Henry Stanley, Pickthall showed an early interest in the East and was, therefore, groomed for a career in the Levant Consular Service. He failed to secure a position, but, in 1894, happily left ‘the drab monotone of London fog’ to accompany a family friend to Palestine and fulfil dreams of, ‘Eastern sunshine, palm trees, camels, desert sand, as of a Paradise which I had lost by my shortcomings.’ Pickthall’s family hoped that if he ‘learnt the languages and studied life upon the spot’, he might ‘find some backstairs way into the service of the Foreign Office’. How- ever, as he later admitted: that idea […] had never, from the first, appealed to me; and from the moment when I got to Egypt, my first destination, it lost whatever lustre it had at home. For then the European ceased to interest me, appearing somehow inappropriate and false in those surroundings.112 â Indeed, once in Egypt, Pickthall shunned European society and explored Cairo alone. In Palestine, he began learning Arabic and trav-

149 LOYAL ENEMIES elled the country with the help of his dragoman, Suleyman, who ‘helped me to throw off the European and plunge into the native way of living’.113 Not unlike the young Henry Stanley: I ran completely wild for months, in a manner unbecoming to an Englishman; and when at length, upon a pressing invitation, I turned up in Jerusalem, and used my introductions, it was in semi-native garb and with a love for Arabs which, I was made to understand, was hardly decent.114 Pickthall wintered in Jerusalem, where, despite the kindness of many Britons, he found life restrictive and tame. He was also appalled at the

8.âMarmaduke/Mohammad Pickthall in 1919. © Illustrated London News Ltd/ Mary Evans.

150 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ pettiness of Christian sectarian snobbery within the European community.115 With a new guide, Rashid, he spent the next eighteen months wandering around Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. When a Christian missionary in southern Syria told him to throw off his native friends and treat them as inferiors, Pickthall realised that, ‘I could never truly think as did that missionary, nor hold myself superior to Eastern folk again. If that was to be reprobate, then I was finished.’116 As Pickthall reflected late in life, these travels had a profound impact: What struck me, even in its decay and poverty, was the joyousness of that life compared with anything that I had seen in Europe. The people seemed quite independent of our cares of life, our anxious clutching after wealth, our fear ofÂdeath.117 Pickthall was so taken with what he later conceded was ‘only the romance and pageant of the East’ that, in Damascus in 1895, he contemplated converting to Islam, but was dissuaded by a sheikh of the Umayyad Mosque (also known as the Great Mosque of Damascus).118 â Although Pickthall resumed a conventional middle-class, churchgoing life back in England, he yearned to see more of the East. Plans to return in 1904 were dashed when his mother became terminally ill but, three years later, he accepted an invitation from a new friend, Lady Valda Machell (1868–1951), wife of the advisor to the minister of the interior in Cairo, to visit Egypt. Pickthall was a more convinced Christian than Cobbold, whose beliefs were further shaken when her parents became Christian Scientists in c.1900.119 However, like Cobbold, ÂPickthall’s personal and emotional attachment to Muslims and Islam led to serious intellectual and political engagement which primed him for conversion. His interest in Islam and admiration for Ottoman lands and its Muslim peoples made Pickthall a committed Turcophile who saw Turkey as the hope of the Islamic world. The Young Turks promised an age of reform—in matters of education, social improvement and enhancement of the status of women—and from this Pickthall antici- pated an improved and educated, modernised Islam.120 Consequently, as we will see in the next chapter, Pickthall (like Cobbold) was appalled at the way the British government distanced itself from its pledge at Berlin (1878) to guarantee the independence of the Ottoman Empire. In 1911, for example, Britain refused to intervene when Italy invaded Ottoman-controlled Tripolitania (North-West Libya), and was equally

151 LOYAL ENEMIES passive during the two Balkan Wars of 1912–13. Alarmed at the imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire during the first Balkan War (between the Balkan League—Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and ÂSerbia—and the Ottoman Empire, October 1912–May 1913), Pickthall ventured to Turkey early in 1913 to see the beleaguered capital for himself. He was horrified to learn full details of the atrocities committed by the Balkan Allies in their attack on Turkey, reported in the German but not the British press—in fact, the latter systematically derided the Turks as barbaric aggressors.121 Pickthall’s despair was evident in letters home to his wife Muriel: How anyone can go imagining the Turks to be fanatical, I cannot imagine! There was I this morning, with my guide, a native Christian, visiting their most holy sanctuaries and shrines, and crowds of soldiers everywhere also sightseeing, everywhere received with smiles and nice remarks.122 After four months in Turkey, Pickthall returned to England more politi- cised. He was determined to prevent the partition of the Ottoman Empire and explain to his compatriots that, if Britain did not befriend Turkey, then Germany—who made no secret of her desire for a Turkish alliance—would take the initiative. â Although Pickthall was increasingly drawn towards Islam, as his friend and biographer Anne Fremantle (1910–2002) pointed out, ‘he had always strongly objected to converts from or to any religion, insisting that faith is absorbed with mothers’ milk, and that, unlike the physical, the spiritual diet is best left unchanged.’123 However, Fremantle conceded that his already waning faith in Christian ethics, morality and ‘civilisation’ was severely tested in superficially calm pre-war England: In the little Sussex church where Marmaduke worshipped, the Bulgarian advance was compared with that of Christian souls assailing Paradise, the Turks with Satan. Remembering turbans set low to cover scars where ears had been, remembering the full horror of the Carnegie Commission’s [1914] report on Muslim areas devastated and their populations destroyed entirely by Christian men, Marmaduke felt unable to rise when Wesley’s hymn was sung.124 Kamal-ud-Din’s first convert, Ebráhim, similarly found at this time that, although the missionary had opened her eyes to Islam, ‘My heart went to Islam all the more by my reading every day in newspapers about the butchery and atrocities committed by the Christians of [the] Balkan[s] on the noble Turks.’125

152 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ â The Balkan Wars cost Turkey around 80 per cent of its remaining European possessions, including the loss of Thrace and Salonika to Greece and an independent Albania. For Pickthall, Christian Europe had neglected and abused Turkey, and he was furious that little was done to prevent her from turning to Germany in 1914. Pickthall’s conversion to Islam was protracted, but he began to finally abandon Christianity when, he felt, Christianity had failed and abandoned him. Fremantle suggests that Pickthall converted to Islam in December 1914 as, ‘a protest against the hysterical hate preached in the name of the Christ he had served and loved so long’.126 However, though he edged towards Islam at the beginning of the war, Pickthall continued to resist conversion. As he told his friend, the Turcophile Conservative MP Aubrey Herbert (1880–1923), Cobbold tried but failed to get him to publicly convert over dinner at Claridge’s (using two bemused waiters as witnesses) in January 1915.127 â Pickthall eventually succumbed in November 1917 and, with the support of Kamal-ud-Din, made a public profession before giving a lecture to the WMM’s new ‘Muslim Literary Society’ in London.128 He told the audience that: The good in modern civilization—and there is some good in it, at any rate upon the theoretic side—is owing to free thought. The evil comes from the lack of a religious, guiding and controlling principle. The Christian Churches have lost all control; you can see that. And when they had control, they were renowned for their intolerance and selfish greed.129 Islam, ‘the religion of Abraham and Moses and Jesus—aye, and Buddha […] and all those ancient teachers whose followers now worship idols’, was, by contrast, based on tolerance, reason and equality. Pickthall argued that, unlike Jesus, who proclaimed that his Kingdom was not of this world, Muhammad stressed the concerns of this world and prescribed rules for them, enshrined in the uncorrupted Qur’an, hadith and sunna. Pickthall believed that this made Islam an advance on Christian- ity and other religions, and agreed with Cobbold that it was, therefore, the natural and best equipped faith to tackle the problems of the post- war world.130

Khalid Sheldrake and others Cobbold and Pickthall were certainly not alone in finding their faith in Christianity and Christian ‘civilisation’ shattered during the war. More

153 LOYAL ENEMIES

9.â‘Brothers in Faith and Arms’—Sergeant Bertram/Khalid Sheldrake and Sergeant Omar Richardson, c.1917–18. âââ Source: Islamic Review and Muslim India, Vol.â6, No.â2 (1918), Frontispiece.

Britons would have agreed with Sheldrake in 1915 that, ‘Protestantism is too much occupied with its own internal dissentions to preach a united doctrine of peace to the world.’131 Writing from his regimental base the following year, Sergeant Sheldrake lamented that, ‘Christianity has had the power to enforce obedience, to make men good and pure and true; she has had churches and paid priests for centuries, and what is the result to-day? Appalling! Heartbreaking! Is Europe happy, united and peaceful?’132 The horror and carnage of the war further dented the confidence of the churches and created and exasperated spiritual doubts. This, combined with the association of many churchmen with bellicose patriotism and the disruption of traditional communities and values by

154 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ the experience of mass soldiering, discouraged more people from regular churchgoing.133 A minority of those who sought alternative religious systems looked to Islam as promoted through what became the WMM and LMM. TheyÂ did so despite the general ignorance and misunderstanding of Islam in Britain, which was accentuated by the Turkish alliance with Germany. Sheldrake reported in late 1914 that: Here at Woking one of the recent converts was speaking of his timidity on the first occasion when he entered the Mosque. He had been told that there were many mysterious practices, and he fully expected to hear the beat of “tom- toms”, and see flames and grotesque dancing. He made several attempts before he could conquer his sense of fear, and enter.134 â Articles and letters published in the Islamic Review show that Britons from across the social spectrum, whether fighting in the trenches or situated on the home front, were disillusioned with organised Christianity and modern, materialistic society. Jameela Maude Etteridge, for example, wrote in 1915 (about a year after her conversion) that: In the present age, when the faculties of every person are trained in the most beneficial way, when the intellect is sharpened through contact with the material civilisation which exists in the West, it is necessary to analyse all our requirements in the light of common-sense. […] Allah has, in His Mercy, given us that great gift of common-sense and Reason, and we must not bury this in the earth and forget it, being blindly led by the opinions of others; we must strike out for ourselves.135 â Indeed, some Britons contemplated conversion to Islam as a result of private study and, when possible, experimentation—by attending services, lectures and festivals in Woking and London during the war. Many who visited Woking or read the Islamic Review in these years wrote that they were pleasantly surprised to learn that Islam meant ‘peace’, and struck by Muslim tolerance, fraternity and non-sectarianism. Though genuine, the WMM certainly went out of its way to promote these principles in its propaganda during the war. The second volume of the Islamic Review (1914) opened with a poem by Headley called ‘The Brothers in Islam’,136 and the third (1915) with a message stressing that: Islam is invested with that force and charm of uniting peoples of various nationalities. We earnestly wish to further such principles and doctrines as are the sure cause of cementing the ties of universal brotherhood. This is our first

155 LOYAL ENEMIES and last wish, and we hope in right earnest to accomplish it through Islam, which is identical with peace.137 Sheldrake contributed several articles in the international auxiliary language of Esperanto, which, he argued, ‘strives for the breaking down of these unnatural barriers of colour, creed, and caste that keep mankind in a perpetual state of armed suspicion of their neighbour’.138 Despite the intensification of rivalries between the Catholic and Protestant wings of the Church after the war, Ahmadi conflict and the rise of the LMM forced the WMM to abandon its explicit non-sectarian message and emphasise instead the themes of Muslim ‘fraternity’ and ‘brotherhood’.139 â With Turkey ranged against Britain, Kamal-ud-Din and his staff were keen to point out that some new Muslims were loyal British servicemen. For example, the September 1916 issue of the Islamic Review contained a frontispiece depicting ‘A Trio of Brave English Soldiers who have Joined the Colours of Islam.’140 A Pall Mall Gazette reporter was impressed by the presence of a couple of ‘Tommies’ at a 1918 eid, noting that, ‘Their khaki caps afforded a vivid contrast to the red fezzes of their co-religionists.’141 The direct experience of war might account for the increase of male converts at Woking during and immediately after the conflict (fig.1). Certainly, some servicemen converted while in England on leave from the army. Abdul-Aziz Peach, for example, converted at Woking in 1915 and, as he wrote in 1918, found genuine psychological benefit from regular Muslim prayer in ‘the far-off, death-strewn battlefields of France’: ‘I am not lonely for Allah is here. His presence is my sole comfort and support. His name is my beacon and His presence my shield.’142 Charles Salman Schleich, ‘an English Muslim’ returned from the frontline, considered in 1917 (probably the year of his conversion at Woking) that Islam was ‘the only practical solution’ to the problems of drinking, gambling and callousness with the enemy dead he had experienced in the 143 trenches. Other servicemen, including Walter H. Â Williams, first encountered Islam and Muslims whilst serving abroad. Williams was posted to Egypt, while Lieutenant Joseph Abdullah Davidson converted while serving in Mesopotamia.144

Philby’s conversion Kathryn Tidrick has highlighted that a number of British officers and gentlemen during and after the war not only encountered but, also, took

156 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ to Bedouin life when circumstances demanded.145 These experiences seldom resulted in religious conversion. However, coming from public school backgrounds with male comradeship, outdoor pursuits and schoolboy loyalty to the school and house which was vaguely mirrored in the Bedouin’s loyalty to his tribe and clan, these men felt comfortable in Bedouin society and rationalised this feeling by pointing to the existence of shared values. As Blunt had identified in the previous century, beneath the Bedouin’s wildness of manner, there was a respect for legitimate authority which, at a time when the English class system appeared to be in danger from the newly organised working-class, upper-class Englishmen instinctively recognised and admired.146 â It is tempting to think of the religious conversion of Philby in this light. Philby’s childhood and adolescence was the model of conformity: born in Ceylon, where his father was a coffee trader, he was schooled at Westminster, went on to Trinity College Cambridge and was destined for the civil service.147 After graduating in 1907, he was accepted for the Indian civil service, and spent an additional year at Cambridge under the direction of Edward Granville Browne studying ‘Oriental’ languages, Indian law and history. In 1915, he was selected as a linguist to join Percy Cox (1864–1937) in Mesopotamia. Cox was chief political officer with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, which sought to encourage the resistance of Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud (1880–1953), ruler of the Nejd in Central Arabia, whom the British hoped would attack the Rashids of Ha‘il, allies of the Turks. Philby’s biographer, Elizabeth Monroe, writes that, ‘As with so many contemporaries who survived the First World War, the pattern of his whole life was shaped by that of his war service.’148 Indeed, between 1915 and 1918, Philby acquired what became a life-long love of the Arab world. He was so fascinated by the desert and Bedouin life, and deeply impressed by the personality of Ibn Saud (whom he first met in 1917), that he began learning Arabic and Arab ways of life. In 1919, Philby was entrusted to accompany a Saudi diplomatic party, led by one of Saud’s eldest sons, the Amir Faisal (1906– 1975; later King Faisal of Saudi Arabia), to England. Philby took the group to see Blunt and his stud of Arab horses in Sussex, and they also visited Woking Mosque.149 It is not clear if Philby had been to the mosque before. What is certain is that, although he had developed an emotional attachment to Muslims and Islam, he had been an unbeliever since 1906150 and showed little sign during or after the war of converting

157 LOYAL ENEMIES to any religion, let alone Islam. Indeed, Philby’s journey to Islam is atypical of British Muslims discussed in this book because, although his increasingly deep bond with Saud combined with an affinity to where he was living (he moved to Jidda in 1926), his motivations for conversion in the inter-war period were largely opportunistic and materialistic.151 â Quarrelsome and resentful of his modest wage, Philby resigned from government employment in 1924. He wanted to explore the Arabian peninsular, craved to be the first European to cross the waterless and trackless southern desert called the Rub al Khali (or Empty Quarter), and sought real influence in Saudi life and politics. As he told his wife, Dora, in 1924: ‘my ambition is fame’. Four years later he admitted that, ‘I am far too immersed in the pursuit of my ambitions[,] my chief aim being to secure immortality.’152 However, Philby’s ambitions were thwarted by constant financial strain and his position as an outsider in Arabia. For example, when he tried to intervene as a mediator in Saud’s taking of the Hijaz from the Hashimites in 1924, the former recommended that Philby, ‘[hold] aloof from it. As you will observe, it is a purely Islamic problem in which your mediation will be uncalled for.’153 â To support his family in England and realise his ambitions, Philby engaged in commercial activities in the Middle East. In 1925, he met Saud on behalf of a ‘powerful syndicate’ eager to secure concessions in Arabia, including a state bank, the Mecca-Medina link of the Hijaz Railway and the development of minerals. However, as Monroe notes, Philby soon realised Saud’s dilemma: here was a ruler intent on mod- ernising his country, but was at grips with reactionaries who loathed foreigners and saw as heresies any inclination to come to terms with lax Muslims or to import modern inventions. Nevertheless, Philby’s persis- tence paid off and the following year, once Saud was proclaimed King of the Hijaz, he secured permission to start a Jidda branch of a British trading company to be called Sharqieh (Eastern) Limited. Philby was to be employed as Sharqieh’s local representative.154 This facilitated Philby’s move to Jidda, which, in turn, enabled him to become a friend and unofficial advisor to Saud. â Though still an unbeliever, Philby admired Muslim ethics and the puritanical Wahhabi faith used by Saud to underwrite his conquests. Around this time, Philby began corresponding with Qadianis in India and England, and met with Dard and others in London. Reflecting on the opening ceremony of the London Mosque, which he attended in 1926, Philby claimed that he was inclined towards Qadiani orthodoxy:

158 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ the Qadiani’s ‘puritanical interpretation of the basic tenets of Islam’ made their approach, ‘more nearly to [that …] of the Wahhabis than […] any other sect in Islam’.155 Philby contemplated conversion but, as he admitted to Dora, less for genuine spiritual reasons than its advantages from a business point of view: ‘If only I was or would become a Mussulman I believe I could get these concessions for the asking.’156 Conversion to Islam in Jidda was not unheard of in this period. For Monroe, ‘isolation had turned old hands into eccentrics’, and both the French consul and a Dutch merchant had converted.157 Finally, still in dire financial straits, Philby asked for Saud’s permission to convert to Islam in 1928. Saud was too busy to deal with the request. However, Philby persisted and, following a fainting fit in 1930, which apparently prompted him to reflect on the frailty of man, he asked the King’s permission a second time, which was granted. Upon hearing the news, Dora wrote: ‘I hope you will be happier for it and I quite see what a difference it is going to make to you being able to get about the country.’158 â Again unlike many British Muslims, Philby wrote in his diary in August 1930 that his conversion was a definite ‘break with the past’, probably because he intended to remain in Arabia permanently: My past life of 45 years divides roughly into two equal halves, during the first of which I was, as born and brought up, a sincerely believing Christian and convinced conservative. That period ended at Trinity, Cambridge [in agnosticism …]. The second half of my life has been marked by agnosticism, atheism, anti-imperialism, socialism and general progressive revolt against all the philo- sophical and political canons in which I was brought up. Now begins the third and last chapter of Islam, into whose peace I enter as the devoted, most sincerely devoted, disciple of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, whom I believe to be the greatest man, morally and politically, I have ever met.159 Rather ironically, in light of the above, which suggests that Philby was more devoted to Saud than God, he took the Muslim name Abdullah, meaning ‘servant of Allah’. Explaining ‘Why I Turned Wahabi’ in the Daily Herald in September 1930, Philby dwelt on the ethical rather than the spiritual reasons for his conversion: I am convinced that the present greatness of England is largely based on the Cromwell Puritan period, which laid the firm moral foundations of the subsequent intellectual and spiritual development. Similarly, I believe that the present Arabian Puritan movement harbingers an Âepoch of future political greatness, based on strong moral and spiritual foundations.

159 LOYAL ENEMIES Also I regard the Islamic ethical system as a real democratic fraternity, and the general conduct of life, including marriage, divorce and the absence of the unjust stigma of bastardy, resulting in a high standard of Arabian public morality, as definitely superior to the European ethical code based on Christianity.160 â Although he had been immersed in Arab life since 1926, few in ÂArabia (including officials in the King’s court) or Britain believed the sincerity of Philby’s new religious convictions. According to a 1930 Colonial Office report, the Jidda merchant community distrusted Philby and locals dubbed him ‘Abdul Girsh, Slave of Tuppence Ha’penny, instead of Abdullah, Slave of God’.161 The British authorities were equally suspicious. As we will see in Chapter Six, Philby made few friends in the British legation in Jidda because of his persistent anti- British rhetoric, but news of his conversion took them by surprise. Sir Andrew Ryan (1895–1958), first minister at the British legation, explained to Lancelot Oliphant (1881–1965) in the Foreign Office that: Nothing in Philby’s conversation since I came here has led me to expect this. […] The question now is, What motives? (a) Purely religious conversion may be dismissed, unless he has undergone a very sudden wave of emotion, always possible but most unlikely. (b) Convenience without anything more self-interested than the wish for access to Mecca might suffice in the case of a man with Philby’s past adventures and present outlook in life. (c) Desire through devotion to Ibn Saud or pure self interest to qualify for being employed in the now-being- organised Hejaz. There are many intermediates and variants to these.162

â Cecil G. Â Hope Gill (1894–1984), who was in charge of the legation in summer 1930, informed the Foreign Office in mid-August that: I happen to have had a lot of talk with Philby about religion and am convinced that, short of having seen some sort of revelation, he has no religious motive. He is embittered and [a] very lonely man and I think that he has done this to rebuild for himself a background and surroundings to replace those left shattered in his past. Here he was neither flesh nor fowl. Now he is in a fair way to become one of the Brothers, probably get a job, and possibly supplant one or other of the Syrian entourage […].163 Having met Philby again a few days later, Hope Gill suggested that his motives were not merely opportunistic but political: He made no pretence whatever that his conversion was spiritual. He had been deliberating the step for four years, ever since the first hot moments of his rage against H.M.G’s Arab policy [which favoured Hashimite over Saudi rule]. This had now cooled and the process had left him without rancour, but his disas-

160 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ sociation from British ideals remained and he had felt increasingly drawn to things Arabian.164 â Six months later, the British legation considered that:

Mr. ÂPhilby has undoubtedly increased his position with the King, if not necessarily in other native circles, by his adoption of Islam. He has much freer access to Ibn Saud now that he can go to Mecca and other places in the interior, than he had before.165 Indeed, access to the King and his court secured Philby permission to cross the Rub al Khali in 1932, followed by numerous other remarkable Arabian journeys. This earned Philby the fame he so craved: his tomb- stone is inscribed ‘Greatest of Arabian Explorers’.166

Interwar conversions Back in England, there were signs of readjustment and revival in some of the churches after the war, but the general decline in membership and attendance continued. This was particularly the case in urban centres, where the churches had to compete against the attraction of the local pub, football team or place of work.167 For Headley, writing in 1923: I do not think this falling off is due to any craving for atheism, as some people have suggested, it is far more likely that educated people, guided by reason as well as high principles, do not like having their intelligences outraged by being told in parrot-like phrases that they cannot be saved if they do not subscribe to this or that dogma which consigns them to perdition if they dare to question its truth.168 As we have seen, this was true for some Britons, but others—especially those who had direct experience of the trenches—found that the war had shattered their belief in the virtues of Christian European ‘civilisation’ and the providence and care of God. Organised religion simply failed to make sense of the sufferings of war.169 â For those who sought to fill the spiritual void, the post-war liberalisa- tion of theology and its more tolerant view of other faiths opened up new possibilities for belief and commitment.170 Many Britons found solace in vaguely familiar systems such as Unitarianism, Spiritualism and a spate of new Evangelical sects. Others found in Marxism a system of belief and an interpretation of the world about them which came close to a quasi-religious certainty. A minority looked to the East, primarily

161 LOYAL ENEMIES Chinese and Indian religion and philosophy, for inspiration. With its ‘pacifist’ virtues, Taoism gained popularity and the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland experienced a post-war revival.171 John Omar Fisher reported to the WMM in 1935 that, while Islam was struggling in the North, ‘for some months there has been a Buddhist Movement operating with some success [… at] Gateshead’.172 Others dabbled with Hinduism, most notably in the later 1930s the writer Christopher ÂIsherwood (1904–86), whose father had been killed in the war.173 â As the historian Maxime Rodinson has pointed out, some Western European intellectuals sought in the Muslim East, ‘a model for the wise life, a contact with supra-sensory realities and with ancestral secrets handed down by a long line of initiates’.174 Discouraged by materialism and loss of the sacred in post-war society, they were motivated by translations and interpretations of the great works of Islamic metaphysics by

Orientalists such as Reynold A. NicholsonÂ (1868–1945), whose classic The Mystics of Islam was first published in 1914. A wealth of new works on Islamic mysticism followed, several written by Inayat Khan (1882– 1927), a charismatic musician probably of the Chishti tariqa175 (Sufi order) who arrived in England in 1912 and established a Sufi Publishing Society.176 The WMM had never shown much sympathy for ‘unearthly’ Sufism,177 but several British Muslims, including Pickthall, Quilliam/

Léon and a new convert, Dr AmeenÂ Neville J. Â Whymant, became members of Khan’s Society. Whymant, sometime Professor of Japanese and Oriental Languages at Oxford, contributed translations and analyses of work by Muslim mystics to the Islamic Review during and after the war.178 â A few Britons, most notably the brothers Ahmad (d.1945) and John (1915–78) Lennard, saw the Sufi tariqas as cells through which was transmitted the ancestral theosophical tradition, and considered that the exoteric doctrines and practices of mystical Islam were more accommodating to a higher spirituality than was the case with Christianity.179 The Lennard’s first encountered Islam at Woking in 1936. Both were disillusioned with Christianity and quickly converted to Islam. Ahmad became interested in Sufism through the example of Sheikh Abdullah Ali al-Hakimi (d.1954), a merchant and leader of the ‘Alawi tariqa (an offshoot of the Shadhili), who—as is related in the next chapter— arrived in Britain shortly before the Lennard brothers converted.180 According to the Islamic Review, Ahmad told his father that, ‘his adoption of Islam was not a matter of form and ceremony but the beginning

162 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ of a determined course of life which was the very antithesis of the manner of life lived by the generality of his people. It meant a marked departure from that life.’181 As we saw in the case of Philby, this attitude was uncharacteristic of British Muslims and was probably not conducive for a British Muslim living in Britain in this period. Indeed, just after his conversion, Ahmad left Britain to pursue the mystical path in India where, following his premature death in 1945, he was buried in the Lahore tomb complex of the renowned Sufi saint, Data Ganj Bakhsh (d.1077). John followed his bother to India and found a spiritual guide in a Chishti sheikh, Syed Muhammad Zauqi Shah (1878–1951), whom he later succeeded as spiritual leader. Taking the name Shahidullah Faridi, John remained with the Chishtis until his death in Karachi, ÂPakistan, in 1978.182 â In Britain, both the WMM and LMM renewed efforts to promote Islam as the most practical and relevant faith in post-war society. Whymant suggested during the war that, among Westerners converting to ‘Oriental faiths’, ‘Islam claims the greater number because of its universal applicability to all kinds of circumstances. It speaks authoritatively on every point of everyday life, and has not the intense technicality of the Buddhist Faith, which needs a scholar to understand it.’183 The missionaries and activists were helped in their quest by a slight softening of adverse attitudes and increasingly more reliable information about ÂMuslims and Islam after the war. This was generated by broader interest in parts of the Muslim world, especially Mesopotamia and Arabia, fuelled by travel books and popular fiction provoked by the mystique of the ‘Arab revolt’ and the romantic legend of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.184 Speaking before a lecture by Philby on ‘The Highways of Central Arabia’ in 1920, the hon. secretary of the Central Asian Society noted that, whereas only four new members had joined in the year before the ÂArmistice, since then 130 new members had taken out membership.185 â WMM and LMM staff and associates delivered lectures around the country and welcomed ‘truth searchers’ to their mosques. The WMM continued to find success among Spiritualists, whose number had increased during the war through attempts to contact the dead and by combatants who had vivid dreams of encounters with fallen comrades.186 Quilliam’s old friend, Stephen, had established the Onierological Society in 1915, ‘for the scientific study of sleep, dreams, and the phenomena connected therewith’, and contributed a series of articles to the Islamic Review based on his fifty years’ research into ‘spiritism’ and psychic

163 LOYAL ENEMIES Âmatters.187 Stephen, along with Parkinson, Sheldrake, Wright, Headley, ÂCobbold, Pickthall, Whymant and others, joined Quilliam/Léon’s Société and College of Physiology in London, where they discussed the relationship between religion, spirituality and modern sciences. Several British Muslims in this period also advocated Spiritualism. Headley, for example, devoted an entire chapter in one of his books about Islam to the subject: I have myself experienced the very greatest relief and satisfaction from visitants from the other side, but in all the manifestations there is no question of employing a “medium”—all I have seen is very real, and not due to dreams or excitement. […] [S]o far as I can see, Spiritualism need not interfere radically with any man’s religion. Jews, Christians and Muslims need be no worse off by a belief in a nearer connection with the spirit world: I will go further and say that anything which induces reverence for sacred things and belief in a future state, can hardly fail to do good, and may save certain people from giving way to despair.188 â Whymant dabbled in psychic research and Spiritualism after his conversion and, in 1931, published a strange account of his participation in a series of séances in New York, where he ‘translated’ the voices of ancient Chinese philosophers delivered through a medium.189 Some Spiritualists who were drawn to Woking converted to Islam, while Âothers, such as Horace Leaf, who visited in 1932, left content that: The more one meditates on the life of the Prophet Muhammad the more does the psychic element stand out. More perhaps than with any other religious genius is spiritual inspiration to be observed with him; and from the Spiritual- ists’ point of view, it is extremely interesting that Muslims are prepared to admit the fact. There is no pretence that the founder of their religion was an incarna- tion of God, nor even that he received his inspiration direct from God.190 â More broadly, in the immediate aftermath of the war, when a briefly revived Temperance movement advocated prohibition on the American model, the Muslim message that Islam forbade drinking alcohol (and countered other social problems such as gambling and illegitimacy, both of which had increased during the war),191 struck a chord. In the longer term, the missionaries’ exposition of Islam as tolerant, rational and democratic found resonance with inter-war ideas of egalitarianism. So too did their claim that Islam was the religion of peace—in both name and sentiment. For Sheldrake in 1918: The whole world strives for freedom and peace, freedom from grief and pain and peace in a harmonized universe. Does any book in the world give us clear

164 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ and definite instructions to attain this stage? […] Yes, the Holy Qur-án gives us positive precepts to attain this grand elevation of the human race.192 Although often ambiguous, and contrary to common perceptions of Islam as the ‘religion of the sword’, such arguments became a little more attractive in the militaristic 1930s. Speaking about the dangers of the ‘machine age’ in 1932, Arthur Charles/Ahmad Bennett, MSGB secretary, warned that: Unless a spiritual balance can be introduced, unless a spirit of brotherhood can be inculcated, catastrophe will result. Civilization will destroy itself. This spirit of brotherhood does definitely exist in Islam. I appeal, therefore, to the states- men of the world and to my fellow Muslims to do all in their power to make known the principles of Islam in the West. War was never so futile, peace was never so necessary as to-day. […]. The price for the last war is still being paid. Another war will not only cripple, but destroy. The preservation of mankind can only result through brotherhood, co-operation and unity. If the West is to be saved from utter destruction by the forces within it—then the adoption of many of the principles of Islam is a necessity—a most urgent necessity.193 â One of Woking’s most high-profile inter-war converts was Sir (Charles Edward) Abdullah Archibald (Watkin) Hamilton (1876– 1939), an army man who had first toyed with Islam when his faith in Christianity waned during the war. Writing in 1924, the year following his conversion, he admitted that: After the last war, when the world waded through streams of blood, I thought that all peace and goodwill was at an end. But the fact that my brethren across the seven seas are so willing to extend a hand of friendship brings a message of hope and good cheer to me.194 â The decline of WMM conversions in the later interwar period (fig.1) might be attributed to the effects of the Depression but, since even the major churches tended to hold their own in these years,195 it is necessary to reflect on the internal dynamics of the WMM. WhatÂ becomes immediately clear is that although several energetic Muslims—British and non-British—continued to labour for the Mission between the wars, some very influential Muslims also died in the same period. In addition to the deaths of Parkinson (1918), Stephen (1928) and Quilliam (1932)—men who, though pre-WMM converts, were important figures in the Mission’s early years—the WMM also lost Baig (1932), Kamal- ud-Din (1932), Headley (1935), Pickthall (1936) and Hamilton (1939). Their deaths resulted in an inevitable loss of strength and dynamism

165 LOYAL ENEMIES both at Woking and, as we will see in the next chapter, within the MSGB too. Indeed, as fig.1 shows, the WMM did not experience a noticeable increase of converts of either sex until the outbreak of the Second World War.

Conversion and the Second World War Although religious belief remained important for Britons during and after the Second World War, overall Church membership fell further and declined even more as a percentage of the total population.196 The greatest losses were, as in the interwar years, experienced in Noncon- formist denominations—namely, those groups from which converts to Islam had been fairly numerous since the 1890s. However, Britons who showed an interest in or converted to Islam during and after the war— male and female—were from a wide range of overwhelmingly Christian denominations. Their letters to theIslamic Review generally reveal similar doubts about Christian ‘progress’ and failures to those expressed by new converts during the First World War. For example, R. Â F. Â Edwards, a member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s (1896–1980) fascist, anti-war ‘British Union’, wrote from Wolverhampton in November 1939 that: What really made me write to you was that as I was brought up in Christian surroundings I have come to realise the hypocrisy of present-day Christianity. Christ himself (rightly or wrongly) was, according to the Bible, an absolute pacifist—and yet soldiers bearing the emblem of the Crucifix (under the cloak of Christianity) have brought misery and suffering to non-Christians—instead of respecting the Faith of other peoples. […] We are told that the Allies are fighting for freedom against tyranny and oppression and have received victory “blessings” from all denominations of the Christian religion. On the other hand, Christian priests in Germany are “blessing” Hitler’s victory.197

â Muhammad Abdullah G. E.Â WarrenÂ was one of many new converts connected with the WMM who were understandably, ‘perturbed about the continued insistence, in the Press and on the Radio, upon the pre- sumption that the present conflict is being fought for the preservation of Christianity’.198 In 1940, he complained to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax (1881–1959): May I as a Muslim, serving in His Majesty’s Forces, be permitted to deprecate the publication of a passage in your recent speech in which you referred to our present struggle as “a Christian Crusade”?

166 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ I beg to point out to your Lordship how greatly such statements distress all us Muslims who are humbly but loyally serving our King and Empire.199

Servicemen What is most noticeable from surveying the Islamic Review letters pages of the early 1940s, when conversions at the WMM briefly increased, is the frequency of correspondence from active servicemen like Warren. Some visited Woking from army barracks in nearby Aldershot, en route to other postings or while on leave in and around the capital. Often these men simply wanted spiritual comfort and guidance and did not necessarily convert. ‘Major J. G.Â W.’,Â for example, wrote to Majid in 1940: ‘It was kind of you to send me such a beautiful copy of the Holy Qur-án. I shall treasure it greatly and will ensure that it accompanies me wherever I go in this war. My intention is to read and digest a small portion each night before going to sleep.’200 Sergeant Potter was one of many servicemen who requested further information about Islam from Woking: With the present war, bringing its own problems of a special nature to the fore, I feel that we are all placed in rather an invidious position and the change of life resultant upon war and its after-effects will have to be met by all with a much clearer outlook. I regret to say that, in my very humble opinion, Christianity will fail in this after this war as it did after the war of 1914–1918, and I feel that to be a useful citizen after a war one needs something practical upon which to build up faith in humanity and in oneself.201 â Correspondence between ‘truth seekers’ like Potter and WMM missionaries was sometimes quite protracted, but often resulted in conversion.202 This was still achieved either by means of a convenient postal declaration form or in person at Woking or London, including, from 1941, the newly opened East London Mosque in Stepney, which was initially linked with the WMM.203 As in the previous war, conversion to Islam was a tonic for some servicemen. Basil Ivan Jamset wrote from his regiment in 1940 that, ‘now that I have returned to the True Path of Love and Duty to God and my fellow-men by embracing Islam, I feel spiritually uplifted and this in spite of the destruction and suffering going on all around me in this terrible war.’204 Others who converted during the war had direct experience of the previous conflict. Major Farmer, for example, had been stationed in the Middle East with the Tank Corps during the First World War. As he wrote at the time of his conversion in 1939:

167 LOYAL ENEMIES We, who went through the war, have now had time to reflect; we see the shal- lowness of priestcraft and the Church’s conception of things. When the Church failed to stand for its principles in the Great War, Christianity was destroyed as a spiritual force; man’s simple trust was shaken; the door has opened for Islam.205 â Although there was no significant increase of converts at Woking immediately after the war, many of the letters from new Muslims published in the Islamic Review were from returned servicemen. Some of them had encountered Muslims and Islam directly overseas, and a minority converted while still abroad. Harold A. Sims,Â for example, converted while serving with the army in North Africa in 1943.206 This was also true for several non-WMM British Muslims. Captain Basil Marchant/Badr el-Murad Smith (1922–2004) was stationed in Malaya (Malaysia) at the end of the war, where he made friends with Muslims who introduced him to Islam. Smith already had doubts about Christi- anity and found Islam to be more simple and believable, but was motivated to convert after meeting a Muslim woman, whom he married before returning to England in 1947.207 Bashir Orchard served in India, where he was apparently courted by a Qadiani officer who taught him about Islam and the Ahmadiyyat, ‘parts of [which] inspired me and uplifted my spirits’. Orchard used his army leave to visit Qadian, where he met the khalifa, ‘an embodiment of energetic repose radiating physical, intellectual and spiritual magnetism which captivated all in his presence’. As his unit pushed towards Burma, Orchard signed the bai’at form and sent it to Qadian.208 Other servicemen returned to Britain conÂ templating Islam as a viable faith. Patrick Ernest/Sa‘eed Chipperfield, for instance, served in the Middle East from 1941, and was ‘deeply moved by the apparent simplicity of the prayers’ he heard every Friday. After the war, he tried to settle back ‘into an England that was very different from that which I expected’. His interest in Islam was rekindled by reading WMM propaganda, from which, ‘sprang the realization that all was not well in my life and that something was definitely missing’. After eighteen months studying Islam and visiting the WMM, he converted in 1952.209

Sufis A second group of Britons who converted in the immediate aftermath of the war were, as was the case in the early interwar period, primarily

168 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’

attracted through Sufism. The popular Orientalist, A. Â J. Â Arberry (1905– 69), wrote in 1942 that: If ever there was a time when the teachings of the great [Muslim] mystics were vitally necessary for the comfort of men’s [sic] hearts and the lifting up of the spirit of humanity, that time is surely now. […] The war has wakened the souls of many who had become intoxicated by the wine of too great material prosperity and fleshly ease, of conquered distances and harnessed nature, so that they now begin to realize that all these things in which they always took their pride are worth nothing, and that the only element of permanence in this imperma- nent world is the force of the Spirit.210 â The WMM accommodated mystical Islam just before the war, conceding in 1939 that, ‘Sufism is a natural development of Islam.’211 How- ever, most Britons who converted to Sufism during and after the conflict appear to have done so outside of the WMM, notably through the example of the French philosopher René Guénon/Abdel Wahed Yahia (1886–1951) of the Shadhili tariqa (and an initiate of the Swedish convert, Ivan Aguéli) who, though isolated in Cairo, was regarded as a symbol of spiritual renewal amid the confusion and fragmentation of 212 the war-torn world. For example, Dr MartinÂ Lings/Abu Bakr Siraj ad-Din (1909–2005) converted to Islam while in Egypt in c.1938–40, and was quickly imbued with Sufism through studying Guénon and meeting other Shadhilis. Lings sympathised with Guénon’s critique of modern civilisation and shared his ‘universalism’ (the transcendent unity of all religious faiths and the abiding Truth that contains them all) within the context of Islam. Lings became both a spiritual disciple and personal assistant to Guénon during the 1940s. He later assumed the position of sheikh of a branch of the Shadhili, and became a respected scholar of Islam and Sufism.213 Another British intellectual, Charles Le Gai/Hasan Eaton (1921–2010), also converted through Guénon’s example. Eaton became interested in mysticism during the late 1940s, and, after reading about Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism, came across Guénon, who: turned the idea of human progress upside down, replacing it with the belief almost universal before the modern age, that humanity declines in spiritual excellence with the passage of time and that we are now in the Dark Age which precedes the End, an age in which all the possibilities rejected by earlier cultures have been spewed out into the world, quantity replaces quality and decadence approaches its final limit. No one who read him and understood him could ever be quite the same again.214

169 LOYAL ENEMIES â In 1950, Eaton accepted a teaching post in Cairo, where he met Lings and subsequently converted to Islam.215

â The British journalist and linguist Husein F.Â Rofé (1922–2008) took a rather different mystical path after converting to Islam in 1946. Shortly before his conversion, Rofé realised that he had ‘clairvoyant capacities’ and, though settled upon orthodox Islam, he ventured first to Morocco and then Indonesia (1950) in search of both employment and, ‘someone who could show me how to develop gifts of this kind’.216 In Indonesia, Rofé secured an interview with Muhammad Subuh (1901– 87), the Muslim founder of Subud—a Sufi-like spiritual experience awakened by the power of God, which reputedly leads to spiritual reality free from the influence of passions, heart and mind.217 Rofé asked Subuh if he could show him ‘a way to find the truth within’, and ‘a means of making direct contact with the Divine, the source of Prophetic wisdom’. Subuh replied that, ‘a technique vouchsafed to him by God could probably prove helpful, since many of his pupils had been enabled to contact the Higher Self in this way. It involved the awakening of the soul, and since the soul was not concerned with nationalities, there was no reason why I should not benefit.’218 Rofé left Indonesia in 1954 to promote both Islam and Subud in Japan.219 He returned to England two years later, where he helped establish Subud and continued to contribute articles to the Islamic Review until its demise in the early 1970s.

Women A third and more numerous group of post-war converts helps to account for the fluctuating number of female conversions during the war and the overall peak of conversions at the end of the period (fig.1). This cohort comprised white British women who generally converted before marrying a Muslim immigrant, leading, as is discussed in the next chapter, to various degrees of religious commitment. Indeed, the WMM database records thirty-six examples of white British women (and only one man) marrying a Muslim immigrant according to Islamic law. Most women appear to have converted before the solemnisation of their marriage at Woking Mosque, where they were married (often wearing a white dress) with a dowry from their spouse. Interestingly, only two of the marriages were solemnised before 1939; eight more were made during the war; and at least twenty-three between 1946 and 1953.220 Their number grew

170 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ and accelerated sharply in the late 1950s and 1960s as more lone male Muslim immigrants arrived and settled in Britain. Indeed, the Islamic Review introduced a monthly ‘Marriages Solemnised’ section in these decades, which also show an increase in the number of white British men marrying first or second generation British Muslim women. â As in the nineteenth century, some of these unions were with Muslim intellectuals and professionals, including several distinguished Muslims who had permanently or temporarily settled in Britain. Whilst the ÂBritish spouses of Ameer Ali and Abdullah Yusuf Ali did not convert to Islam, others did. These latter included Elizabeth MacKenzie (1900– 60), who married the Afghan writer and poet Ikbal Ali Shah (1894– 1969; then known as Syed Abdullah) while he was studying in Edinburgh in 1916. Writing under the pen name of ‘Morag Murray Abdullah’, she later recalled that Shah: walked so erectly and looked like the popular idea of a handsome sheikh. He was tall, with finely chiselled features and the air of a swashbuckler, yet there was no ‘side’ about him. I could tell that his bearing was natural. He seemed defiant and yet devil-may-care, and I could look at no one else.221 Despite opposition to the relationship from both families, MacKenzie converted to Islam and married Shah according to Islamic law in her family’s drawing room. The couple left Scotland for Afghanistan, where they were married again according to local custom. MacKenzie took the names Saira Elizabeth Luiza Shah and was relieved to learn that, whilst ‘polygamy is allowed by Islam, […] few men seem to avail themselves of the doubtful distinction of becoming lord and master of four wives’.222 â The WMM database suggests that most Muslim husbands in this period were working class maritime workers recruited in the late-Â nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as cheap labour on British steamships plying their trade across the Empire. Whilst the majority of these men (typically from India, Yemen, Egypt, Malaya, Turkey and Somaliland) came to Britain temporarily, some settled with local women—many of whom converted to Islam—in the docks and working class urban districts of mainly Glasgow, Dundee, South Shields, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Barry, Cardiff and East London. Converts in the WMM database include Mrs Mary Muhammad of Glasgow (1941) and

Mrs A. ÂEthel Yahi of Hull (1941). However, by the early-twentieth century, the largest identifiable Muslim communities in Britain were to be

171 LOYAL ENEMIES found in the busy seaports of Cardiff and South Shields, both of which Âcomprised a core of permanent settlers mainly from Yemen and Somaliland initially picked up in the British controlled port of Aden. Their numbers swelled during and after the First World War (from around 700 to 3,000 in Cardiff alone between 1914 and 1919),223 when non-enemy aliens and British subjects were recruited to make up shortages of maritime workers and, following the war, the shipping industry experienced a short-lived boom. â Anthropologists in both Cardiff in 1941 and outhS Shields between 1949 and 1951 found that marriages between local, generally young, white working-class women and Muslim migrants had been and remained especially common among Yemenis.224 Contacts between local women—of whom there was a large surplus of marriageable age in the interwar period—and Muslim men in Cardiff and South Shields were mainly made in centres of recreation. Young white women were typically employed as domestic servants in Arab-run boarding-houses and cafés. Female friends of these women visited the docks, and also found themselves attracted to the exotic and generous Arabs, who earned good wages before the end of the First World War.225 Many relationships were temporary and only a few resulted in marriage and permanent settlement. However, most of the boarding-house masters, café owners and shopkeepers in Cardiff and South Shields married local women and settled down, as did some seafarers. Consequently, there were, for instance, around 40 Muslim families—of men, women and their ÂBritish-born children—in South Shields by 1930.226 Sidney Collins found that some marriages in Tyneside were hasty affairs subsequent to premarital pregnancy; others involved young women with illegitimate children who had been deserted by their parents and found acceptance and security by marrying non-white men; and still more were brought together through mutual affection.227 Prior to the arrival of Ahmad ÂLennard’s mentor, al-Hakimi, who organised and reinvigorated both the South Shields and Cardiff Muslim communities in the 1930s (see Chap- ter Five), these marriages were probably conducted according to British law. Thereafter, however, Islamic marriages like those solemnised at Woking were possible and, as Collins found in the late 1940s, some couples in South Shields observed both Christian/civil and Muslim marriage rites in order to fulfil religious duties and also to protect women and their children’s status in Britain.228

172 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’

III. ÂQuantity versus quality: missions compared Two important questions remain: how many converts did the two Mis- sions secure in this forty-year period, and how do their numbers compare with the LMI’s record of approximately 300 conversions achieved over two decades? â We have seen that evidence is more plentiful for the WMM, which was better organised and resourced than the LMM (and LMI), enabling it to propagate Islam further afield and to more Britons than its only serious rival. The WMM database count of 483 British Muslims between 1913 and 1953 is undoubtedly an underestimate of the grand total of Britons who converted in those years. As with the LMI, accu- rately gauging numbers is difficult because numbers fluctuated and, moreover, contemporaneous sources that cite statistics often conflict. For example, a Sunday Post journalist who visited Woking in 1924 reported that the WMM was averaging one conversion per day.229 The WMM claimed a decade later that, ‘hardly a week passes before a new convert is added to the list’.230 The following year, a Foreign Office report estimated that the WMM had made approximately 11,000 converts in England alone!231 Considering the WMM database and other anecdotal and official reports, it seems reasonable to support the claim made in the Islamic Review in late 1951 that the WMM had made a grand total of approximately 2,000 converts—not all of British origin— since its inception.232 â Despite its more advantageous location in the capital (albeit in the near suburbs for most of the period), the LMM’s weaker organisation, lack of white British leaders and role models, and dubious cultish status, meant that it was far less successful numerically than the WMM. Â Details of new Qadiani converts were erratically reported in the Review of Reli- gions and other official LMM publications but, since the convert’s nationality was often not given, reliable comparisons of overall numbers with those derived from the WMM database (or the construction of a meaningful LMM database) is not possible. What is clear, however, is that the LMM consistently struggled to secure new converts in Britain. As we saw earlier, the Qadiani’s admitted in 1916 that just seven of the 3,000 converts made worldwide in the previous year were in England. By the late 1930s, when the LMM should have been in its prime, the Daily Herald reported that it had only secured between 200 and 300

173 LOYAL ENEMIES converts.233 In fact, the lower end of the Daily Herald’s figure seems reasonable from the LMM’s inception in 1914 through to 1953, and corresponds with another estimate of Qadiani converts in Britain between these years.234 The LMM also experienced a much sharper decline in numbers towards the end of the period: after ‘several days hard work’, the newly arrived imam of the London Mosque identified just 149 members of the jama‘at in 1959, most of them immigrants 235 and Âforeign students rather than converts. In light of this, the

LMI’s Âapproximately 300 British converts in the arguably tougher late- Victorian and Edwardian period seems all the more remarkable. It is in fact questionable whether the better-resourced LMM was as successful numerically as the short-lived LMI. â Although the LMM and WMM were keen to publicise new conversions, just like Quilliam at the LMI, both organisations downplayed the importance of numbers and instead spoke of the ‘quality’ of individual converts (for example their social status, intelligence, sincerity and commitment) when it suited them. For example, following a poor year for conversions in 1917, Kamal-ud-Din wrote that the WMM could nevertheless, ‘add this year to the ranks of Islam men well known for their vigour of pen and literary attainment’.236 Again, the WMM trumped the LMM (and LMI) by facilitating the conversions of some influential Britons during this period. These included upper-class Establishment figures, most of them Tories. Besides Cobbold, Headley (who had stood, unsuccessfully, as Conservative candidate in County Kerry in 1892)237 encouraged his friend, Sir Abdullah Archibald Hamilton (sometime master of the hounds and president of the Selsey Conservative Associa- tion) to convert. Hamilton turned his neighbour, the retired Royal Navy surgeon, Deputy Inspector-General Charles William Buchanan-Hamil- ton (d.1929), towards Islam. â Other Establishment converts who gained valuable publicity for the WMM included Buchanan-Hamilton’s wife and future MSGB president, Helen/Khalida (d.1942), who was related to the Viceroy of India, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925); Sir Thomas Stopford/ Jalal-ud-Din Lauder Brunton (1866–1937), who was instructed by Kamal-ud-Din at Woking, but formally converted in India in 1931;238 the Misses Elizabeth (1880–1955) and Irene/Aisha (1883–?) Went- worth-Fitzwilliam, granddaughters of William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, sixth Earl Fitzwilliam (1815–1902); and Thomas Sackville/Hasan

174 ‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’ Ahmad Tufton (1916–86), who became fourth Baron Hothfield. Appearances could, of course, be deceptive and inevitably the WMM’s list of nobles and notables included some quite odd characters. Upon his death in 1988, the Telegraph considered that another of Headley’s friends, Sir Omar Hubert Rankin (1899–1988, converted 1927), was, ‘an eccentric remarkable even by the rarefied standards of the barone- tage’, and concluded that, ‘his death deprives Who’s Who of possibly its most entertaining entry’.239 Rankin listed his recreations as including: cycling on mountain tracks to tops of British mountains […]; archaeology (wife and himself the only persons to have crawled under dwarf fir forest for last ½ mile of most northerly known section of any Roman road in Europe […]); study of domestic animals, speaking on politics, especially re Scottish Home Rule and Highland problems.240 Politically, Rankin shifted from right to left, first joining the Labour Party, then the Scottish Nationalist Party (he demanded ‘an independent Red Republic of all Scotland exc. Orkneys and Shetlands’), the Scottish Communist Party and the Welsh Republicans.241 â Whilst the WMM was keen to publicise converts from the upper echelons of British society, key to its success as a missionary organisation was its ability to attract a socially and demographically heterogeneous community of converts. Most were in fact from the middle and, increasingly during the inter-war years, working classes. Many British Muslims were, like Pickthall, solidly Tory but others were Liberals and some more left-leaning, for example Lovegrove who was a tailor and, like Quilliam, an active trade unionist.242 Both the WMM and LMM had most success in England, especially in London and the Home Counties. Indeed, the WMM database shows that of the 332 converts whose address at the time of their conversion is known, 283 (85.2 per cent) were based in England, the largest number in London (ninety-seven) and the South- East (sixty-two). John Omar Fisher’s claim (above) that Islam was struggling in the North during the interwar years rings true for the whole period. A further twelve (3.6 per cent) British Muslims were based in Scotland at the time of their conversion; seven (2.1 per cent) in Wales; three (0.9 per cent) in interwar Ulster/Irish Free State; and twenty-seven (8.1 per cent) overseas, most of the latter within the British colonies.243 The English, Scottish and Welsh regions contained remarkably equal proportions of men and women while, as might be expected, more men

175 LOYAL ENEMIES (twenty-three) than women (four) converted overseas. The question of how these varied individuals (and groups) sustained their conversion and what impact Islam had on their lives as Muslims in twentieth-century Britain is tackled in the next chapter.

176 5

‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’

BRITISH MUSLIM LIVES, 1908–1953

We turn now to the post-conversion lives of the British Muslim individuals and communities identified in the previous chapter. How did missionaries, other Muslims and the converts themselves foster and sustain belonging and commitment to Islam and the Muslim community? What was the personal impact of conversion and how did these converts negotiate their lives as Muslims, adapt and indigenise their faith in late-imperial Britain? To answer these questions, we need to consider Islamic practice (especially the ‘pillars’ of Islam) and Muslim customs, as well as attitudes about women, and then reflect on how this was perceived within and outside the dominant Muslim communities in Britain. Finally, we can explore two key pressures that affected individual and group commitment in this period: as we have already seen, the first of these pressures, sectarianism within British Islam, had its origins in the early-twentieth century; the second, discrimination against Muslims, had persisted for centuries and showed little sign of abating.

I. ÂBelonging and commitment to Islam Examining how and in what ways early-twentieth-century British ÂMuslims developed and sustained a sense of belonging and commitment

177 LOYAL ENEMIES to Islam and their Muslim community is not a straightforward task. This is because, as the socio-economic background and demographics of British Muslims diversified in the first half of the twentieth century, so patterns of belonging and commitment became more varied. Individual willpower, beliefs and attitudes, which illuminate religiosity, are seldom documented for this generation of converts. However, sources indicate that, like their predecessors, most continued to rely on Muslim institutions to foster and maintain community, belonging and commitment. â We have seen that the majority of British Muslims in these years were connected to the WMM and LMM. InÂ the port towns, predominantly female converts were typically associated in some way with al-Hakimi’s

Zaouia Islamia Allawouia Religious Society of the UK. TheseÂ three organisations provided facilities for worship, organised socio-religious events, sought to educate converts and their families about Islam, and offered instruction in Arabic. Moreover, each organisation developed new initiatives to help shape and cement faith and belonging with varying degrees of success. Qadiani missionaries at the LMM, for example, inaugurated a special tabligh (preaching) day in the 1930s to encourage the jama‘at to devote itself to missionary work.1 The missionaries hoped that, besides propagating Islam, participation would strengthen individual commitment to Islam, the khalifa and the jama‘at. Whilst this might have worked for the few converts who took part, the spirit of the day was undermined by its irregularity in the jama‘at’s annual calendar of events. We saw in Chapter Four that fewer British Muslims helped organise the LMM compared with the WMM, primarily because Indian missionaries and leaders in Qadian firmly controlled the affairs of the jama‘at. British Muslims who lived relatively local to the London Mosque were, however, urged to join a separate, self-led ‘British Wing’ in the early 1930s, which points to the importance of convert-led sub- groups within British-based Muslim organisations.2 However, without energetic leaders or perhaps sufficient support from Qadiani missionaries, the British Wing was a more modest and short-lived organisation than the BMS/MSGB, which continued to be run primarily by converts well into the 1950s. â Although, as we will see, it was certainly not plain sailing for the BMS/ MSGB, its socio-religious activities—primarily in the form of ‘at homes’, lectures and often quite grand celebrations of Muslim festivals—were generally well-attended by converts, as well as interested others and a

178 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ growing number of Muslims from overseas. For example, up to 200 Muslims of all nationalities celebrated Muhammad’s birthday in an Old Bond Street restaurant in 1924, and a record 320 people squeezed in to mark the occasion five years later.3 At its peak in 1935, the MSGB had some 200 members, many of them native British Muslims.4 â In addition to the networks afforded by the BMS/MSGB and facilities for worship in Woking and London, some WMM converts, such as Sir Omar Hubert Rankin and David/Dawud Cowan, temporarily lodged with the Woking imam in the Memorial House to learn about Islam and the Islamic world, the Mission and how to practise their new faith. While still in his teens, the rebellious Rankin ran away from home, first working as a riveter’s mate in a shipyard and later joining the army. After being invalided in 1922, Rankin met Headley, who introduced him to Islam and the WMM.5 In 1927, then in his late twenties, Rankin converted at Woking, but it was not until 1932 that he lodged at the Memorial House in order to, ‘master the technical aspect of the Islamic prayers’.6 Rankin’s experience at Woking undoubtedly strengthened his faith, and he became MSGB president three years later. How- ever, as is explained below, sectarian squabbles shattered his faith, and he turned away from Islam in 1944. â In contrast to Rankin, Cowan converted very young, having chanced across a copy of the Islamic Review in his local public library at the age of sixteen, in 1931. Late in life, Cowan recalled that his interest in Islam was prompted by a fascination with the ‘exotic’ Arabic language spoken by the many sailors in his home town of Dundee. Although he eagerly posted a conversion declaration form to Kamal-ud-Din in 1931, Cowan also later admitted that, at sixteen, he really knew very little about Islam. In 1933, therefore, he joined imam Majid at Woking to learn more, and commuted into London to study Arabic. Despite disapproval from his family, these experiences cemented Cowan’s faith and he became an active member of the Mission and the MSGB. Â During the Second World War he was assistant imam at Woking and, in contrast to Rankin, died a Muslim in 2003, more than seventy years after his conversion.7 â While, like Rankin, some—perhaps many—British Muslims drifted from Islam, especially after the novelty of their conversion wore off, Cowan’s story is a reminder that others retained their faith against the odds. The examples of Britons associated with all three main missionary organisations operating in this period re-emphasise the diversity of com-

179 LOYAL ENEMIES mitment to Islam and Muslim institutions. Most converts did not follow in Rankin and Cowan’s footsteps to the Memorial House or equivalent, relying instead upon prayer meetings, eids and other religious events, lectures and social activities to develop and strengthen their faith and relationships with other Muslims. The majority also subscribed to missionary journals, which, as in previous decades, provided a lifeline for converts who were geographically distant from ÂMuslim activities in London and south-east England, especially those who lived overseas. For example, forty years after his conversion, Abdullah Williamson (Chapter Three) maintained contact with Muslims in ÂBritain and informed about the community by subscribing to the Islamic Review and corresponding with WMM staff.8 Many converts also continued to contribute material to Muslim publications. The WMM database indicates that 131 Britons who converted between 1913 and 1953 (27.1 per cent of the 483 converts in the database) had at least one article or letter published in the Islamic Review between 1913 and 1970, most of them (72.5 per cent) men.9 By contrast, few converts connected with the LMM contributed to Qadiani publications in the same period, exceptions being two particularly zealous Qadianis— Mubarak Ahmad Fuelling and, later, Bashir Orchard (Chapter Four), who became the first European Qadiani Muslim missionary and an editor of the Review of Religions. About a dozen British Muslims associated with the WMM also contributed to the Light, an English-language journal established in 1921 by Lahoris in India to defend and promote Islam among the English-speaking Indian community. â Several converts published other works related to Islam for Muslim or Orientalist organisations and independently. As Sheldrake explained inÂ1920: Ignorance is responsible for much of the trouble in this world, and it is our duty to do all we can to pierce this veil of darkness, and give to the people of the West the real truth concerning Islam, and to show to them that it is a creed for humanity, not for one land or continent. […] We must expect to be ridi- culed, to have our motives suspected, to be regarded as “infidels” by the fanatical, or as “cranks” by the more tolerant, but one charge cannot be levied against those Britishers who have, or may, adopt Islam, they cannot stigmatise us as “foreigners”, and so have one advantage over those who profess non-Christian faith who come from another land.10 Besides Sheldrake, the most published authors of works about Islam and ÂMuslims, much of it missionary in flavour, were Headley, Wright,

180 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ Lovegrove, Pickthall and another WMM convert, William Burchell/ Bashyr Pickard (1889–?).11 In the tradition of Quilliam, which Sheldrake embodied, these men used their knowledge and position as ‘native’ ÂBritons to help explain and rationalise Islam and Islamic customs, generally by positing their faith within the Abrahamic tradition, and comparing and contrasting British/Western Christian and Islamic culture and tradition. This was an approach that still antagonised non-Muslims. For example, commenting in 1927 on a compilation of Headley’s articles published by the WMM, the East and the West journal suggested that: Lord Headley takes over into his exposition of Islam specifically Christian Âconceptions, such as the Fatherhood of God, thereby giving it a spurious attraction. He endeavours to clothe Mohammadanism in a Western twentieth-century dress.12 â In a 1929 review of ‘Ahmadiya’ propaganda, James Thayer Addison argued that, while Lahori propagandists Kamal-ud-Din and Maulana Muhammad Ali (1874–1951) were, ‘excellent controversialists, keen, coherent, and not too scrupulous; […] as to the mental endowments of

Lord Headley and Mr. Â Lovegrove, the less said the better’. Addison concluded with some justification that, ‘All the writers succumb to the partisan temptation to make uneven comparisons. They always compare the Moslem ideal or “the Spirit of Islam” with the actualities of Christian- ity.’13 He also rightly identified Pickthall to be the best of British Muslim writers. Judging from a literary perspective, E. M.Â ForsterÂ (1879–1970), considered Pickthall to be, ‘the only contemporary English novelist who understands the nearer East’.14 Indeed, Pickthall became the most influential and enduring British Muslim of his generation, and arguably of the twentieth century. Both before and especially after his formal conversion in 1917, he drew heavily on the Qur’an, hadith and sunna, historical context and his experience of Muslim countries not only to explain, justify and defend Islam and Muslims, but also to encourage the reform and rejuvenation of the umma.15 To give just one example, in his 1917 lecture on ‘Modernism and Islam’ noted in the previous chapter, ÂPickthall urged his audience to embrace the Islamic principles of free thought and inquiry; he argued that, rather than slavishly ape the Christian West, Muslims should follow the spirit of the Qur’an and emulate Muhammad’s example to revive the glories of Muslim civilisation and progress: ‘It would be a blessing to the world if Islam should once more take the lead in human progress.’16

181 LOYAL ENEMIES â Pickthall was not an Ahmadi but, when Kamal-ud-Din left England for India in early 1919, he effectively took control of the WMM (including editorship of the Islamic Review) until Sadr-ud-Din returned to England in the autumn. Pickthall seized every opportunity to emphasise and expand his thoughts regarding Muslim modernisation and revival. As he explained in one of several well-received ‘Friday Sermons’, ‘The course of our Jihad is clearly indicated: first for the healing, re- uniting and uplifting of the Muslim brotherhood, so as to set a great example to the world, and secondly by that means to spread Islam throughout the world.’17 Some fellow British Muslims engaged with his Âideas, but little was achieved in the short term because, in 1920, Pickthall also left England for India. After a stint in Bombay, he moved to Hyderabad, the largest of the Indian states that had evaded absorption into the Raj and, therefore, was, according to Pickthall, ‘a bit of the old Mughal Empire which has survived the wreck’.18 Indeed, Pickthall found himself living in a society where the traditions of the old Mughal Empire lived on and where a benevolent, paternalistic nizam, Asaf Jah VII (1886–1967), ruled over a mass of Hindus while exemplifying 19 the ÂIslamic ideals of wisdom and tolerance Pickthall cherished. In Hyderabad, Pickthall became first editor of Islamic Culture, an authoritative, scholarly English-language journal produced under the nizam’s patronage. In 1927, he also delivered a series of influential lectures in Madras entitled ‘The Cultural Side of Islam’—a bold, modernist account of the causes for the rise and decline of Islamic culture designed, once again, to reinvigorate the Muslim world.20 The following year, the nizam granted Pickthall special leave of absence on full pay to complete his rendering of the Qur’an into English, which he started in 1919 because he was dissatisfied with existing ‘humdrum’ English editions.21 The book was published to excellent reviews in 1930 and, like his Madras lectures, remains in print today.22 â Back in Britain, the experience of women who married Arab and other Muslim immigrants in port towns like Cardiff and South Shields differed markedly from the convert mainstream. This was primarily because the wives of immigrants were socially and, particularly in Cardiff’s Butetown (or ‘Tiger Bay’), racially segregated from the majority white population. Whether they converted to Islam or not, they were thus expected to conform to particular ethnic, cultural and religious norms and ways of life within their community. Before the arrival of al-Hakimi

182 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ in the mid-1930s, religious observances remained a private affair, mainly for the benefit of men and confined to boarding houses and individual homes. However, as was noted in the previous chapter, al-Hakimi introduced formal socio-religious institutional structures which benefited both sexes. Zawiyas (lit. ‘a corner’, used in Sufism to mean a spiritual retreat; a small mosque/centre of a Sufi order) were established in Cardiff, South Shields, Hull and Liverpool. Muslim women continued to be subjugated in these institutions—for example, the Shields Gazette recorded in 1937 that, ‘The women were not allowed to kneel nor use prayer mats but were provided with chairs in a corner of the room, where they sat throughout the ceremony, breaking out at times into the monotonous, wailing chants which were part of the devotions.’23 How- ever, al-Hakimi had enabled their participation in South Shields and, moreover, organised them into a separate group with a room within the zawiya set aside for their weekly worship and religious instruction. A few women were taught to lead prayers and prepare the dead for burial; some also learnt Arabic, which enabled them to translate Qur’anic verses for their children, who were raised as Muslims.24 Sidney Collins found in South Shields that: The changed religious position of the women resulted in a new attitude towards life and an increase in women converts. It gave them greater confidence in their social position in the community. “Before, we were only Arab’s wives,” commented a woman, “but after that experience we felt that we belonged to something too. We had our religion.”25 âAfter al-Hakimi’s departure from South Shields in 1938 (he returned briefly in late 1939), these gains quickly evaporated—the women’s room was taken away and their meetings in the zawiya were discontinued.26 Women nevertheless continued to play an important and influential role in the religious and social life of the community, helping organise eids and other festivals, teaching their offspring the rudiments of Islam and, in the absence of their seafaring husbands, regulating their children’s lives according to the norms of the community.27 These women also had sufficient influence to modify custom: for example, Collins noted that they managed to persuade their husbands to break the tradition of cir- cumcising their sons eight days after birth by waiting at least three weeks instead.28 Moreover, as Britons with experience of immigrants and their way of life, these women acted as crucial intermediaries and bridge- builders between British society and their communities. Collins also

183 LOYAL ENEMIES found that a wife, ‘may get a house when her husband fails, intercede on his behalf for employment, and if his knowledge of the English language is poor, serves as his interpreter’.29 When, during the Depression, the Arab’s own union, the National Union of Seamen, and the Shipping Federation called for strict regulation and control of Arabs to protect the jobs of their white counterparts,30 some wives in South Shields translated for the local press letters written by their husbands, and also spoke out on the issue themselves. ‘Arab’s wife’, for example, wrote to the Shields Daily Gazette in 1930: Give any Arab a chance to go down the mines or any other work he is put to and I will guarantee however hard it is he will not shirk his job. Half the Eng- lishmen on the dole are there through their own fault, being too lazy to look for work. When they receive the dole what do they do with it? Nothing but gamble and waste money on horses and drink.31 â Despite the plight of the Arabs and their families in the port towns, there was little contact across the various British Muslim communities in this period. Sheldrake is one of the few converts known to have visited South Shields, arriving in 1930 to help defend Arab seafarers and their jobs.32 Ahmad Lennard, the Sufi mentioned in Chapter Four, also attended a Butetown festival to commemorate the death of the founder of the Alawi tariqa in 1937, and later MSGB presidents, Ismail de Yorke

(1909–53) and Lt.-Col. Abdullah F. Â B. Baines-Hewitt,Â attended the festival in 1952.33 These men might have been pleasantly surprised to discover in South Shields and Cardiff an evolving Anglo-Arab Muslim culture. But, since they and most of their fellow British Muslims lived away and very much apart from these communities and were immersed in mainstream, non-Muslim society, how did they negotiate their lives as Muslims in Britain in this period?

II. ÂMuslim life in Christian Britain Elastic (Anglo-)Islam Like previous generations, few converts living in Britain (or abroad) in the first half of the twentieth century regarded Islam to be a total way of life. Indeed, insights into their lives—and here we focus on British converts associated with the WMM and, to a lesser extent, the LMM— reveals a continuing practical engagement with non-Muslim culture and

184 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ society, and pragmatic, yet, diverse responses to managing their Muslim lives and identities depending on personal circumstances, piety and confidence. Few were Muslim reformers like their contemporary, the Polish-born journalist Leopold Weiss/Muhammad Asad (1900–1992; converted in Berlin, 1926), who was intent on engaging with the umma while bound by Islamic sources to translate Islamic ideals into terms of practice.34 Indeed, with the exception of Quilliam/Léon and Pickthall, British Muslims in this period seldom engaged with, let alone initiated, intellectual debates in Islam. Yet, many did make real attempts—not always consciously or successfully—to indigenise Islam by adapting it to their environment and daily lives.

The ‘pillars’ of Islam As BMS president, Headley was, like his mentor Kamal-ud-Din, keen to promote what he called the ‘elasticity’ of Islam. He advised members at the Society’s first public meeting in 1914, that it would be: injudicious in the extreme to lay down too many hard and fast rules at starting. If we attempt to insist on the strict observance of minor points we shall […] lay ourselves open to charges we make against our Christian brethren, who insist that certain ceremonials and beliefs in dogmas are necessary to salvation. […] We want to enable people to see for themselves the beauty and simplicity of Islam—matters of form and ceremony which are not of vital importance should be left for future consideration.35 Almost fifteen years later, Headley was still making the argument to the BMS that: it is hard to conceive how our blessed Faith can make satisfactory advance in, say, England, without certain insignificant modifications of forms or ceremonies to suit the new environment. In other words, it must be recognized that different conditions and temperaments require special handling.36 â Headley’s starting-point was the very basis of Muslim life, the ‘five pillars’ of Islam. Kamal-ud-Din and others at Woking had tried to encourage observance of the second pillar, salat, five times daily. The Islamic Review intermittently contained, ‘a schedule of times of sunrise and sunset […] for the benefit of our Muslim brethren in the British Isles’, and an oft-reprinted guide to Muslim prayer was first distributed to converts in 1914 (later editions contained photographs of British

185 LOYAL ENEMIES Muslims demonstrating specific prostrations).37 However, like earlier generations, Headley and many other converts struggled to reconcile the demands of salat with their working lives in a non-Muslim country. Headley, for example, claimed in 1915 that, ‘It is quite impossible for the busy city man to pray Muslim fashion five times a day at appointed times: the opportunities for prostration and conventional devotion can not be found.’ He therefore advised that a Muslim who, ‘sends up a silent prayer that the Holy Spirit of Allah may in all things direct and rule his heart [will] surely […] be accepted Above, even though he has not had the opportunity of humbly placing his forehead on the ground’.38

10.âJames William/Habeeb-Ullah Lovegrove Demonstrating Salat, c.1930s. â ââSource: Al-Hajj Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Islam and the Muslim Prayer, Sev- enth Revised Edition, Lahore: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1960; first published in 1914.

186 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’

11.âWilliam Burchell/Bashyr Pickard Demonstrating Salat, c.1930s. â ââSource: Al-Hajj Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, Islam and the Muslim Prayer, Sev- enth Revised Edition, Lahore: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1960; first published in 1914.

â The practicalities of performingsalat continued to trouble British

Muslims throughout the interwar years. For example, T. Â H. Â Barklie of the WMM wrote in 1933 that, ‘I should find it hard if I were addicted to prayer to pray with sincerity more than three times a day.’39 In contrast, according to the orthodox Bashyr Pickard: To say that to have prayers five times a day is very inconvenient and very troublesome for business is to disregard the purpose of prayer and to throw away the benefit of repeated remembrance of God. If your worldly affairs are so

187 LOYAL ENEMIES insistent that they do not leave you time for prayer, then something is radically wrong with your way of life: your way of life is not Islamic.40 Headley modified his argument regarding salat as early as 1916, suggesting that public worship in a mosque should be, ‘supplemented by household or family prayers, where the household can be readily assem- bled, say, twice a day’.41 Parkinson, who, like most British Muslims living outside of south-east England, did not live near a mosque, reminded them that: To attend at the Mosque daily and go through the prescribed forms of worship is not enough. A man may never attend the Mosque, and be a better Muslim than one who does. To give mere outward observance, “a show of devotion”, and between times to neglect religious duty, is not Islam. […] Outward form is merely the shell, not the kernel of Islam.42 âRecognising its important religious, social and symbolic function, several WMM converts nevertheless joined the campaign to build a purpose-built mosque in the capital, first begun in earnest at the beginning of the century (Chapter Four). In 1916, Headley approached the British government to build a mosque in memory of the Muslim soldiers who had died fighting for the Empire and to serve London’s growing Muslim population.43 Tellingly, the India Office considered it, ‘unthinkable for a Christian government to be a party to erecting a mosque in a Christian country’.44 Headley was a fighter (quite literally—he was a former University boxing champion),45 and resumed his campaign after the war, supported by Sheldrake and other Muslims and friends. During a visit to India in 1928, he received a donation to the scheme of approximately £60,000 from Pickthall’s employer, the nizam of Hyderabad. Back in London, Headley, Kamal-ud-Din, Baig, the

Aga ÂKhan (Mohammed Shah, 1877–1957) and others established a ÂNizamiah London Mosque Trust Fund, and purchased a site for the building in Kensington.46 Although construction costs spiralled out of control and little progress was made in Headley’s lifetime, assets from the Fund were transferred to a Central London Mosque Trust in the 1950s, thereby contributing to the building of the mosque that over- looks Regent’s Park today.47 â As far as WMM converts are concerned, more attended Muslim festivals in Woking or London than participated at daily prayer meetings, including Friday prayer. Festivals at Woking remained especially popular

188 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ socio-religious occasions, attracting over 600 British and, increasingly, overseas-born Muslims by the early 1920s. A ‘Muslim Festival Special’ train was specially laid on by the Southern Railway Company to carry the large number of Muslims and their guests from London to Woking for eid al-adha in 1923, and marquees had to be erected in the mosque grounds to cope with the crowds during the interwar years.48 Notably, however, numbers dropped if the festivities fell on a weekday. For example, the Islamic Review commented in June 1921 that attendance at eid al-fitr had been modest compared with previous years because, ‘most of our Muslim brothers and sisters could not leave business’.49 As Pickthall acknowledged in 1920, sawm, which he tried to observe, was also affected by everyday life: To those who have to work all day and journey to their work, whose life is dependent on the life of those who are not Muslims, I have no right to speak. They know what they can do. But I beg them to do all that is in their power to obey our Lord’s command on this occasion, and, at any rate, to manage somehow to say the full number of prayers each day, and to remember in their prayers the Muslim Empire.50 âA minority of the more conscientious converts at both the WMM and LMM paid zakat, though the amount depended on individual circumstances. For example, Ernest J. Â Sadik Bromley, who converted after spending many years in Turkey and North Africa with the Royal Navy, admitted after his conversion in 1932 that, ‘I am a working class man, therefore my means are not sufficiently large to give a great deal in alms, but I shall, according to my income, send you 5 per cent of my total income each quarter.’51 In addition to paying zakat, Qadianis in employment were also required to donate money to various Ahmadi schemes. These included an obligatory regular subscription of one-sixteenth of an individual’s income after payment of taxes. It is unclear how many ÂBritish Qadianis paid these subscriptions, or if they did so regularly. The orthodox Orchard did, paying one-sixteenth of his income at the time of his conversion in 1945. He later opted to donate one-tenth and, by 1967, one-third of his income to the jama‘at, which qualified him to be buried in the Ahmadiyya cemetery in Qadian.52 â As opportunities to travel increased during the twentieth century, a few more British Muslims—men and women—made the hajj. This fifth ‘pillar’ usually represented an important phase in an individual’s spiritual and cultural conversion. Some, such as Aisha Wentworth-Fitzwilliam,

189 LOYAL ENEMIES who went to Mecca within five years of converting (and would have gone sooner if she had secured the necessary permissions),53 experienced the hajj at an early stage of their Muslim lives. Others, such as Olive Suleiman, who converted before marrying a Yemeni in Butetown, and the Qadiani Orchard, who had converted in his mid-twenties, travelled to Mecca in old age, the hajj representing a final stage in their religious lives.54 Pickthall too considered the hajj as something of a climax: ‘In the pilgrimage the Muslim goes as to his [sic] death, having settled all his worldly business, paid up all his debts, made his will and freed himself from earthly cares.’55 However, like many others, Pickthall died before realising his ambition. In contrast, a handful of Britons performed the hajj numerous times, primarily converts like Philby, Cowan and el- Murad Smith, who were living in the Middle East. â Headley arrived in Jidda with Kamal-ud-Din in July 1923 under the hospitality of the King of the Hejaz, Sayyid Hussein bin Ali (1854– 1931), who provided them with a car and driver. Once in Mecca, Head- ley had as comfortable a pilgrimage as was possible. He slept on a camp-bed in the desert and, anxious that ‘no English head would survive the trial’, was granted permission to leave his head unshaven if covered with a turban (it is customary for male pilgrims to shave their heads).56 The summer of 1923 was notable for the Lausanne Conference, which was to decide Turkey’s fate. For the New York Times, ‘Doubtless [Head- ley’s] social position also gives his hajj a semi-political complexion at a time when British prestige in the Mohammedan world is somewhat impaired.’57 Ever the patriot and probably aware that he was being monitored by the intelligence agencies, Headley went to great lengths at receptions in Port Said and Cairo before his hajj, and afterwards in Jidda and London, to dismiss rumours that it had any political significance.58 He emphasised that it was a purely religious experience, and one which had (despite his privileged position) shown him the, ‘wondrous brotherhood of Islam—I never quite understood what it really meant until this pilgrimage was over, but now I do so most thoroughly’.59 â Other British Muslim pilgrims also wrote and spoke in public about their experiences, most famously Cobbold, who, at the age of sixty-five in 1933, became the first British Muslim woman to perform the 60 hajj. ÂThe following year, Cobbold published a diary describing her journey, overcame prohibitions against women to talk about her hajj at organisations such as the Central Asian Society and the Travel Club, and

190 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ contributed accounts to prestigious journals including the Royal ÂGeographical Society’s Magazine.61 â Like Headley, Cobbold also benefited from colonial privilege and made the hajj in some style. Cobbold’s friend, Sheikh Hafiz Wahba (1889–1967), first Saudi Arabian minister in Britain (who also contributed the Foreword to her book), obtained for her permission from Ibn Saud (who had driven Hussein out of Arabia the year after Headley’s hajj) to enter Mecca, and she received special attention everywhere she went. Cobbold stayed with the Philbys in Jidda, a prominent local family in Mecca, and secured special accommodation in Medina. She travelled around in a chauffeured car, which, on the Jidda-Medina leg, contained, ‘a pillow and blanket as I shall have probably to sleep in the desert occasionally; also a luncheon basket with cold chicken, eggs and bread, and a bottle of soda water’.62 As soon as the ceremonial part of the hajj was over, Cobbold obtained permission from Saud to leave Arafat before the traditional Feast of Sacrifice. As the Egyptian Gazette sarcastically noted: ‘In that way, she got off before the rush and caught an almost empty ship to Suakin [Suwakin], from where she went to Port Sudan to do quarantine, in exceptionally favourable conditions.’ While conceding that she certainly ‘did’ the hajj and thereby acquired ‘distinction as well as religious merit’, the Gazette facetiously concluded that, ‘Lady Evelyn’s experiences have about the same relation to those of an ordinary pilgrim as have the conditions in which a minister plenipoten- tiary travels to the voyaging of a Polish Jew emigrating to Palestine.’63 Though not quite experiencing the same egalitarianism as Headley, Cob- bold nevertheless also had a truly spiritual experience, and was equally affected by the sense of unity and purpose among pilgrims. As she cir- cumambulated the Kaaba (the shrine at the centre of the Grand Mosque in Mecca): The shining eyes, the passionate appeals, the pitiful hands outstretched in prayer moved me in a way that nothing had ever done before, and I felt caught up in a strong wave of spiritual exaltation. I was one with the rest of the pilgrims in a sublime act of complete surrender to the Supreme Will which is Islam.64 Perhaps unsurprisingly given his ambiguous motivations for conversion, only Philby’s hajj narratives, published in the 1940s, focus less on what the ceremony and ritual meant to him as a Muslim and more on the new physical, cultural and diplomatic world being opened up to him.65

191 LOYAL ENEMIES Negotiating Islamic prohibitions Beyond the ‘pillars’ of Islam, British Muslims negotiated various other Islamic prohibitions. With regards to alcohol, Headley pointed out in 1914 that, ‘Drinking in moderation is the custom of the country, and it is too much to expect any sudden change.’ He therefore recommended ‘self-control’.66 Unfortunately, Headley ignored his own advice and was arrested on a drunk and disorderly charge a couple of years later. The Times reported that he, ‘could swear on his honour as a gentleman, an Englishman, and a peer of the realm that he had drunk no more than two bottles of stout and a cup of coffee afterwards. He had been brought up on stout and should continue to drink it, but his religion forbade excess.’67 â Amid much public ridicule,68 and following an unsuccessful appeal against his conviction (he eventually settled a ten shillings’ fine), Head- ley admitted in the Islamic Review that, ‘even the moderate use of alcohol in certain conditions and on certain temperaments may easily lead to disaster, and I have therefore given up the use of all stimulants—even my favourite beer—in the hope of setting a good example and avoiding giving offence to any one.’69 This would certainly have pleased Kamal- ud-Din and the many teetotal converts who, as we have seen, were partly drawn to Islam though its prohibition against intoxicants. Pick- thall claimed to be among the latter, though his friend and biographer, Fremantle, recalled that he sometimes drank wine.70 Other British ÂMuslims indulged in alcohol with less guilt. For example, Cobbold (who, as we have seen, married into a Suffolk brewing family—though the marriage ended in separation in 1921) drank sherry and recorded in her diary of an expedition to Kenya in 1934 that she took beer on safari and, after a hard day’s shopping, quenched her thirst with a glass of Pimms.71 Philby’s wife, Dora (d.1957), wrote to family in 1933 that, ‘I have been given and have smuggled drink into the house [in Jidda], and you should see Jack [Harry Philby] creeping into my bedroom before dinner and have a good stiff whisky and soda.’72 Reluctant to relinquish this luxury, Philby was drinking brandy at a party in Beirut the night before he died in 1960.73 â Many British Muslims also smoked. As Orchard of the LMM explained, ‘Although smoking is not specifically forbidden in Islam and may be considered a lesser vice, it was the hardest of them all for me to overcome.’74 Though generally strong-willed, Pickthall remained a heavy

192 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ smoker and, despite great effort, did not always succeed in quitting during Ramadan.75 Whilst most British Muslims were aware of the Qur’anic injunction against consuming pork and tried to avoid it, only those living within or near Muslim enclaves were likely to have access to halal (permitted or lawful for a Muslim) meat.76 Collins, for example, found a ‘Moslem butcher’ in post-war South Shields, from whom British Muslim women purchased halal produce. They also received from their local grocer, ‘butter and margarine substitutes for [their] bacon and lard ration’.77 Meanwhile, Ernest/Sadik Bromley overcame the problem in his hometown of Portsmouth by patronising a local kosher butcher.78

The experience and place of women One of the most consistently pressing issues affecting British Muslims in this period concerned the experience and place of women in Islam and Muslim societies. As far as can be ascertained, most WMM converts accepted Kamal-ud-Din’s view, based on the hadith, that Islam sought the emancipation and equality of women, and attributed restric- tions against them, such as purdah (seclusion of women) in India, to local circumstances and culture rather than Qur’anic injunctions.79 This was indeed echoed by British Muslim writers, especially Pickthall and Cobbold. Although an outsider, Pickthall had a good knowledge of women’s lives in Muslim countries such as Turkey and their legal status in Islam, and wrote at length about Muslim women in both his fiction and non-fiction. In his 1913 novel, Veiled Women, for example, he defended the institution of the harem and explained Muslim women’s position in an Islamic law codified and interpreted by men. For the protagonist of Pickthall’s novel, Barakah (an English convert to Islam living in Egypt), ‘The world of women was […] a great republic, with liberties extending to the meanest slave, and something of the strength which comes of solidarity.’80 â Pickthall elaborated his views on Islam and Muslim women in ‘Islam and Progress’, a long article written shortly before his conversion in 1917. As usual, he took a historical perspective and referred to Islamic sources to construct and explain his argument: ‘The historical truth is this, that the Prophet of Islam was perhaps the greatest feminist the world has ever known, considering the country and the age in which he lived.’81 Pickthall undermined popular Christian beliefs and myths

193 LOYAL ENEMIES about Muslim women, arguing, for instance, that: ‘The whole personal teaching of the Prophet is opposed to cruelty, especially towards women’; ‘The passage in the Qur-an which allows polygamy under certain circumstances does not enjoin it, nor permit it unconditionally’; and, like ÂQuilliam, he countered the claim that Muslims believed that women did not have souls—‘there is no hint of such a doctrine in the Qur-an or the Sunnah or in any Muslim author that I know.’ Pickthall concluded that, ‘The true Islamic spirit with regard to women is a spirit of justice within the existing social order. The Western spirit is one of chivalrous devotion and half-mystic exaltation which is apt to make its votaries unconscious of the claims of common justice.’82 This was far from Pickthall’s last word on the subject. In 1919, he argued thus: Islam acknowledges no inequality of woman in the spiritual sphere. And in the temporal sphere what does the inequality amount to? A frank admission of the fact that woman is the weaker sex, and that in a state of society where men are violent they must be protected by strict laws and some seclusion. The law of El Islam in this and many other matters is not static, as some people suppose, but dynamic; not stringent but elastic enough to comprehend the needs of every age and every people. It is not a bar to human progress, but a guide and handrail by which the right direction of such progress can be secured and ascertained.83 â Pickthall devoted his penultimate Madras lecture (1927) to the position of women. Reflecting on their lack of education and legal status, as well as the ‘un-Islamic’ practice of purdah and veiling, Pickthall was adamant that he was, ‘in a country where, among the Muslims, woman is emphatically not in her Islamic position, and where men are generally indifferent to the wrongs done to her’: The status to which the great majority of Muslim women in India are reduced today is a libel on Islam, a crime for which the Muslim community as a whole will have to suffer in increasing social degradation, in weak and sickly offspring, in increasing child mortality, so long as that crime is perpetuated.84 âCobbold, who was very much influenced by Pickthall, but also had firsthand experience of Muslim women’s lives through her travels abroad, became the most outspoken female convert on the subject of women and Islam. Her position softened after her conversion and reading of Pickthall, Ameer Ali and others. Cobbold had been especially critical of the harem in her first book, Wayfarers in the Libyan Desert, written shortly before her conversion. After visiting an Egyptian harem,

194 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ she admitted that, ‘The gloom and depression of the room, to one unac- customed to being shut out from the sunlight and the living world by a wooden screen, is indescribable. […] The monotony of these lives behind the yaskmak [yashmak, or face veil] and the shutter appears to us almost like a living death.’85 However, twenty years and a religious conversion later, she was more sympathetic, not towards the system of purdah in India which, like Kamal-ud-Din, Pickthall and others, she considered un-Islamic, but in describing the harem in Pilgrimage to Mecca as, ‘a sanctuary, but far from being a prison’.86 Besides presenting a travelogue, Pilgrimage to Mecca was also a calculated and rigorous defence of Islam and Muslims, including women.87 Again like Pickthall, Cobbold quoted Muhammad throughout the book, for example on relations between the sexes: ‘“O People ye have rights over your wives, and your wives have rights over you. Treat your women with loving kindness.”’88 Cobbold explained that Muhammad gave specific rights to women and, ‘placed them on a footing of perfect equality with men in the exercise of all legal powers and functions.’ Reflecting on their rights in matters of property, custody of children, maintenance etc., she argued that, ‘It was Islam that removed the bondage in which women were held from the very dawn of human history and gave them a social standing and legal rights, such as were not granted them in England till many centuries later.’89 â The impact of this discourse on British Muslim women (especially those connected with the WMM) was that, similar to their predecessors in Liverpool, they fared reasonably well within their Muslim community relative to their position in British society. Though encouraged to par- ticipate at religious events, as in the port towns, Muslim women at Woking usually sat behind or to the side of men.90 Women also prayed behind men in the more conservative Qadiani London Mosque, and were discouraged from shaking male hands to retain the ‘moral purity’ of the jama‘at.91 Contrary to Headley’s early musings on female modesty cited in Chapter Four, however, British Muslim women of the WMM and, on the whole, the LMM, were not expected to veil. Photographs published in both the Islamic Review and Review of Religions depict women wearing contemporary fashions. An image of the mature ÂCobbold, printed in the Islamic Review in 1934, depicts her in glamor- ous eveningwear, sporting furs and pearls. This contrasts with an uncommon photograph in the same journal the following year (which

195 LOYAL ENEMIES

12.âLady Evelyn Cobbold as Depicted in the Islamic Review, 1934. â ââSource: Islamic Review, Vol.â22, No.â3 (1934), Frontispiece. was also the frontispiece to Pilgrimage to Mecca), which depicts her fully veiled in pilgrim dress on the hajj. â Cobbold was also one of the few British Muslims to record her views about veiling and Muslim women’s dress, again based on her privileged travels in Muslim countries. Personally, she found her pilgrim garb oppressive. In Medina before the hajj, she boldly removed her veil in front of a group of Muslim men who were ‘old friends’. Following in the footsteps of Muhammad, she climbed Mount Uhud, but was, ‘terribly hampered in my Arab dress and forced to put my veil up. I eventually discarded the voluminous black skirt and cape and emerged in my thin summer frock, as if I was walking in an English country lane and hatless but protected from the sun by my umbrella.’92 Only after four days in Medina was she, ‘beginning to feel at home in my Arab dress but [I]

196 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’

13.âLady Evelyn Cobbold in Pilgrim Dress during the 1933 Hajj. ââââSource: Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Pilgrimage to Mecca, London: John Murray, 1934, Frontispiece. Reproduced by Courtesy of Angus Sladen. have not discarded my stockings and I know my feet are an object of curiosity at the Mosque’.93 â Other British Muslim women and men who travelled in the Middle East conformed to some extent to cultural expectations in matters of dress but, as Headley explained, back home in Britain, ‘it is better to remain a Western in appearance, the tarbush, the turban, and the Arab head-dress all being somewhat out of place in this climate’.94 Exceptions to this in the interwar period were some British Muslim women living in the more conservative and culturally sensitive Muslim quarters of port towns, who were encouraged to wear the hijab (headscarf) at prayer meetings and on other religious occasions.95 It was not until the Second

197 LOYAL ENEMIES World War that the British wives of Muslim immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere began to be depicted in the Islamic Review with headscarves—a trend that gathered momentum in the late- twentieth century.96

The heterogeneity of commitment British Muslims throughout this period continued to find that their practical and selective engagement with and practice of Islam aroused suspicion and censure from other Muslims and critical non-Muslims. Some Muslims overseas again felt that a syncretic Anglo-Islam resulted in ‘un-Islamic’ behaviour and weak religious commitment. This may have been true for some converts, especially those who struggled to adapt to and reconcile the intricacies and demands of their new faith with their daily lives. But, we have seen that ways of practising Islam and expressing religiosity were heterogeneous, with the result that the more pragmatic Cobbold and Headley, for example, were not necessarily any less committed to their faith than the orthodox and conservative Pickard and Orchard. â To take Cobbold as an example, albeit a complicated one: she was firmly connected with the WMM’s London offshoots and had a house in the capital, but seldom, if ever, visited Woking Mosque.97 In Arabia, the cynical (and devout Catholic) diplomat Andrew Ryan supposed her to be ‘a pretty lax’ Muslim, and Philby (hardly in a position to judge) wrote that she was, ‘rather a vague one’.98 Perhaps these opinions are to be expected as Cobbold’s relatives suggest that she was a private person who considered faith to be very personal.99 However, we have also seen that she was politically active on behalf of the ailing Ottoman Empire during and after the First World War, wrote and published on Islam and performed the hajj (she was so private that, were it not for her hajj and the books, articles and talks that followed it, we would know little about her conversion and attitude towards Islam). She was a keen supporter of the CIS, and became a patron of the MSGB. â Though undoubtedly difficult and eccentric in old age, Cobbold remained committed to Islam, which continued to impact on her life in many ways. For example, at a court appearance in the 1950s, she refused to swear an oath on the Bible. The court did not have a copy of the Qur’an to hand, so she produced a pocket edition from her handbag

198 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ and swore an oath on it in both English and Arabic.100 The Daily Sketch reported in 1961 that a broken hip had left Cobbold bedridden in an Inverness101 nursing home and, although informed on Islamic matters by Lord Hothfield, she had no other contact with Muslims. The newspaper contacted the Woking imam, Muhammad Tufail (1921–84), who proposed a visit from Mr Flowers,Â a recent convert and WMM ‘missionary’ based in Newcastle. Evidently, arrangements were made as a Daily Sketch correspondent subsequently wrote to Woking that, the ‘co-operation […] resulted, I think, in a real act of mercy to Lady Evelyn ÂCobbold in Inverness.’102 Cobbold was one of the few British Muslims in this period to specify in her will (dated 1947) that she wanted a Muslim burial, in the deer forest of her Highland estate, Glencarron: I wish a Piper to play MacCrimon’s Lament at the graveside and that no ÂMinister of the Christian Religion attends and that no-one goes into mourning. I also wish a plain slab of stone to be placed flat on the Grave with the verse from chapter 24 of the Koran beginning “Allah is the light of the Heavens and Earth” inscribed on it in Arabic.103 â Following her death in January 1963, Tufail officiated at a short service in Cobbold’s Glencarron Lodge before leading a party of mourners to the hillside burial plot.104 When they arrived at the remote spot, Tufail reputedly questioned the alignment of Cobbold’s grave, but was persuaded to proceed with the burial rather than wait for the reposition- ing of the grave in the frozen, rocky earth (despite its isolated location, the gravestone was soon afterwards vandalised with knife marks).105 â Headley also received a Muslim funeral, laying beside a small number of other converts—some equally prominent, others less so—in the ÂMuslim section of Brookwood Cemetery.106 As the public face and voice of British Muslims for most of the interwar years, Headley had grown used to criticism, especially from Muslims abroad, who often miscon- strued his public statements regarding the adaptation and ‘modernisation’ of Islam. For example, one correspondent wrote in 1927 that, ‘It is being insinuated here in Ceylon that your Lordship, in conjunction with your brother Al-Hajj Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, had permitted the British Muslims to freely partake of bacon and beer.’107 Headley denied the claims and boldly declared that, ‘The essentials of our Faith are of paramount importance and other matters, such as those connected with food, forms and ceremonies, are trifling by comparison.’108 But criticism also increasingly came from Muslims within Britain as British Islam frag-

199 LOYAL ENEMIES mented along sectarian lines. Combined with negative responses to conversion and converts in mainstream British society, Ahmadi sectarianism undoubtedly rocked the lives of British Muslims and, for some, affected their very commitment to Islam.

Sectarianism We saw in the previous chapter that the first overseas Muslim missionaries to visit Britain played down sectarianism within the umma and, throughout the period, there was very little discussion of sectarianism beyond Ahmadi differences. Kamal-ud-Din, for example, repeatedly emphasised that, ‘Islam is a religion without sect, in the real signification of the word “sect”. […] My preaching has been, and will remain always, free from sectarian principles.’109 This was to some extent imperative given that many Britons converted to Islam partly because they were tired of confusing and damaging Christian sectarianism. However, amid divisions across the umma, information and opinions about sectarianism began to appear in the Islamic Review during the First World War.110 Many British Muslims were initially comforted in their belief that, as BMS Secretary Charles Salman Schleich put it in 1918, ‘all Muslims believe in the same Kalima [(the shahada)] […]. All Muslims believe that the Qur-án is word by word the revealed guidance from God to humanity.’ Moreover, as Schleich pointed out, ‘We have prayers in London, and Shias and Sunnis pray together in the same manner.’111 There was in fact remarkably little discussion about the major branches of Islam during the period covered in this book, and it was Kamal-ud-Din’s association with the increasingly outlawed (Lahori) Ahmadis that first generated controversy. Muslims abroad, primarily India, were especially critical of Kamal-ud-Din for his printing quotations from Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in the early issues of the Islamic Review, republishing Ahmad’s works and, in 1917, circulating copies of the Lahori Maulana Muhammad Ali’s edition of the Qur’an. Questions began to be asked about the philosophy of the WMM and, in turn, the beliefs of its British Muslims. â A few early converts, such as Quilliam/Léon, Sheldrake and Stephen (the latter readily quoted Ahmad in an article in 1917),112 regarded Ahmadis as part of the rich tapestry of the umma and, keen to avoid a repeat of the LMI’s quick demise, went out of their way to defend the integrity of all Muslims. Younger and based in London, Sheldrake was

200 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ the most active of the old-timers in the affairs of twentieth-century British Islam. But, his relative youth and association with the LMI also made him the most outspoken and ambitious, claiming as early as 1914 to be ‘Sheikh of the British Muslims’.113 This was resented by some new converts and WMM staff, who ordered Sheldrake to leave the Mission in 1915.114 He was soon readmitted but, in the context of the rise of Wahhabism in Arabia, and following the Qadiani khalifa’s visit to ÂLondon in 1924, Sheldrake’s open fraternising with Qadianis irritated the WMM and BMS. Â Sheldrake retaliated in 1925: Did I accept the views of this or that party? No! I accepted Islam, and schools of thought mean but little to me. What I admire is sincerity! Shall I reject a man or party because their views on minor details differ from my own? Thus I repeat, all Muslims to me are brethren. […] Muslims! cease to quibble over this or that and unite in the service of Allah. This is the time for unity, not division.115 â The following year, Sheldrake was again ejected from the WMM, but took with him four protégés, including an army friend, Omar Richardson, and a neighbour, Osman Watkins. Along with a new convert, Abdullah Day, they established a separate, avowedly non-sectarian Muslim organisation, which became the Western Islamic Association (WIA). Perhaps hoping to assume Quilliam’s mantle of Sheikh-ul-Islam, Sheldrake prepared to spread Islam and encourage conversions from his South London house. He organised ‘at homes’, established a new journal and persuaded influential Muslims, including the Aga Khan and Quilliam/Léon, to act as patrons. Within a year, Sheldrake optimistically claimed that his journal, the Minaret, was the ‘official organ of the British Muslims’.116 In fact, few copies were produced and fewer British Muslims read it. Neverthe- less, General-Secretary Day showed in a fundraising letter sent to Muslim countries in 1929 that the WIA had grand ambitions, aiming to become an ‘International Islamic Organisation’. Day noted that the WIA had already made some converts in London, and established a prayer room with an information bureau and distress and welfare fund.117 In reality, few converts had been made, the prayer room (sometimes styled the ‘Peckham Mosque’) was in fact a space in the Sheldrake family home and Sheldrake mainly funded the operation himself. â As late as 1931, the WIA distributed Lahori literature, and Sheldrake wrote to the Lahoris in India that, despite being ‘unable to associate myself any longer with the Woking Mission, […] I remain on the best of terms with the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat-i-Islam of Lahore’.118

201 LOYAL ENEMIES Nevertheless, Day’s letter of 1929 capitalised on recent controversy sur- rounding the WMM’s Ahmadi connections: We stand today not only the centre of Islamic activity in London but also the central body of Islamic control in England over all the other Islamic bodies, with the exception of the “mythical” British Moslem Society controlled by the Ahmedi [sic] Mission at Woking.119 In mid-1931, imam Majid was awarded damages against Day ‘for causing to have printed a defamatory letter’ in the pan-Islamic Indian Daily Zamindar. The letter accused Majid and Headley of taking a ‘special interest’ in ‘the new religious crusade against Russia’, spearheaded by anti-Russian religious leaders.120 â The departure of Sheldrake and others from Woking coincided with the opening of the Qadiani London Mosque, which heightened tensions within both the WMM and BMS, and drew some British Muslims into uncomfortable discussions about sectarianism. For example, in a letter to the Light in 1926, Lovegrove fulminated against some ‘Indian Ahmadia people’, undoubtedly Qadianis, who had joined him on a Spiritualist platform in Clapham. The Ahmadis had refused to take a cup of tea from or shake hands with the organising party’s female president: ‘Idiots! The Muslims are in the position they are now through the retardation of the so-called priestly class. Christianity was the same and all religions have suffered. Islam is a manly religion, simple and supreme. Be Muslims at heart and ignore the bigots!’121 In general agreement with Lovegrove, Headley wrote to a Muslim friend from a different school of Islamic thought that he deeply regretted the ‘scintilla of friction between us equally true Muslims’: I have seen fights between the Sunnies and the Shiahs and I firmly believe that there are certain fanatical Wahabis who would cheerfully decapitate the Khwaja [Kamal-ud-Din] and me, and also you my Brother, because we are not sufficiently orthodox to satisfy their own ideas of “Holiness”—they would cut off our heads to save our souls!122 â In 1927, Headley warned that while Islam had nothing to fear from outside: What may cause obstruction and delay is the attempt to establish fresh sects within the great fraternity of Islam. […] The Sunnis and the Shiahs and Wahabis have all very decided views, and may almost be looked upon as “sects”, and in very recent years the Ahmadis, followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad,

202 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ proclaim the advent of their leader, whom they regard as the “promised ÂMessiah”. These latest reformers [i.e. Qadianis] insist that all those who refuse to acknowledge […] Ahmad as the Messiah shall be “deprived of the light of faith” and, further, that the rejection of […] Ahmad “means the rejection of the Holy Prophet Muhammad himself”. It strikes a blow at the solidarity of Islam which is to be greatly deplored. One cannot find fault with the Ahmadis (Qadianis) for thinking anything they like (it is a free country), but one may reasonably object to being excluded from the ranks of the faithful at the behest of a small number of zealous adherents of a certain idea.123 For Headley, the Qadianis’ rejection of other Muslims was not in the spirit of Islam, which he (and others, including Pickthall) defined as ‘tolerance’. Indeed, Headley had recently told the imam of the London Mosque that he, ‘could not subscribe to the views he promulgated because they savoured too much of the intolerance we complain of in Â[Christianity], and might almost be inspired by the spirit of the ÂAthanasian Creed which most of us unite in condemning’.124 â Headley returned to the dangers of sectarianism in a presidential address to the All-India Tabliq (preaching) Conference in Delhi late inÂ1927: I am absolutely at a loss to understand the causes of the trouble brewing in our atmosphere on sectional grounds. And let me be frank to tell you one thing: Don’t entertain any hope of success in the spread of Islam, especially in the West, if you carry your religion to them with all such sectional spirit, so rife in this country. […] Sectarianism is the chief trouble in Christendom; they are divided more or less in five hundred sects. People there regard these divisions and sub-divisions as a curse of the official faith in the West. Should we carry to them that which also smacks of the same curse?125 â While in India, Headley fielded numerous criticisms about the

WMM. BesidesÂ fresh allegations of Ahmadi influence and intrigue, it was claimed that the Mission was ‘a “one man show”’ under Kamal-ud- Din. The Moslem Chronicle of Calcutta also considered that the Board of the Nizamiah London Mosque Trust Fund was ‘too much of a family affair’, and pointed out that, ‘public work of the sort done by the ÂWoking Mission and supported by funds subscribed by the public should be above all suspicion of nepotism’.126 Headley listened, and explained to the BMS upon his return to England in 1928 that the proposed new mosque in London would be ‘entirely non-sectarian’.127 Though in poor health and based in Lahore, Kamal-ud-Din also sought to quash allegations of nepotism and sectarianism by declaring that the

203 LOYAL ENEMIES WMM, ‘and all its kindred institutions, which have hitherto more or less been a private and an individual concern, will now be a communal matter’. The WMM and its offshoots, including the Islamic Review, were, ‘amalgamated and transferred to a Board constituted on non-Â sectarian lines’. However, the installation of Maulana Muhammad Ali as vice-chairman to Headley and the registration of the trustee deeds in Lahore did little to dispel rumours that the WMM itself remained a Lahori affair.128 â Tensions about Ahmadi differences and leadership simmered within both the WMM and the BMS/MSGB, especially after Kamal-ud-Din’s death in 1932. For example, Arthur/Ahmad Bennett resigned as MSGB secretary in 1934, complaining publicly of ‘indirect Ahmadi influence’ at Woking.129 Matters came to a head when, following Headley’s death in 1935, Rankin assumed presidency of the MSGB. SmartingÂ from allegations made in India the previous year that he was an Ahmadi,130 and encouraged by Sheldrake, within a month of his election Rankin called for the MSGB to be completely disassociated from the Ahmadiyya. The majority of members rejected Rankin’s proposal on the grounds that, in the spirit of Kamal-ud-Din and Headley, the Society strived to represent the collective interest of all Muslims in Britain irrespective of sectarian, ethnic or other differences.131 Piqued and embarrassed, Rankin resigned his post and became a vice-president of Sheldrake’s WIA before eventually rejecting Islam altogether for Buddhism at the end of the Second World War.132 Headley’s old friend, Sir Jalal-ud-Din Lauder Brunton, wrote in the Islamic Review that Rankin had, ‘caused a non- sensical split in the [MSGB] through his impulsiveness’.133 The incident also gave the Qadianis the opportunity to criticise both the MSGB and the WMM. TheÂ LMM’s Mubarak Fuelling, for example, argued that most British Muslims (that is those connected with the WMM) were, ‘led like sheep in all matters that affected Islam’ by any man from the East who had a beard or spoke Arabic.134 â In 1937, the MSGB reorganised under its first and only female president, Khalida Buchanan-Hamilton, who was supported by Lovegrove and Pickard. They re-emphasised that the MSGB, ‘has, from its inception, been of a cosmopolitan nature, and includes as Members representatives of all sections of Muslims—irrespective of either nationality or school of thought’. Consequently, it was renamed the Muslim Society in Great Britain, with the aim of propagating and promoting Islam, and

204 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ endeavouring to, ‘form a real brotherhood, whereby Muslims from all parts of the world may meet and interchange ideas’.135 Pickard called upon converts to propagate ‘a representation of true Islam to English people’ across the country, and ‘consolidate and […] stabilise the results of successful propaganda’, which, he admitted, was not being achieved ‘adequately’ through the MSGB: I would [therefore] suggest that a body be established for the direction, foster- ing and safeguarding of Islam in England, such a body to be designated as the “Council of Islam in England”. This Council, from its composition, would be both advisory and authoritative, and to this body all questions arising concerning Islam in England would be naturally referable.136 Significantly, Pickard proposed that the Council include not only representatives from each of the London legations of Muslim countries, the

WMM and MSGB but, also, the Qadiani LMM. Â He also asked for: the creation of some communal Islamic life, a Muslim community [in Woking or London], dwelling together, living and working together, instead of, as at present, a few stray individual Muslims, scattered amongst millions of adverse, hostile, prejudiced, indifferent non-Muslims, who, by the pressure of numbers and arrangement of details of existence, make Muslim life not only difficult, but solitary.137 Pickard’s words underscore the problem of being Muslim in mid-Â twentieth century Britain. âTheM ethodist Recorder considered Pickard’s speech, ‘remarkable for the light it throws on Islam as a religio-political organisation. Friends of Christian missions should note that it is the avowed object of certain Muslim propagandists to paralyse Christian enterprise at its base.’138 However, in the absence of activists like Headley, Pickthall and ÂSheldrake, Pickard’s proposals appear to have had little impact within the British Muslim community.139 Indeed, he again pressed for the ‘organising of Islam’ in 1939,140 but war intervened, which diverted people’s attention from the specific needs of their faith community, and also curtailed MSGB meetings. Despite continued criticism of the WMM’s Ahmadi roots and ongoing rivalries between the WMM and LMM (the WIA fizzled out in the late 1930s), after the war most ÂBritish Muslims considered both the Mission and the MSGB to be non-sectarian and tended to avoid discussion of both sectarianism and rivalries.141 Symbolically, Baines-Hewitt, who became MSGB president at the end of the period, in 1953, was a Shi’a and, while still president

205 LOYAL ENEMIES in the mid-1960s, also became president of a new London-based ‘Shi’ah Islamic Society’.

Discrimination Whilst sectarianism undoubtedly affected British Muslim lives, leading to disillusionment with Islam in some cases (for example Rankin), a second and more entrenched external pressure had a greater impact across communities. Indeed, despite better awareness of Islam and

14.â‘A British Muslim Family’—the Welchs. ââââSource: Islamic Review and Muslim India, Vol.â4, No.â3 (1916), Frontis- piece.

206 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’

15. âThe Wedding of S. Â Ahmed Toto and Olive Zeytoun Howell at Woking Mosque, 1939. â ââSource: Author’s Collection.

ÂMuslims within British society, longstanding misunderstanding and distrust of both—manifested in varying degrees of discrimination—continued to make life difficult for converts old and new throughout and beyond the first half of the twentieth century.142 â Neither the WMM nor the LMM experienced the equivalent level of sustained local antipathy and discrimination endured at the LMI. ThisÂ was partly because public responses became, on the whole, less confron- tational as the Muslim presence in Britain became more permanent and Christian Evangelical fervour subsided along with imperialist ambitions.

207 LOYAL ENEMIES Both organisations might also have benefited from limited governmental patronage through visits to their mosques by British officials and ÂMuslim dignitaries. However, the limits of toleration are highlighted in the case of the WMM, which aroused small-scale local opposition as early as 1914. In June of that year, a clergyman pointed out that Mus- lims in Woking were ‘cleverly and insidiously’ infiltrating the minds of the young, and called upon locals to produce ‘counter propaganda’.143 Olive Zaitun Howell, who had recently begun visiting the mosque with her parents, later recalled that: The inhabitants of Woking had no desire for Islam. Woking is a small but important place, narrow in its views, hating everything fresh, and from it up starts Islam, new to its inhabitants, and unwanted by them—so unwanted, indeed, that they were determined that at all costs it must not be allowed to thrive—it must be nipped in the bud. […] First refuse to supply food for the Mosque people. Next cut all people off if they go to the place.144

â Howell’s father, C. HaroldÂ Qasim Howell (d.1930), was told (and found) that his business would suffer if he converted to Islam, and a Woking printer, probably fearful of public reaction, refused to print the Islamic Review.145 Qadianis in London also found that their public propagation of Islam aroused some local opposition. Reflecting on a lecture in Hyde Park, for example, a Qadiani missionary noted in 1921 that, ‘Christian Missionaries […] are taking a very hostile attitude. In last night’s discussion, thank God, all the audience, except two bigots, were with me.’146 â As the Howell’s discovered in Woking, news that a relative or friend had converted to Islam was usually met with disdain that a Briton would choose to convert to an ‘inferior’ and ‘corrupt’ religion like Islam. Con- sequently, converts still found themselves ostracised and estranged from family and friends. Sheldrake, for example, wrote in 1912 (more than a decade after his conversion) that, ‘I try to live a true Muslim life at variance with my nearest and dearest relatives on account of my acceptance of Islam. I try to soften that displeasure by following the example of our Holy Prophet.’147 Around this time he composed a poem for his sister’s autograph book: All of us are from One Eternal Course Returning at the end to the One Source Then quarrell [sic] not on difference of Creed All are True and to Him do all roads lead.

208 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ For forms of creed let faithless bigots fight He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.148 Similarly, in 1914, ‘Ameena’ wrote a poem entitled ‘The Outcast’ for the Islamic Review: They laugh at my faith and mock me, Who cannot comprehend; They know that I am defenceless, Possessing ne’er a friend.149 â Some British Muslims found that the shock and indignation of their family and friends gave way to mockery. Many converts were, like Henry Stanley several decades earlier, dismissed as eccentrics, faddists and idealists who would—as we have seen, rightly in some cases—eventually abandon Islam. Lovegrove died a Muslim but a friend recalled in 1932 that when he first heard that he had converted to Islam: I felt somewhat shocked and decidedly amused. Up to then [sic] I had regarded him as a capable man of business with a decided penchant for religion, of good morals and sound judgement. His glowing description of his new religion I attributed to the enthusiasm of a young convert, who was so enamoured of Islam that he failed to see its defects.150 However, Lovegrove encouraged his friend to attend eid al-fitr at ÂWoking, which taught him, ‘more about Islam than all my reading had done’: The social side of Islam was charmingly demonstrated by the friendly intercourse between worshippers before the prayers and at the simple feast afterwards. Islam is obviously a religion of good fellowship and sound commonsense.151 â Headley, who, as we saw in the previous chapter, was branded an apostate when he converted in 1913 (government officials also denounÂ ced him as a ‘renegade Peer’ and ‘pervert to Islam’),152 believed by the late 1920s that, ‘the popularity of thumb-screws, racks and red-hot pincers as a means of regeneration [has] died out in this country, [and] anyone is pretty safe from actual violence, whatever his [sic] religious opinions may be.’153 As far as can be ascertained, British Muslims were no longer (or seldom) physically attacked because of their religion, but discrimination persisted after the First World War, perhaps more so for women because their conversion was still perceived to undermine and threaten British feminine respectability, reputation and honour. For example, just like Fatima Cates forty years earlier (Chapter Three),

209 LOYAL ENEMIES Halima Marguerite-Lee wrote in 1928 that, ‘I have had to leave my home because of my having adopted Islam […]. My people would not even allow me to keep the Qur-an in the house.’154 In 1933, Rahima Griffiths, Assistant Matron at a destitute children’s home, began attending services and meetings at Woking Mosque. The Homes’ Committee secretary heard news of Griffiths’ ‘changed ideas’ about religion and wrote her a blunt letter: We wish to know if you are intending definitely to associate yourself with Islam, and I must make it clear that the Committee would consider this a sufficient ground for dismissal as we can obviously not only not have a person professing the Moslem faith on the Staff, but not even one who is making a practice of attending a Mosque.155 Griffiths recalled that another Committee member asked: ‘“Had I lost my senses? Islam was a religion made for men by a man, and for coloured men only.”’156 In 1939, ‘C.E.’ of London wrote to Woking that, ‘For a time I may feel obliged by material necessities to refrain from too public a proclamation of my conversion’.157 â On the whole, the British Muslim (and non-Muslim) wives of Arab seafarers in Britain’s port towns fared worse than individuals connected with the WMM and LMM, although their marriage to a Muslim—if the relationship lasted—meant that their commitment to Islam was more likely to survive long term. They suffered primarily because the very act of marriage to a non-white Muslim immigrant was regarded a serious transgression of both ethnic and imperial hierarchies.158 This applied equally to marriages involving middle- and upper-class Muslims. For example, Elizabeth MacKenzie/Saira Shah’s father ‘refused to consider’ his daughter’s engagement to Syed Abdullah/Shah in 1916 (Chap- ter Four), and an aunt claimed that news of the engagement had brought on ‘two weak turns and several fainting fits’.159 MacKenzie’s family tried to persuade her to call off the engagement: I was told that all Orientals were married in their cradles and that it was a ninety-nine-per-cent. possibility that Syed Abdullah was married and that once in his country he would return to the degenerate ways of his clan and I would either be given ground glass in my food or be made a slave to his relations, whose womenfolk would be madly jealous of me.160 â Working class wives of immigrants in port towns experienced a combination of racial, ethnic, religious and class prejudice, which left them

210 ‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’ even more ostracised from family and friends than many had been before their conversion/marriage.161 Their husbands were especially unwelcome in Britain after 1918, when the boom in shipping abruptly ended. Demobbed white British men demanded jobs, houses and women over Arab and other ‘alien’ workers, leading, in 1919 (and again in 1930 on Tyneside), to a number of sometimes quite violent distur- bances in the immigrant quarters of Cardiff, South Shields, Liverpool, London, Hull, Salford and Glasgow.162 The ‘unruly’ and ‘lazy’ (that is unemployable) children of white mothers and ‘coloured’ men were also condemned as a threat to the moral fabric and ‘racial purity’ of the nation.163 Cardiff’s Chief Constable considered the issue of miscegena- tion and ‘problem’ of ‘half-caste [children with …] the vicious hereditary taint of their parents’ so serious that he contemplated imposing legislation, ‘to prevent or penalise relations between the white and coloured races’.164 As non-white immigration increased in the post-war years, racial tensions simmered, which, as has been well documented elsewhere, continued to make life especially tough for the wives and families of Arabs and other immigrant Muslims.165

211

‘LOYAL ENEMIES’?

IDENTITIES, ALLEGIANCES AND THE ECLIPSE OF BRITISH MUSLIMS IN LATE-IMPERIAL BRITAIN

Having examined the impact of conversion on British Muslim lives and pressures that affected faith and belief, belonging and commitment, we can turn to exploring in detail the tensions between British and Muslim identities and allegiances, and the fate of these converts at the beginning of the New Elizabethan Age. Old beliefs that adherence to Islam negated or undermined loyalty to Crown, country and Empire remained perva- sive in British society and at the heart of negative reactions towards converts throughout the early-to-mid-twentieth-century and beyond. As we saw in the case of Quilliam/Léon (Chapter Two), suspicion of convert loyalties increased before, during and immediately after the First World War, when the future of a defeated Turkey hung in the balance. Reflecting on the experiences of a small core of politically-minded ÂBritish Muslims associated with the WMM, what sustained and exacerbated these suspicions into the Second World War? Moreover, was there any substance to them? Finally, how do we account for their decline in numbers and influence, and what was their fate at the end of the period?

213 LOYAL ENEMIES

I. ÂPolitical engagement and loyalties The First World War and British Muslim patriotism Just a year after Kamal-ud-Din moved to Woking, Britain declared war against Germany and, as Turcophiles like Pickthall had predicted, neutral Turkey sided with Britain’s enemy. An anxious Kamal-ud-Din advised Indian and British Muslims in September 1914 that, ‘from the Muslim point of view, it was obviously necessary for Great Britain to declare war. Self-preservation is a natural instinct, and the very existence of England was threatened: thus we Muslims must support England to the utmost of our ability.’1 Like Quilliam/Léon (Chapter Two), most British Muslims connected to what became the WMM fell into line, and there is no evidence of Quilliam-style rhetoric that religion should take precedence over patriotism. For example, while lamenting events and the British press’s ‘undignified cartoons, threats, jibes, rodomon- tade’,2 Parkinson concluded from revisiting the Qur’an that: Ethically, this war on our part is for the rights of neutrals, for justice to the weak, for mental and social freedom. It is against oppression and civil discord and the tyranny of one nation to dictate to all others. It is being waged to throw off some of the great moral evils against which Islam wages war continually, and against which the Prophet invoked and his followers fought.3 â In late September 1914, Headley asked the Foreign Secretary to forward a BMS resolution offering, ‘our wholehearted congratulations to our Eastern brethren now at the front, and to express our delight to find that our co-religionists in Islam are fighting on the side of honour, truth, and justice, and are carrying into effect the principles of Islam as inculcated by the Holy Prophet Mohammad.’ Headley also reminded Grey that, ‘His Majesty has no more faithful and loyal subjects than the Muslims.’4 â Headley could not, of course, guarantee the loyalty of the millions of Muslims spread across the British Empire, and neither could he be sure how the growing British Muslim community would respond to a prolonÂged and bloody conflict, especially one involving urkey.T But, Headley’s confidence in the loyalty of his compatriots early on in the war was not misplaced. Indeed, British Muslims in this period were overwhelmingly loyal to the Crown and broadly supportive of the existing British Empire. As we saw in Chapter Four, Headley himself was

214 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? one of several Establishment figures at the WMM, most of them staunchly patriotic Tories. In explaining and justifying his conversion to Islam in 1913, Headley had emphasised that: I would not, could not, as a loyal supporter of the Crown and Constitution, put my hand to the plough with such confidence if I had the slightest fear that the increase in the number of those who profess Islam […] would be likely to make the subjects of His Majesty anything but loyal and law-abiding. The true- believer puts his love for God, and his earnest desire to benefit every one of God’s creatures, so far above any thoughts of worldly advancement that he is the last person in the world to advocate rebellion against properly constituted authority.5 â As soon as war was declared in 1914, Headley waxed lyrical about its unifying effect: To feel that one actually belongs to a grand Empire, whose sons are freely pouring out their life blood in defence of honour and for the love of truth and justice, and to think that one is permitted to live and see heroism and devotion on such a magnificent scale, thrills the soul to its very innermost recesses. […] Paradoxical as it may seem, we are, in a sense, great gainers through this scourge; but for the urgency of the case and the need for concerted action, we should never have known, as we now know, how deeply attached we of the British Empire really are to one another.6 A month later, Headley denounced the ‘few misguided and unpatriotic persons, calling themselves British, who would willingly hand over our glorious Empire to the modern Huns’. Britons who opposed the war were, he argued, ‘only traitors, and their seditious utterances are drowned in universal acclamations coming from [… all] portions of the Empire’.7 â Though unquestionably patriotic and loyal, many ritishB Muslims were, however, disappointed that Britain failed to prevent Turkey’s alliance with Germany. Shortly before Turkey officially entered the war, Parkinson speculated that: Failing any agreement and war ensued, as a Britisher I would support my country in the contest by every honourable means in my power, to bring matters to a victorious ending and I think every Muslim in the Empire would do the same. Yet, while doing so, I would regret the necessity that compelled me to fight against Turkey, a people with whom I sympathise on many national ideals and to whom I was bound.8 Parkinson proposed that, ‘Those of us who have long stood by [Turkey] in weal and woe, in good or evil days, will still stand by to help by every

215 LOYAL ENEMIES means in our power, so long as that help does not interfere with our greater duty to our own Empire, to our native land.’9 â Turkey’s entry into the conflict created a swift, inevitable anti-Turkish and anti-Islamic backlash in the British press and society at large, prompting Headley to warn the BMS that, ‘We must not enter into the field of politics, for if we do so we shall be certain to come to grief, either through internal dissentions or through collision with some outside authority.’10 Sheldrake also echoed Quilliam/Léon (Chapter Two) in a telegram to Grey promising that the government could depend upon British Muslim support, co-operation and loyalty.11 He and several other converts volunteered to fight for their country early on in the conflict and many more were later conscripted. Moreover, in 1917 ÂSheldrake offered his services to the Crown: May I venture to point out to you that attempts are being made to unsettle the Moslems of the Ukraine and at the same time the Arabs following the Shareef of Mukka (Mecca). Promises have been made of an enticing nature, and ÂMoslem patriotism is being played upon. As one in daily touch with the inner world of Islam, may I venture to point out that absolute loyalty can be obtained by delicate handling of these peoples. […] I receive much information as to the pulse of the Moslem world, and whilst in the Army I have never ceased to exert my influence on behalf of Britain. […] [I]f I can assist you in any Muslim question it is my duty to do so.12 â Sheldrake’s friend and fellow WIA member, Frank Mohammed ÂCrabtree (d.1931), also offered the Foreign and India Offices, ‘my influence among my Brother Muslims, in Afghanistan or Arabia, India or Egypt to bring about a better understanding between rulers and ruled’.13 Whether the government doubted the sincerity of these Muslims is unclear but, like Quilliam/Léon, neither Sheldrake’s nor Crabtree’s offers were accepted. In contrast, Abdullah Williamson’s knowledge and experience of the Arabian Desert and its peoples enabled him to do ‘unspec- tacular’ intelligence work for the British authorities in Mesopotamia to subvert Turkish and German interests.14 Similarly, British Muslims with direct experience of the Middle East were employed in government intelligence during the Second World War, including the anthropologist Jack Driberg (1888–1946), who did ‘special work’ in connection with military operations in the region and, back in London, was, along with David/Dawud Cowan, employed in the Middle East section of the ÂMinistry of Information.15

216 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? The pan-Islamic threat Headley’s hope that British Muslims would avoid politics was dashed once Turkey entered the war. While converts could, like Headley apparently did, decline or revoke their membership of organisations such as the Anglo-Ottoman Society,16 their conversion to Islam and association—however tenuous—with politically-motivated Muslims and ÂTurcophiles during the war meant that British Muslims were tarred with the same brush and viewed with some suspicion by the authorities (given press censorship it is difficult to gauge public reactions). This was especially true of those Britons connected with the WMM because of its strong connections with ‘dissident’ Muslims such as Mushir Hussain Kidwai and the journalist Dusé Mohamed Ali (1866–1945). In the wake of fresh attacks against the Ottomans before and during the war, Kidwai and Ali used Muslim/Turcophile organisations in London to organise activists with a view to supporting pan-Islamic and nationalist forces in Turkey and, with less success, Egypt and India. Both men attended WMM events and meetings of the Islamic Society/CIS, AOS, BMS and Quilliam/Léon’s Société. Ali distributed and encouraged subscriptions and contributors to his journal, the African Times and Orient Review, which was produced with the help of a British Muslim, Charles Rosher, to articulate the grievances and aspirations of the African and Asian world as victims of British imperialism.17 â Shortly after the first Balkan War began in October 1912, Pickthall started writing in the African Times and Orient Review and a host of other journals and newspapers with a view to defending the integrity of the Turks and their ailing Empire. In November, he began a series of articles in the New Age entitled ‘The Black Crusade’, which decried the intrigues of ‘Christian Powers’ in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire and proclaimed the Turks, ‘by far the most advanced of Moslem races […] mentally capable of attaining to the highest civilisation’.18 Disagreeing with Quilliam/Léon, Pickthall claimed in the December issue of the respectable Nineteenth Century and After that Turkish massacres of Christian subjects were the fault of ‘Abdul Hamid II., a Sultan whom the Turks themselves deposed with ignominy. Moslems of the better sort are not bloodthirsty.’19 â Writing in the Times the following month, just as he was preparing to leave for Turkey (see Chapter Four), Pickthall pointed to the alleged ‘butchery’ of Muslim Macedonians by Christians, and complained

217 LOYAL ENEMIES about British silence over the massacres. His letter might have been written almost forty years earlier in protest against Gladstone’s Bulgarian Horrors and popular support for the Slavs and other Christians within the Ottoman Empire. In fact, the letter emphasises that Pickthall adhered to a Disraeli-inspired English foreign policy fearful of Russian interests threatening the territorial integrity of Turkey and, in the long term, British India: ‘The evident desire of our English Government to hush the matter up is causing bitter indignation […]. To persons like myself, who had imagined the promotion of good feeling between Christian and Mahomedan to be a part of England’s standing policy, it is inexplicable.’20 Once in Turkey, Pickthall was deeply impressed by the reforming policies of the ‘Young Turks’. His travels confirmed a love for the Turks and a stubborn dislike of the Ottoman Christians, whom he considered uniformly arrogant, insinuating and self-deluding.21 Like Henry Stanley, he returned to Britain convinced that Turkey was ‘the aristocracy of the whole Muslim world’ and, therefore, its saviour: Turkey, a country in close touch with Europe, was the head of the progressive movement in the East, the natural head, the sanest head that could be chosen; for the Turk was capable of understanding Europe and acting as interpreter to those behind him. If we cut off that head, as Russia, our ally, and other Powers desired to do, a hundred mad fanatic heads would rise instead of it, a monster would be formed which would devour our children.22 â Back in London, Pickthall and Quilliam/Léon, Dusé Mohamed Ali and Arthur Field helped establish an Ottoman Committee to defend Turkish interests. By the end of 1913, the Committee had split into two organisations, both of which Pickthall joined. He briefly sat on the ÂOttoman Association’s Executive Committee, which comprised, ‘British subjects of European descent [with …] special knowledge of Turkey’ and was designed to influence policy for, ‘maintaining the integrity of the Ottoman Empire [and …] promot[ing] a cordial understanding between Great Britain and Turkey’.23 Pickthall became more closely involved with the second organisation, the AOS, which also counted Parkinson and, as we saw in Chapter Two, Quilliam/Léon as members. In contrast to the Ottoman Association, the AOS claimed to be a popular and international formation, composed of all nationalities, Muslim and Christian, proposing ‘a united movement in British and Continental political and Press circles […] calling for a European defence of Turkey’.24

218 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? â As Pickthall explained in the letters pages of the Near East in November 1913, he and other Turcophiles such as Aubrey Herbert and Pierre Loti (1850–1923)25 were, ‘defending an unpopular cause. [We] have had to fear, and have encountered, public ridicule and private abuse.’26 Never- theless, the AOS gave Pickthall the platform to write and speak out publicly against British policy and attitudes towards ‘progressive Turkey’ and its Muslims. His defence was typically framed in the context of his patriotism: As an Englishman who has the interests of the Mohammedan at heart, I am a pro-Turk until the balance is adjusted. I do not care a straw for [Christian] Macedonia, save in so far as its events affect a wider question—the relation of Islam to Christendom, which I should be grieved to see made permanently hostile. […] Any sentimentality (which is a weakness, I admit) I may have felt or betrayed when writing of the Turks, is for the British Empire, which some men deride. That is an affair of temperament and upbringing. I confess that I can not see England in a mean and, at the same time, ruinous course of policy without emotion of a most decided kind.27 In March 1914, Pickthall complained to Herbert that, ‘in the nine years of [Sir Edward] Grey and the Russian incubus, England has sunk from the first to the second rank of Powers. She aspires to be the chairman of Europe but is in fact the butt, as the pacific chairman of a warlike meeting must be.’28 â Despite their efforts, Pickthall and other Turcophiles did little to persuade Grey to keep the peace with Turkey or encourage Turkish neutrality and independence in 1914. After Turkey entered the war, Pick- thall found himself at the head of an ambitious pro-Turk public campaign involving a small number of other British Muslims with the aim of winning hearts and minds in Whitehall and further afield, and securing a separate peace agreement with Turkey. Their efforts were generally channelled through the AOS and Islamic Society/CIS, which organised protest meetings, public debates and lectures; forwarded countless resolutions to the Foreign and India Offices; sent letters to national newspapers and journals; and published articles, pamphlets and books promoting the merits of the Turks and warning of the pernicious influence and ambitions of Russia. But, as Pickthall admitted in a letter to Herbert as early as January 1915, the campaign was: pitifully futile […]: I think myself that partition [of the Ottoman Empire] is indicated, and has been practically inevitable since June 1908 [that is the Young

219 LOYAL ENEMIES Turk ‘revolution’]. As a very keen Disraeli-ite, I rave of course; but I don’t see that my ravings need disturb the victors.29 âDespite wartime censorship and an increasingly anti-Turk and anti- Muslim sentiment in British society during David Lloyd George’s (1863–1945) premiership from 1916 until 1922, Pickthall continued to ‘rave’ and, in the months before his conversion, became more avowedly pan-Islamic. Writing in the New York Times in 1916, for example, he argued that pan-Islam—‘the conscious effort for united progress made by educated Moslems’—was the ‘cornerstone’ of ‘Disraeli’s great con- structive Eastern policy’. Reflecting on what he had seen in Turkey, pan- Islam was, ‘the most hopeful movement of our day, deserving the support of all enlightened people, and particularly the British Government, since a British Government inspired it in the first place’.30 â The Turcophiles offered a short-lived olive branch to Russia following the first Russian revolution in February 1917. Through the chairman- ship of Pickthall, the AOS expressed their ‘deep gratitude’ to the foreign minister of the Provisional Government for the, ‘repudiation by democratic Russia of all those designs of territorial expansion which made the policy of autocratic Russia a menace to the peace of Europe in the past’. The AOS hoped that the new Russia would: recognise the independence of progressive Turkey, which, in 1908, exchanged a military autocracy for free institutions, just as Russia herself has now done. A disinterested attitude, if taken up by Russia at the peace settlement, would arouse immense enthusiasm in the Muslim world, and would dispel the unfortunate distrust of Europe, which has long been growing among Oriental peoples.31 â A more immediate concern for Pickthall and others in 1917 was the government’s plan to create a Jewish State in president under the suzerainty of a Christian power. In June, the CIS held a meeting ‘to express their resentment of those proposals’.32 The President, Mirza Hashim Ispahani, claimed that, ‘as politics per se are not included in the objects of the Society, I shall not discuss the political aspects of the question […]. This […] meeting has been organised to remove that serious and dangerous ignorance which seems to prevail in this country as regards the Muslim interests in Palestine.’33 In a keynote speech later published by the CIS, Pickthall (who knew Palestine well) argued with some fore- sight that he:

220 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? should regard it as a world-disaster if that country should be taken from the Muslim government. Must even that sacred ground be exploited by the profi- teer? […] If you want to have a new and terrible storm-centre for the world, hand over Palestine to any Christian power.34 Yet again, they were disappointed: the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 promised British support for a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine. The CIS swiftly forwarded a resolution to the ÂBritish government proposed by a British Muslim, Omar Flight, who reminded the government of its earlier pledge to Palestine.35 Foreign Office officials considered the signatories ‘seditionists and C[ommittee of] U[nion and] P[rogress] agents’ best ignored.36 â It proved difficult, however, for the authorities to completely dismiss Pickthall, Quilliam/Léon and other politically-motivated converts and their associates. The ‘undesirable activities’ and, ‘more or less violently worded resolutions in favour of the Turk’ penned by the Islamic Society/ CIS and AOS were scrutinised from the start.37 Representatives of ÂSpecial Intelligence attended Pickthall’s CIS lecture on Palestine.38 Although most British Muslims steered clear of politics, both the Surrey and Metropolitan Police kept Woking Mosque and its visitors under surveillance as early as December 1914.39 According to Foreign Office notes, by 1918, surveillance of Muslim activities in England was being conducted by a ‘trustworthy agent’.40 â Of the converts, Crabtree and Sheldrake were singled out and discredited by the authorities because their attempts to internationalise the WIA involved courting Muslims in several countries that had sensitive relations with Britain and its allies.41 An India Office official, for example, was informed that Crabtree ‘has “a most evil reputation”’ in Cairo.42 At the end of the war, letters from Crabtree were discovered among the papers of former African Times and Orient Review employee Rosher, who was described in a War Office report as, ‘an English Muhammadan crank, […] arrested on suspicion in Alexandria in January 1916’.43 Sur- veillance of both Crabtree and Sheldrake continued long after the war. Crabtree was refused an Egyptian visa in 1920 and again in 1928/9 on the grounds that alleged ‘homosexual tendencies’ and his conversion to Islam made him ‘morally and politically undesirable’.44 â Sheldrake’s activities confounded the authorities on several occasions, especially when he organised in Morocco the distribution of ‘subversive pamphlets’ designed to encourage revolt against French rule.45 His

221 LOYAL ENEMIES strangest moment came in 1933 during a worldwide lecture tour on the ‘International Aspect of Islam’. While staying in a Peking (Beijing) hotel, Sheldrake met a delegation from Chinese Turkestan, the predominantly Muslim region of Western China also known as the Province of Sinkiang (now Xinjiang). Turkestan was engulfed in a civil war dominated by international tensions and intrigue because of its strategic position on the borders of Russia, Afghanistan and India. According to Sheldrake, the delegation claimed that Turkestan had been liberated from Chinese rule and selected him to become King of the new independent republic of ‘Islamestan’. News of Sheldrake’s good fortune caused a diplomatic scare for the confused British authorities, especially since Russia suspected British intelligence of engineering a plot to divide up Turkestan between Britain and Japan (the latter had already occupied North-East China). However, it soon emerged that Sheldrake had never visited Turkestan and, after leaving China for Japan, he told various government officials that he had no intention of claiming the throne.46 Put off the idea by tales of banditry in Turkestan, his convert wife, ÂGhazia Sybil Sheldrake, told the Sunday Express that, ‘Frankly, the idea of being a queen doesn’t appeal to me at all.’47 It is possible that the story was complete fabrication, a publicity stunt for Sheldrake’s international Islamic cause. â As the main voice of dissent within the British Muslim community, Pickthall was considered by the authorities to be the most troublesome convert in this period. Before the war, the historian Sir Edwin Pears (1835–1919), who had raised the alarm about Bulgarian massacres in 1876, denounced Pickthall as ‘an enemy to Christendom’.48 By contrast, in conversation with Cobbold, Herbert astutely dubbed Pickthall ‘ÂEngland’s most loyal enemy’. While Cobbold apparently assented, ‘There is only one thing I deplore about him, and that is his name.’49 At times during and immediately after the war, some Establishment figures and government officials considered Pickthall to be disloyal and, more than Crabtree, Sheldrake or any other British Muslim, a genuine threat to national security. This was to be expected, for Pickthall was, like Stanley and Quilliam/Léon before him, a politically contradictory character whose conversion only complicated matters. Though anxious not to fight the Turks, as a patriotic English Tory, Pickthall was willing to do his bit for his country, albeit initially on his own terms. Hopeful of influencing policy, he almost succeeded in securing a government job

222 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? early on in the war. Colonel Hedley, head of the intelligence agency MO4, considered Pickthall for a job in Cairo, but rejected him as a result of his public criticism of the government’s attitude and policy 50 towards Turkey (T. Â E. LawrenceÂ was selected for the role instead). Sur- prisingly, then, Pickthall told Herbert in January 1915 that he had been: offered a job in the Postal Censor’s Department—opening private letters— thousands of them, on the off chance of finding something reasonable—and I did three hours at Arabic and Turkish letters, just to try. But it seemed to me the kind of job which should be left to others.51 â As the war dragged on, Pickthall realised that his chances of employment were slim, confessing that, ‘I find myself regarded almost as a traitor to my country by some people’: It is possibly because I care so much about the British Empire in the East, and from the circumstances of my life can see things from the Muslim point of view. Having had good reason to suspect as long ago as 1913 that the Entente Powers contemplated a partition of the Turkish Empire, and having seen the means by which the same suspicion, near to certainty, was forced upon the Turkish Government before this war, I realised the terrible effect which such a policy, executed at a moment when the Turks sincerely aimed at progress, could have upon my Oriental fellow-subjects. And in my small way I have been trying to make England realise it.52 â In mid-1916, Pickthall sought permission from the government to visit Switzerland to meet Felix Valyi, editor of La Revue Politique Inter- nationale and influential within Turkish government circles, with a view to coming to terms with Turkey. Pickthall approached the Foreign Office, but its officials doubted his ‘qualifications as a peace negotiator’, and one civil servant who thought him ‘most undesirable’ went so far as to suggest that he should be, ‘in no way […] encouraged. In fact, he ought to be interned as an alien enemy!’53 Emphasising how divided opinion about Pickthall was, another proposed that, ‘Pickthall is [not] as bad as he appears, but he is a very strong supporter of the C[ommittee of] U[nion and] P[rogress] and not likely to help much.’54 Sir Mark Sykes (1879–1919), advisor to the government on Near Eastern policy, wrote to Pickthall to inform him that his request to meet Valyi had been rejected. Pickthall spent the next few weeks trying without success to persuade Sykes to reverse the decision, emphasising that, ‘I am pro-Turk but in no sense anti-British.’55 By June, Sykes was tired of Pickthall’s

223 LOYAL ENEMIES meddling and rattled by his pro-Turkish press campaign, complaining to the Foreign Office that: It is very difficult to run an Arab policy in our papers if pro-Turkish propaganda is consistently pushed in our press. Ever since the Turks came into contact with our troops there has been an unceasing stream of praise, adulation, and fraternisation, it serves no purpose at all on our behalf and shakes Russian, Armenian, and Arab confidence in our good faith.56 Ignoring recent Armenian persecution of Muslims, Sykes continued: The Turks have committed against the Armenians the vilest atrocities and are now deliberately starving Christians of the Lebanon because they sympathise with the Entente. […] I suggest that Censors and the Press Bureau should be warned and […] newspaper correspondents requested to refrain from harping on this note.57 A circular letter was subsequently, ‘addressed to the Editors of the 100 most important papers, warning them against flattery of the Turks’.58 â Pickthall continued to irritate the authorities. For example, in late 1917 he contributed a letter to the Saturday Review refuting allegations that the Turks had a longstanding hatred of and desire to extinguish Britain’s allies, the Arabs.59 The Foreign Office warned Ronald Wingate (1889–1978), assistant political officer of the Mesopotamian Expedition- ary Force, which was defending British interests in modern-day Iraq, that the letter compared Arabs, ‘most unfavourably with Turks’, attacked the civilisation of the Hejaz and disparaged Armenians and Zionists.60 The Foreign Office considered prosecuting Pickthall and/or the Saturday Review under the Defence of the Realm Act because, ‘the letter creates bad feeling between this country and an allied power (the Kingdom of the Hejaz)’.61 Though the idea of prosecution was dropped (primarily because it was felt that it would lead to uncomfortable public discussion about ‘the extent to which the King of the Hejaz [Hussein] is an ally of His Majesty’), immediate steps were taken to prevent the Saturday Review reaching India and Egypt. One intelligence report considered Pickthall’s letter, ‘a masterpiece of enemy propaganda’, because it ‘insinuates that our ally King Hussein is a venal traitor [… ;] set[s] the Arabs at variance [… ;] suggests that we have violated the holy territories by introducing police into Mecca [… and] goes in for pure Turcophilism’.62 â Just three months later, Pickthall was again in hot water after contributing an equally provocative article to the radical anti-war newspaper, Worker’s Dreadnought, in which he argued that:

224 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? Our present rulers seem to imagine that it is possible to pit the Arabic-speaking Muslims against the Turkish-speaking Muslims. It is not. Our false ideal of nationality and patriotism was abolished by the Prophet 1300 years ago. Only the half-savage Arabs of the mountains and the desert still preserve a taint of it. And how reactionary is the Arab movement with which England is allied at present may be gathered from the manifesto of the Grand Sherif, in which, among the most dreadful crimes of the Young Turks, is mentioned the steps which they have taken towards the emancipation of women. The great division in Islam today is that between Progressive and Reactionary; and we at present are supporting the reactionaries, who are bound to lose in the long run. By one generous gesture—handing back the territory we have taken from the Turks— we could, at the peace settlement, completely neutralise the German influence in Turkey proper, and give immense relief to all the millions who are watching our behaviour with extreme anxiety.63 â The authorities inferred from the article that Pickthall was receiving copies of Valyi’s banned Revue, and the Foreign Office considered informing the postal censor ‘of this apparent evasion of the prohibition order’.64 Pickthall was only silenced in the final months of the war through conscription and a posting to rural Suffolk, where he was entrusted to help defend the East coast.65 His wartime activities, along with those of a few other British Muslims, had little impact. The Turco- philes were constantly disappointed as Britain doggedly sought to preserve her relationship with Russia, which, despite rhetoric about supporting the principle of the preservation of Ottoman Empire, actually meant repeatedly sacrificing Ottoman—and British—interests. By the time Pickthall was demobbed in March 1919, the Ottomans had concluded an armistice with the Allies and agreed to a complete suspension of hostilities, the immediate demobilisation of the Ottoman armed forces and the occupation of any part of Turkey deemed necessary to Allied security. The capitulation of the Ottomans not only marked the end of the war in the Middle East, but also the end of the Ottoman Empire itself.66

A call to arms: Turkey, the Caliphate and inter-war paranoia Pickthall was a rather lone voice of public political dissent within the Woking-centred British Muslim community during the war. After the conflict, however, more British Muslims connected with the WMM became involved in the campaign to secure a just peace settlement for

225 LOYAL ENEMIES Turkey. As imam at Woking and editor of the Islamic Review in 1919, Pickthall was supportive of the joint efforts of a number of influential Muslims, led by the respectable Ameer Ali and the Aga Khan, who pleaded for a considerate hearing for Turkey at the Peace Conference, stressing that its destruction would be neither compatible with British imperial interests nor conducive to the peaceful development of Asia, especially India.67 â The CIS, AOS and WMM met egularlyr to discuss the situation, pass resolutions and prepare letters and documents calling on the government for a sympathetic hearing and response to Turkey.68 These actions were imperative given the lack of Muslim representation at the Versailles Peace Conference (in January 1919, the Foreign Office refused permission for an unnamed CIS delegate to attend).69 Pickthall was still fearful of Russian intrigues, complaining to Herbert that, ‘our Eastern Empire is not worth ten years’ purchase if the Turkish Empire is divided up as Ll[oyd] George seems to wish’.70 Freed by wartime censorship, more British Muslims connected with the WMM were drawn to the cause because the negotiations involved the future of the (Ottoman) Caliphate, which was integral to the umma. For its part, the British government and press sought to convince the millions of Muslims within the Empire that they were not duty-bound to owe allegiance to the Ottoman Caliphate. However, following a massacre of peaceful protestors campaigning against the Raj by British soldiers in Amritsar in 1919, the Khilafat Movement (1919–24) was born. As we saw in Chapter Two, the Khilafat Movement aimed to maintain the authority of the caliph at Constantinople and Muslim control of the holy places of Islam, and also end British rule in India. In October 1919, ‘a large congregation’ assem- bled at the WMM London Muslim Prayer House on the day appointed by the All-India Muslim Conference (Lucknow) the previous month, to pray for the preservation of the Ottoman ‘khilafah’. Chairing the subsequent meeting, Pickthall argued that attempts by Christians to persuade Muslims that the Caliphate should be hereditary in Muhammad’s family (that is pass to a leader more suitable from the Western point of view) were uncalled for, and ‘roused very angry feelings in the Muslim world’: The question of the Khilafat is no concern of Christians any more than it is the concern of Muslims to decide who shall be Pope of Rome. The Muslim world as a whole accepts the Ottoman Sultan as its Khalifah with enthusiasm and impassioned sympathy […]. In the course of history, by God’s decree, the

226 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? Khilafat passed from an Arab to a Turkish dynasty, and in our own day the Khilafat of the House of Othman has become identified with Muslim progress. That the sentiment of Islam is not anti-European in this matter is proved by the fact that it is our earnest wish that our Khalifah should be remain one of the Powers of Europe.71 â Encouraged by Kidwai and Ispahani, Pickthall formed the ‘Islamic Defence League’, quickly renamed ‘Islamic Information Bureau’, to collect and circulate up-to-date, ‘true information about Turkey and other Muslim matters’. Supporters included Sheldrake, Cobbold (who donaÂ ted £50 towards publication costs for the Bureau’s pro-Turkish bulletin, Muslim Outlook), Dusé Mohamed Ali and the Aga Khan.72 The combination of groups and individuals loosely tied together through the Bureau confused and concerned the authorities, leading to a widening of their surveillance.73 In a year of paranoia about Bolshevik subversion within the British ruling classes, Pickthall and his associates were taken seriously.74 Pickthall was no Bolshevik, but a glance at the Bureau membership and a perusal of the Outlook led the India Office to suspect that the group was, ‘to some extent anti-British’.75 â After a CIS pamphlet on the future of Turkey written by Kidwai and prefaced by Pickthall was intercepted by the British High Commission in Constantinople in 1919, the High Commissioner, John de Robeck (1862–1928), argued that his government should have, ‘good reasons for tolerating the continued existence of a society which appears to be definitely Pan-Islamic and anti-British in aim’.76 Reflecting on de Robeck’s comments, one Foreign Office official commented that: the only reason for tolerating Kidwai and Pickthall is that we have never had sufficient grounds on which to put a stop to their activities, though they make a practice of sailing very close to the wind. […] I think we might point out to Admiral de Robeck saying that if he can succeed in obtaining direct evidence of their being implicated in militant anti-British propaganda we will see what can be done to put an end to their agitations.77 Another Foreign Office employee concluded thus: It seems absurd that we should tolerate a Pan-Islamic and anti-British propaganda headquarters in London, but its suppression would probably be the most effective propaganda the [Central Islamic] Society could hope for failing definitive proof of treasonable conspiracy. I suppose it would be useless and probably dangerous to talk to Mr. PickthallÂ to try and make him see the harm he is doing as a result of the exaggerated importance attached to his support of the Moslems?78

227 LOYAL ENEMIES â Scotland Yard was given the case files but, as far as the Foreign Office was concerned, the foreigner Kidwai was, ‘The most dangerous of the Woking Mosque gang, a body which includes such agitators as ÂMarmaduke Pickthall and Arthur Field and is in comm[unicatio]n with all the most dangerous conspirators in this country and abroad.’79 Intel- ligence reports indicated that some of the many pro-Turkish telegrams the government was receiving from Muslims across the Empire and elsewhere were drafted no further away than Woking or Dusé Mohamed Ali’s Fleet Street office: ‘If we could lay the Woking Mosque gang by the heels we should be doing a very good stroke of work, but the Home Office apparently regard this as impossible.’80 As Ian Duffield has argued in his work on Dusé Mohamed Ali, contrary to the suspicions of para- noid civil servants, the Muslim networks of which Pickthall was central were actually too diverse to have represented a conspiratorial network.81 Nevertheless, the authorities continued to monitor Pickthall and others. In January 1920, the director of intelligence at Scotland Yard informed the Foreign Office that, ‘very recently there has been a divergence of opinion between Sheik [sic] Kidwai and […] Pickthall. The latter has been expressing his opinion that Kidwai is becoming indiscreet and his articles have become dangerous.’82 Further reports indicated that ÂPickthall had grown so tired of Kidwai’s interference in the Islamic Information Bureau that he had resigned after its main benefactor, ÂIspahani, sided with Kidwai.83 Back at Scotland Yard, the director of intelligence went further than the Foreign Office in his denunciation of Kidwai, arguing that he, ‘may be looked upon as an enemy to this country’ and concluded that, ‘Pickthall may be regarded as somewhat of a crank, but in all probability, at heart he is a loyal British subject.’84 â As if to emphasise his loyalty, Pickthall was a signatory alongside Cobbold and the Aga Khan of a patriotic letter to the Prime Minister dated December 1919 (the month he resigned from the Bureau), which urged for ‘a policy towards Turkey that would lead to appeasement’ and thereby placate Indian Muslims.85 Pickthall went a little further in an article published in the Africa and Orient Review (formerly African Times and Orient Review) the following month by again claiming that Britain’s supremacy in the East would be threatened if the government failed to stand by Turkey.86 When Mohamed Ali and a Khilafat delegation arrived at Woking Mosque in early 1920 (see Chapter Two), Pickthall strongly encouraged British Muslim cooperation and hosted a dinner party for

228 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? the group.87 The delegation’s arrival coincided with the Allies finally drafting their terms of peace with Turkey. During the discussions which preceded the drafting, the British and French considered on a number of occasions the possible expulsion of the Ottomans from Constantinople, but it was decided that they should be permitted to remain—the principal opponent of a policy of expulsion, the secretary of state for India, Edwin Montagu (1879–1924), emphasised that expulsion would particularly antagonise Indian Muslims.88 â To the surprise of many British Muslims, in September 1920 Pickthall left England for India. Disillusioned and in need of work, he had accepted editorship of the nationalist newspaper, the Bombay Chronicle, whose British editor, Benjamin Horniman (d.1948), had recently been deported for criticism of the British authorities.89 Pickthall left home: full of trepidation, going, as I was, to try to fill the place of a man who had done so much for India and for humanity […]. I feared my ability to take the place of an ardent politician, for I hated politics. I felt, however, very soon, that the movement of the Indian people was not a political one but in reality a religious movement.90 Muriel wrote after her husband’s death that Pickthall’s ‘chief object in undertaking this editorship was to bring home to the Government, as well as to the people of India, the truth about the spoliation of Turkey and how it was going to affect the Muslim World.’91 â Pickthall’s reputation preceded him: when he and Muriel landed in Bombay in September 1920, they were welcomed by the local committee and snubbed by the British. Pickthall told E. M.Â Â Forster that he felt like, ‘one whose salute to the East has been complete—i.e. who has become a social outcast from the Anglo-Indian point of view.’92 Within a year, Pickthall was forced to take his ailing wife home to Britain: ‘“It isn’t the climate”, he explained to Lady Valda Machell, “but the social boycott that has got at last upon her nerves, though I told her before she left England of what she had to expect if she would insist upon accom- panying such an awful man as me to ‘British’ India”.’93 Pickthall also genuinely feared arrest and imprisonment, primarily because, during 1921, he had become associated with Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), who was attempting to create bridges between Hindus and Muslims by supporting the Khilafat Movement.94 The Bombay Chronicle backed Gandhi, and Pickthall personally aligned himself with the Non-Coop- eration Movement. He spoke before the Indian National Congress and

229 LOYAL ENEMIES wore ‘the white Gandhi dress, with the Khilafate badge on my cap to show the Muslim’:95 It is liberty. It is a national resurrection, postulating only the destruction of such things and influences as are positively noxious to the growth of healthy Asiatic life. It began as an indignant protest against certain wrongs committed by the British Government; but already it is far more than a protest, a negative thing; it is an assertion, a positive thing—an assertion of the existence of an Indian nation independent of British education and patronage.96 âWriting from India in 1921, Pickthall argued in the Islamic Review that, ‘The East was all disintegrated when the Europeans came there. It is now united. It had no general consciousness, no common conscience or public opinion. Now it has both. It was asleep, and it is now awake.’97 When, later that year, the Indian police fired on an unarmed crowd in Bombay, Pickthall protested in person before the local governor, who had little time for him and, ‘threatened me—very gingerly and politely—with prosecution if I dared go on with the campaign’.98 The British journalist Sir Valentine Chirol (1852–1929) later denounced Pickthall’s editorship of the Chronicle thus: ‘The leading articles are in the same key—vehement denunciations of Lord Curzon and of British policy, and constant glorification of the Turk.’99 â Pickthall was also out of step with many of his fellow British Muslims in the interwar years. For Headley: the [Indian] administration has been conductive to peace and commercial prosperity. Most of the Indian Muslims with whom I am acquainted realise that without such a rule there would speedily ensue a condition of internal strife and disorder. […] Mistakes there may have been, but where, in the whole of this world of inequalities and enigmas, can we point to a condition of affairs which is independent of, or above, human error? […] At present let us be thankful that we belong to a great Empire of which we have no reason to feel in any way ashamed.100 Whilst at odds with Pickthall over India, even Headley (as president of a rejuvenated BMS) joined other British Muslims in the campaign to influence government opinion about Turkey and the Caliphate in the early 1920s.101 Their efforts were, however, again in vain: in 1923 the terms of the final Treaty of Peace were signed between the Allies and the Tu rkish nationalists at Lausanne. Turkey conceded the loss of Egypt, Cyprus, the Arab Provinces and the Dodecanese Islands.102 The formal abolition of the Caliphate the following year signalled the end of the

230 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? Khilafat Movement, its Indian leaders merging into the mainstream Independence struggle. Pickthall resigned his post at the Bombay ÂChronicle, in late 1924, after the newspaper was sold and its new management opted for an editorial policy hostile to Gandhi. He remained in India, working for the nizam of Hyderabad, until 1935. â British Muslim activities were still being monitored by the authorities when Pickthall left India in the mid-1930s.103 However, with the fate of Turkey settled, the Foreign Office was satisfied that, ‘The [Muslim] ÂSociety [of Great Britain], since it is so closely connected with the Wok- ing Mosque, may be regarded as a perfectly respectable organisation’, and also concluded that the WIA was, ‘a purely religious organisation of a sufficiently innocuous type’.104 Pickthall landed in England in early 1936, dying just a few months later. But, even with Pickthall out of the way and a more sedate MSGB and faltering WIA, the authorities were unable to rest easy as another British Muslim, Harry Philby, was creating trouble at home and abroad. In fact, Philby came to be considered a greater political threat than Pickthall had been.

Philby, ‘agin the Government’ Like Pickthall, Philby emerged from a conventional upbringing to become a contradictory radical. Philby’s biographer, Monroe, argues that he was, ‘exasperatingly contrary, consistent only in his inconsis- tency’.105 Despite wavering political affiliations throughout his life (beginning with an undefined turn to the left whilst studying at ÂCambridge), Philby was also a patriot at heart and, as we saw in Chapter Four, his first meeting with Ibn Saud in 1917 was organised to help further British campaigns against the Turks. Three years later, Philby joined Cox in Iraq to help calm an anti-British uprising.106 However, after his first meeting with Saud, Philby began to consider an independent future for the Arabs. He was mesmerised by the personality of Saud, whom he believed could lead the Arabs within a unified Arab State and withstand the Turks if they attempted a comeback. â Though still a civil servant, Philby became increasingly critical of British (and French) meddling in the Middle East after the war. In 1921, he witnessed firsthand the British dispense with free elections in Transjordan and proclaim Prince Faisal the King under British military protection. Back in England the following year, Philby strongly criti-

231 LOYAL ENEMIES cised British and French control of Mesopotamia and Syria, which, under the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918, should have been liberated from the Ottoman Empire and granted governments determined by their own populations. A few years after resigning from the Indian civil service (in 1924), Philby explained to his son, the Cambridge spy

H. ÂA. ÂR. ‘Kim’Â Philby (1912–88) that, ‘Some people may think […] that I was disloyal to the government, but that was never the case. I was in opposition to its policy and always made this clear, and I resigned in order to have freedom to express my views more publicly.’107 Indeed, as far as Philby was concerned in the early 1920s, Britain had betrayed its word to the Arabs and it was now his duty to put right that wrong, penning articles throughout the rest of that decade directed against ÂBritish policy in the Middle East and promoting Saud as the man fit to rule the whole Arabian Peninsular.108 â The British authorities were never certain about the level of threat Philby posed or how much influence he really had over Saud. For Hope Gill in Jidda in 1930, Philby was ‘an absolute fanatic’ on the subject of ‘pan-Arabism’: I have no doubt at all that Philby is now one of the foremost in keeping the great ideal of Pan-Arabia well in the foreground of discussion and endeavour. He can see no good in our occupation of Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq, and no ill in Ibn Saud and his Arabs. They are all paragons of all the virtues. I have never met a man so woolly-witted about anything. […] The man is undoubtedly a monomaniac, of a kind and now in a position to do us no good at all in our relations with Ibn Saud.109 However, the Foreign Office was in broad agreement with the opinion of the British consul in Jidda, Hugh Stonehewer-Bird (1891–1973), that, ‘He is a nuisance rather than a power of evil. The King [Saud], I am convinced, though he likes and admires him, rarely takes him seriously.’110 Even after his conversion to Islam, the British legation in Jidda considered that, whereas Philby had been ‘a thorn in the side of British authorities’ in the past, he: Need now no longer be regarded as anti-British, except that he would still sympathise with Ibn Saud in any quarrel with His Majesty’s Government, and will still rail on occasion against the British Empire as a system. […] His influence with the King has been exaggerated by some into a legend, while many still believe him to be a British political agent.111

232 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’?

16.âHarry St John Bridger/Abdullah Philby in his Mecca Garden, 1933. ©ÂRoyal Geographical Society (with IBG).

â During spells in England in the 1930s, Philby found himself in great demand as a public speaker on Middle Eastern affairs. In a lecture before the Near and Middle East Association in 1935, he argued that the problem of Transjordan was insoluble: ‘The time has now come when the great nations of the world must make up their minds whether the old game of snatching has gone for ever, or whether we must recognize the rights of all the little peoples of the world. I say, let them live in the way they want to live and not in the way we think is civilised.’112 In a similar vein, he warned the MSGB about, ‘the greed of powerful and imperialistic States […] in Arabia and round about. On all sides the integrity of Arabian territories and the independence of the Arab people is threat-

233 LOYAL ENEMIES ened by the encroaching Powers. And the danger is a danger not to Arabia alone but to Islam itself, of which every Muslim must take serious account.’ For Philby, the danger was exemplified in Palestine, where the British government, ‘preferred to fulfil the promises made to the Jews and to break the promises made to the Arabs’.113 â The Second World War intervened before the partition of Palestine was realised. Unlike most other British Muslims, Philby declared himself a pacifist (excepting Saud’s war) before the conflict, and called for an agreement with Germany. In England, his estrangement from the Labour Party led to an alliance with the anti-Semitic British People’s Party, for whom he fought the Hythe by-election in July 1939 (he lost his deposit, garnering just 576 of the 22,000 votes).114 Like Pickthall, Quilliam/Léon and other British Muslims in 1914, Philby maintained that he could be a patriot without necessarily acquiescing in his government’s policy and, therefore, once war broke out, he offered his services to Whitehall as an Arabist. Despite his rage against the government in the 1920s, Philby was confident that he would be accepted after a friend recommended him for a War Office post handling intelligence and counter-intelligence in Arabia. Unsurprisingly, Philby was passed over for the job. Monroe attributes this not to Philby’s religious beliefs but, rather, to his association with ‘dubious peacemongers’.115 Philby felt exonerated from war service, sought an exit visa and returned to Arabia at Saud’s invitation: ‘I have the queer consolation of knowing that another King and Country not only need but want me desperately.’116 He went to the King’s palace at Riyadh and, still very bitter, told the court that Britain’s chances of defeating Germany were slim. Railing against the prosecution of pacifists, Philby argued that the British system of government was a dictatorship.117 This aroused the wrath of the ÂBritish legation in Jidda, who sent word to London that Philby, ‘has been openly and indulging in disloyal and defeatist talk in both Allied and neutral company’.118 The Foreign Office consulted the India Office about stopping Philby’s Indian civil service pension, and asked if he could be deported from Arabia. Denied both options, the Foreign Office instead distributed a circular to consular officers instructing them to impound Philby’s passport if the opportunity arose and furnish him with an emergency certificate valid for passage to England.119 â Despite renewed concerns that, ‘Philby never loses any opportunity to poison the King’s and everybody’s minds against Britain’,120 the Foreign

234 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? Office was delighted to learn that Saud was beginning to distance himself from the Englishman. In July 1940, Saud told the British legation that he thought Philby was ‘mentally deranged’, never ceasing to heap curses, insults and scorn on the British government, and proposing a trip to the USA via India for the purpose of conducting anti-British propaganda.121 A week later, Saud informed the legation that Philby had in his luggage, ‘letters and articles of anti-British tone which he will try to smuggle out at Bahrain’. Saud explained that, although he considered Philby a friend, the interests of Britain took precedence over personal friendships.122 â In light of Saud’s claims, the authorities were right to consider the maverick and stubborn Philby to be the most dangerous of British ÂMuslims, although, as Monroe also suggests, he was at heart a radical and opportunist rather than intent on betraying his country.123 Philby was arrested with instructions from the Home Office and deported to England as soon as he arrived in India. He reached Liverpool in October 1940 and was detained under the Defence of the Realm Act, Section 18B, ‘Activities Prejudicial to the Safety of the Realm’. This was the first time that a British Muslim had been detained in Britain on such grounds, but it was less Philby’s religious creed that had landed him in prison than the immoderation in which he expounded his political views. Consequently, some people in Whitehall thought that Philby had finally got his just desserts. One official, worried that Philby had friends in high places who might help exonerate him, noted: ‘the fact that a man for years has fulminated against the [British] Government is no reason why he should be shown leniency when he shows himself actively disloyal in war time.’124 However, others, including some very influential friends indeed, felt that the precautions taken under Section 18B were exaggerated. Lord Lloyd at the Colonial Office explained to the Foreign Office that he had known Philby, ‘for many years and am perfectly certain that there is nothing even faintly disloyal about him’: He is just someone who has always had rather a mauvaise langue [lit. ‘bad tongue’] against the Government, but I am confident it is nothing more, and that it only does harm antagonising and embittering people like him by keeping them in gaol.125 â Lloyd also wrote to the acting director-general of MI5, Oswald Â‘Jasper’ Harker (1886–1968), arguing that Philby, ‘is a bit of a brilliant lunatic and has always been a bit “agin the Government”, but he is the last man who I should have conceived of being anything but a most

235 LOYAL ENEMIES loyal and patriotic person.’126 An informant led the intelligence officer Valentine Vivian (1886–1969) to conclude that Philby was not ‘disloyal, merely insufferably arrogant’. On the question of his disloyalty, Wilson

Young at the Foreign Office told Vivian that, ‘in MrÂ Philby’s world there 127 is only Mr Philby.Â Loyalty and disloyalty are only words to him.’ Another Foreign Office official accepted that Philby’s release would not do any harm so long as he was confined to Britain: ‘The worst that is likely to happen would be that he would talk a lot of nonsense to the Saudi Arabian Legation, and other people from the Middle East. But everyone knows him for a “crank”, and his views are not taken very seriously.’128 Philby was eventually released from prison in March 1941 as a harmless fanatic, yet subject to surveillance. Unable to obtain an exit permit for the duration of the war,129 he milled about Britain, speaking and writing about Islamic affairs and Arab independence in particular.130 He became a regular at WMM, MSGB and LMM events, encouraging Muslim unity, and officiating at services and festivals in both Woking and London.131 Philby’s prospects were still bleak when the war in Europe ended and so a return to Arabia was the obvious solution to his financial difficulties. The Home Office agreed to restore his passport and he left for Arabia in July 1945.

‘Green fields and grey skies’ In contrast to today, we know relatively little about press let alone public opinion towards British Muslim converts during these pivotal years because of wartime censorship. It is, however, clear that the handful of more radical and contradictory converts during and between the wars were considered by the authorities to be a genuine threat to law and order at home and abroad. Yet, albeit with some reservations about Philby, who remains difficult to fully place, these converts were ultimately loyal patriots whose Muslim sensibilities encouraged them to battle for the betterment of Muslims and Islam as well as, in their minds, Britain and its Empire. After all, they had strong attachments to Britain, the Crown and constitution. â Unlike most of the converts discussed in this book, Philby lived out his final years abroad.132 Critical of government corruption and poor administration, he fell out of favour with the Saudis after the death of their King in 1953, and was banished to Lebanon.133 As a memo from

236 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? the British Embassy in Jidda noted in 1955, Philby still fulminated against British policy in the region: When I last met him, early this year, he was as fiercely outspoken as ever against the concept of Empire; asserting that the Commonwealth was on the verge of collapse and deserved to be so while the United Kingdom continued to exert influence in territories (such as the Persian Gulf Sates and Aden […]) “which it is holding by force”.134 An official in the British Embassy in Damascus, ‘found him, at the age of 70, a rather pathetic figure, though I suppose he may still prove a thorn to the flesh’.135 Philby was restored to favour with the Saudi royal family in 1956 and returned to live in Riyadh. However, Britain still pulled and, consequently, he continued to return regularly to see family and friends, patronise his Club (the Athenaeum), devour the Times and grumble about the cricket. Philby made his final trip to Britain in 1959; he was returning to Saudi Arabia when he died.136 â As we saw in the previous chapter, other British Muslims travelled abroad—some for work, others for religious reasons (such as the hajj) or leisure—but the evidence indicates that they were generally eager to return home eventually. The Times noted in 1923 that Headley considered Mecca to be, ‘very hot and dusty, and most undesirable as a place of permanent residence’.137 Although spiritually lifted by her hajj, ÂCobbold skipped the Feast of Sacrifice and noted in her diary that, ‘I long to see green fields, grey skies, to hear the splash of rain, to escape from the pitiless sun.’ Back at the Philby’s in Jidda, ‘my charming host- ess welcomes me and I realise how glad I am to be back again in the world I know and to speak my own language’.138 Even Quilliam/Léon and Pickthall returned to Britain late in life, and both were buried near Headley in Brookwood Cemetery. Another key player in British Muslim affairs, Sheldrake, slipped into obscurity after the Turkestan Affair (like Quilliam, Sheldrake appears to have run out of steam after decades of tireless campaigning), though his work for the WIA continued to take him abroad until the Second World War, when he became a business representative in Turkey and part-time employee of the British Council in Ankara. Sheldrake returned to Britain in 1944, dying in London three years later.139 Despite his pivotal role in early-twentieth-century British Islam, Sheldrake’s death was overlooked in the press and all of the mainstream Muslim publications.

237 LOYAL ENEMIES

II. ÂDecline and fate That Sheldrake’s demise and death was ignored is perhaps surprising but symptomatic of the marginal position of converts within the dominant British Islamic organisations after the Second World War. But, how can we explain the decline and fate of Sheldrake’s generation of converts? â We saw in Chapter Five that British Muslim influence waned following the deaths of key converts in the interwar period. However, the decline proved to be irreversible, accelerated by post-war immigration of Muslims from the former British Empire and New Commonwealth, which rapidly enlarged a range of ethnically diverse Muslim communities spread across Britain. These communities introduced their own syncretic cultural beliefs and traditions, as well as sectarian differences, into the British context.140 ‘British Islam’ rapidly became Islam from the Indian subcontinent and the convert ‘community’ became increasingly marginalised. â As far as the WMM was concerned, British Muslim involvement and influence evaporated following the transfer of the Mission’s management to Lahore during the Second World War.141 Apart from mainly theological and spiritual essays from Dudley Wright (who died in 1949) and Pickard, the number of British Muslims who contributed to the Islamic Review dropped significantly. Meanwhile, Woking itself, though still the main hub for converts, was under threat as the centre of British Islam. In 1945, the editor of the Islamic Review, former Woking imam, Aftab- ud-Din Ahmad, pointed to the rise of the temporary mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre on the site of what was to become the London Central Mosque overlooking Regent’s Park, but was optimistic that Woking, ‘continues to be the religious headquarters of Islam in Great Britain in a very real sense, and will continue to be so for perhaps a long time to come.’142 Tellingly, however, in 1947 the Islamic Review reported that eid had been celebrated at the Woking and East London Mosques as well as at the Islamic Cultural Centre.143 â Despite the challenge from Islamic institutions primarily organised by and for immigrants, the mosque at Woking retained a special appeal for many Muslims in Britain after the war. Around 1,500–2,000 Mus- lims joined its eids in the early 1950s, most of them immigrants. The few remaining converts—old and new—were not necessarily complacent about their future. For example, Pickard and others were involved in renewed attempts to forge a ‘Muslim Council of the United Kingdom’, constituting the increasingly numerous Muslim associations spread

238 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? nationwide, and helped organise an Assembly of the ‘Congress of ÂMuslims in Great Britain’ at Woking in 1952. The Assembly agreed that: the task of the propagation of Islam, carried on by the Woking Muslim Mission for the past forty years, needed consolidation, and the time had come when ways and means of promoting community life among British, European and other Muslims should be devised and formulated.144 However, these and other efforts quickly faltered. The biggest group of new converts—white British women married to Muslim immigrants— were preoccupied with raising their families and marginalised by their husbands in the Missions and mosques. Despite the attempts of Pickard, Cowan, Major Farmer and a few more converts, the combined energy and drive of the pre-war British Muslim community was never recap- tured. Although conversions continued, today the majority of the several thousand Muslims who live in and around Woking and visit the mosque are of Pakistani origin.145 â The London Mosque, which emainsr under the control of the ÂQadianis, also attracts few converts today. Although their number and influence was always slim, British Muslims were increasingly sidelined at the LMM during the Second World War. Paper shortages in Britain also forced the Review of Religions editorial office to the Indian subcontinent during the early 1940s, resulting in fewer British Muslim contri- butions and scant news about the LMM and British jama‘at. A secretary to the London Mosque imam later recalled that, ‘There were so few [Qadiani] Ahmadis in London that right until the end of the Second World War, the London Mosque was opened only twice a year—on occasion of each of the two Eids.’146 Like converts at the WMM, those connected to the LMM also appear to have died out or, in the absence of formal religious and social structures, left the jama‘at and/or Islam in the post-war period. The LMM made few new converts after the war. As the frustrated Qadiani leadership admitted in the late 1950s, ‘There is no appreciable progress. We have not found even a dozen energetic Englishmen to dedicate themselves for the cause of Islam.’147 â The eclipse of British uslimsM at both Missions was partly the fault of the converts themselves who, albeit for similar reasons as their Victorian predecessors—namely marriage to a non-Muslim, discrimination and disregard for Islam in mainstream society—did not tend to raise their own children as Muslims or, when they did, their offspring typically drifted from Islam. To some extent this was inevitable given that the

239 LOYAL ENEMIES Anglo-Islam these Muslims practised was rational and based on reason. Although Headley was more confident than most that his four sons would grow up to be good Muslims, he set the tone in 1914 by asking: for the sake of argument, that one of them so far forgot himself as to change his religion, should I wish him ill? No, I should be deeply grieved, but should not alter in my fatherly affection one iota. I should argue with him, and do my very best to show him the folly of deserting Islam, but if my arguments failed I should deal just as kindly with him as before.148 â Just over a decade later, his sons now young men, Headley argued that the children of British Muslims: should from the very earliest date be taught the Commandments, certain prayers of a non-sectarian character, such as the Muslims’ Fatiah and Christian Lord’s Prayer, and they should be strongly imbued with the necessity of doing to others as they would wish others to do to them. Nothing else is needed for their salvation, and I always say I shall love my children just the same whatever faith they embrace provided they are quite honest in their conviction that it is the best.149 The following year, Headley’s second son was married with a Christian service.150 In fact, none of Headley’s children or grandchildren followed him into Islam. This was the case for other influential British Muslims in this period—Sheldrake (who gave his sons Muslim names),151 Cobbold and Philby (Parkinson and Pickthall both died childless). It was also true of later, albeit lifelong converts, such as Gai Eaton (Chapter Four), whose wife remained Christian and their children, though ‘respectful’ of their late father’s beliefs, are not Muslims.152 â Islam was more likely to survive within families headed by a convert partnered to a born Muslim because the latter naturally rooted the family in a tradition of Islam. For example, the children and grandchildren of Basil el-Murad Smith, who married a Malay Muslim (see Chapter Four), are Muslims today.153 The children of Ikbal Ali and Saira Shah (Chapter Four)—Amina Shah (b.1918), Omar Ali-Shah (1922–2005) and Idries Shah (1924–96)—all became respected Sufi writers and teachers. Marriages between local white women and Muslim immigrants in the port towns also led to scores of relationships where the core ÂMuslim family unit was generally strong. As Collins found in South Shields in the late 1940s: the wife is confronted by the cultural values of her husband who insists that they should be transmitted to his children. She lacks the same freedom to plan

240 ‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? for them. She must compromise in the training process, with the result that both English and Moslem culture elements contribute to the product of the second generation.154 â This cultural fusion had mixed consequences for individual uslimM identity and commitment. Collins found that the Muslim community inevitably lost some of its children as they grew older: ‘Until adolescence the child’s life is strongly influenced by Moslem customs and values. Later he [sic] tends gradually to free himself from these controls and to orientate his life increasingly towards the ways and values of British society.’155 This was especially true for boys, many of whom showed waning interest in the ritual of the zawiya and Islamic festivals, preferring instead, ‘drinking and going to dances’.156 Girls, on the other hand, were a little less likely to stray. Collins found that there was, ‘a very strong paternal desire to keep half-caste [sic] daughters in the community by encouraging marriage to a Moslem’: To some degree endogamy is practised. Of fourteen girls born of mixed marriages, twelve were married to Moslems and two to white men, and all but three continued to live in the community. Moslem fathers do not encourage their daughters to marry white men, because of fear that the paternal link with daughter and grandchildren will be broken. But marriages to members of the Moslem group are encouraged—a process which is establishing a network of kinship relationship within the community.157 â Slum clearances and urban redevelopment after the war increased community dispersal and dislocation and, despite the rebuilding of religious institutions, the breakdown of Muslim identity in the port towns. Today, South Shields and Cardiff each have a small Arab (mainly Yemeni) community composed of elders and a few younger families who have resisted complete assimilation and retained their Arab and Muslim identities.158 The legacy of pre-war conversions and ‘mixed marriages’ lives on by a thread following the death in 2011 in Cardiff of the ÂButetown imam and Yemeni community leader, Sheikh Said Hassan Ismail (1930–2011), who was born to an English mother and Yemeni sailor father in interwar South Shields. After his father drowned at sea during the Second World War, Said moved to Cardiff and was adopted by Sheikh Ismail Hassan, al-Hakimi’s sometime deputy. Said was trained in Islamic thought, completing his studies in Yemen, before taking on his father’s responsibilities as imam in 1956 and assuming spiritual leadership of the Butetown community for the next half century.159

241

EPILOGUE

From European ‘renegades’ in the early modern period through to ‘white Mughals’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain has a long history of its peoples converting to Islam. Before the mid-nineteenth century, British and other European citizens were generally forced to convert by their captors or motivated by economic/material gain. However, as imperialism gathered momentum and negative attitudes towards Islam and Muslims hardened following the Indian ‘Mutiny’, forced conversions petered out and Britons had little to gain materially by converting to an alien religion of the colonised. It was, nevertheless, precisely at this point in time that Henry Stanley converted to Islam, which started a new trend of the free conversion of Britons who remained Muslims by conviction in Britain. â Stanley’s hesitant conversion in 1859 was actually ahead of its time; it was several decades later in the context of late-Victorian religious pluralism and doubt that Britons like Quilliam first converted publicly on British soil. Nevertheless, we have seen continuities as well as changes in motivations for and consequences of conversion across the century. Beginning with Stanley, conversions were inextricably bound up with, influenced and enabled by the culture of Empire and imperialism. The converts were products of their age, but their interaction with Muslims and appreciation of Islam and Islamic culture emphasises that the colonial encounter was in some respects reciprocal with heterogeneous outcomes. â Taking stock and reflecting on conversions to Islam across the period, from the 1850s to the 1950s, it is clear that, especially in the larger

243 LOYAL ENEMIES communities of Liverpool, Woking and London, often quite conservative individuals (and, occasionally, their relatives or immediate families) converted to Islam for a combination of mainly spiritual, intellectual and sometimes political reasons. Economic and materialistic motivations were not altogether absent—for example, the working-class women in the port towns who converted to sanction or seal their marriage to a Muslim. Moreover, predominantly affectional, intellectual and experimental motifs characterised conversion narratives. In a country like Britain, where Islam was popularly derided and conversion away from Christianity was a threat to the very notion of Britishness, Muslim leaders and role models were crucial to conversion. Charismatic guides and mentors, some of whom were home-grown (for example, Quilliam and Pickthall), but many more of whom were missionaries from overseas (such as Kamal-ud-Din and Sayal), presented Islam as a familiar religion that could hold its own in the West. â Although the number of converts was never large, from the late- nineteenth century, the faith of Islam appealed to Britons from across the social classes. Regardless of background, conversion followed a typically protracted period of absorption and reflection. Considering conversions diachronically has shown the gamut of religious experience, interpretations of Islam and levels of commitment, from the zealous to the faddish to the pragmatic. Inevitably, from Stanley onwards, converts made concerted efforts to negotiate, adapt and harmonise Islam with their lives as Britons in a non-Muslim country. The syncretic Anglo- Islam forged by a solitary Stanley in the mid-nineteenth-century and developed through Quilliam, the LMI, WMM, LMM, WIA and, in quite different ways, in Britain’s port towns, was by necessity essentially practical and based on reason. This modernist Islam did not work for all converts and we saw that some gave up the fight or drifted (for example, Rankin), and a few of even the most committed eventually ran out of energy (notably Quilliam and Sheldrake). However, it is a testament to individual willpower and belief in their faith as well as the overriding importance of religious leaders, role models, community structures and support that so many of the individuals and groups discussed in this book lived out their lives as Muslims. â To turn to Islam in a non-Muslim country was never easy and it is hardly surprising that the offspring of these converts did not identify with the faith of their parent or parents. Conversion to Islam aroused

244 EPILOGUE negative reactions at all levels of society. We have seen that, at the heart of prejudice against British Muslims was a persistent suspicion that they had ‘divided’ loyalties for the Protestant British Crown on the one hand and a Muslim ruler, country or the umma on the other. The converts were described by a range of people, from Christian Evangelicals at the local level to officials in Whitehall during the First World War, as infidels, traitors, ‘renegades’ and enemies of the State. A handful of the most determined and contradictory British Muslims (especially Quilliam and Philby, possibly Pickthall too) came close to these descriptors when, as was frequent during this period, diplomatic relations with Muslim countries were strained and they felt that it was politically opportune to invoke their religious identities and allegiances. The stories of Quilliam, Philby and Pickthall highlight that there were real tensions between some converts’ national and religious identities; each man had genuine grievances about the advance of Western ‘civilization’ and the extension of Empire, especially as it affected the Caliphate and umma, but, as Westerners and British citizens, they were ultimately ‘loyal enemies’. The overwhelming majority of their fellow converts throughout this period were simply patriotic Britons who happened to be Muslims. â What, then, was the impact and legacy of British Muslims who lived in this turbulent period? These individuals and communities were undoubtedly pioneers but, as might be inferred by the very writing of this book, which has required extensive archival research to recover the converts’ history, their impact within their own lifetime should not be exaggerated. The British Muslims were a numerically small group whose grievances did little to alter the course of events and, though taken seriously at times of national emergency, were and remained peripheral to the British political arena. Anecdotal evidence, not least from conversa- tions with some of the relatives of key British Muslims, frequently dismisses these converts as eccentrics. Some, for example Stanley and Headley, were undoubtedly eccentric in their own way, but they were also principled and courageous people, operating in a difficult and often hostile social, cultural and political climate. They were early multicultur- alists, advocates of inter-faith dialogue, a few of them—certainly Quil- liam and Pickthall—Muslims of national and international standing. â These converts continue to have relevance for people today because they navigated and demonstrated what it takes to be Muslim in a non- Muslim country. Although operating in a different historical context,

245 LOYAL ENEMIES their lives have obvious parallels with Muslims—converts and non- converts—in Britain now. Contemporary Muslims experience prejudice and discrimination; they also have to negotiate Islamic prohibitions, seek to adapt and indigenise their faith to make it consonant with living in the modern West; and continue to juggle sometimes conflicting, diverse national, cultural and religious identities and loyalties.1 Notably, the increased public scrutiny of Muslims in twenty-first century Britain has encouraged interest in Britain’s Muslim heritage. To cite a few examples: Daoud Rosser-Owen, founder of the Association of British Muslims, which seeks to support converts and born Muslims, claims continuity from Quilliam’s British Muslim Association and Sheldrake’s WIA and is therefore, ‘the oldest extant organisation of British Muslims’.2 As we saw in Chapter Three, Muslims and non-Muslims in and around Liverpool are working to restore the former LMI premises, to ‘return it to being a Centre of Islamic Excellence, as it was 100 years ago, and to take it into the 21st Century as the Abdullah Quilliam ÂHeritage ÂCentre’.3 ‘Quilliam’, previously known as the Quilliam Foundation, was founded in 2008 by a group of former ideologues of UK-based extremist Islamist organisations, ‘in memory of [… Sheikh] Quilliam to help foster a genuine British Islam, native to these islands, free from the bitter politics of the Arab and Muslim world.’ The organisation considers itself 4 to be, ‘the world’s first counter-extremism think tank’. W. H.Â AbdullahÂ Quilliam himself has an Appreciation Society comprising several hundred members (mostly British Muslims and at least one of Quilliam’s descendants) on the social networking website, Facebook. Its founder notes that the group, ‘is set up to show appreciation to this great man […]. [W]ho would have ever thought that Islam in the UK would date back to the Victorian times.’5 Beyond Liverpool, the history of the pivotal WMM and its British Muslim community is slowly being unrav- elled, principally by a group of British Lahori Ahmadis who undertook the mammoth task of digitalising every issue of the Islamic Review. Now, anyone in the world with access to the internet can freelyÂ access articles Âby and images of Quilliam/Léon, Parkinson, Sheldrake, Headley, Pickthall, Cobbold, Philby and the many other British Muslims whom we have encountered in this book.6 The story of these converts continues to intrigue and inspire Muslims and non-Muslims, rooting Islam in British history and culture.

246 pp. [1–3]

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1.âCannadine, D., Ornamentalism: How the British Saw their Empire, London: Allen Lane, 2001, p.âxix. 2.âSee Ward, P., Britishness since 1870, London: Routledge, 2004. For a contemporary, critical Muslim perspective, see Hussain, D., ‘British Muslim

Identity’, in Seddon, M. Â S., Hussain, D. Â and Malik, N. (eds),Â British ÂMuslims between Assimilation and Segregation: Historical, Legal and Social Realities, Markfield: Islamic Foundation, 2004, pp.â84–118. 3.â Birt, Y., ‘We are not traitors in your midst’, The Spectator, 16 August 2006,

p.â23. See also Seddon, M. Â S., Hussain, D. Â and Malik, N. (eds),Â British ÂMuslims: Loyalty and Belonging, Markfield: Islamic Foundation, 2003. The terrorist attacks led to widespread discussion about the basic tenets of Islam and variety of Muslim beliefs which, in turn, reportedly increased the number of converts to Islam in Britain. For a summary of post-9/11 reporting of British conversions, see Anon., ‘Rise in converts’, British Muslims Monthly Survey, 10:1 (2002), pp.â7–9. A recent survey suggests that the number of converts in Britain might have doubled between 2001 and 2010 to approximately 90,000 or 100,000 individuals from a variety of ethnic backgrounds:

Brice, M. Â A. Â K., A Minority Within a Minority: A Report on Converts to Islam in the United Kingdom, London: Faith Matters, 2010, p.â11.

4.âSee Chew, S. Â C., The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance, New York: Oxford University Press, 1937; Clissold, S., The ÂBarbary Slaves, London: Elek Books, 1977; Matar, N., Islam in Britain, 1558– 1685, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; Matar, N., Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery, New York: Columbia Univer-

sity Press, 1999; Vitkus, D. J.Â (ed.),Â Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary

247 pp. [3–5] NOTES Captive Narratives from Early Modern England, New York: Columbia ÂUniversity Press, 2001; Colley, L., Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850, London: Jonathan Cape, 2002; Dalrymple, W., White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-century India, London: HarperCollins, 2002;

Davis, R. C.,Â Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the ÂMediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500–1800, Basingstoke: Pal- grave Macmillan, 2003; Milton, G., White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa’s One Million European Slaves, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2004; Tinniswood, A., Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean, London: ÂJonathan Cape, 2010. 5.âFor more on this relationship, see Daniel, N., Islam and the West: TheÂMaking of an Image, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1960; Daniel, N., Islam, Europe and Empire, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966. 6.âMatar, Islam, p.â34.

7.âClark, G. Â N., ‘The Barbary corsairs in the seventeenth century’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 8:1 (1944), pp.â22–35.

8.âScammell, G. Â V., ‘European exiles, renegades and outlaws and the maritime economy of Asia c.1500–1750’, Modern Asian Studies, 26:4 (1992), pp.â641–61.

9.â Quoted in Vitkus, D. J.Â (ed.),Â Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p.â7. 10.âDaniel, Islam and the West, p.â1.

11. âSaid, E. W.,Â Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, New edn, ÂHarmondsworth: Penguin, 1995. For a good review of the Orientalism

debate, see Macfie, A.Â L., Orientalism, Harlow: Longman/Pearson Educa-

tion, 2002. See also Mani, L. andÂ Frankenberg, R., ‘The challenge of ÂOrientalism’, Economy and Society, 14:2 (1985), pp.â174–92; Kopf, D., ‘Hermeneutics versus history’, Journal of Asian Studies, 39:3 (1980), pp.â495–506. Critical responses include Lewis, B., Islam and the West, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, especially pp.â99–118;

Mackenzie, J. Â M., Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. 12.âSaid, Orientalism, p.â2. 13.âIbid., pp.â40–1. 14.âIbid., pp.â3, 39–40.

15.âMatar, Islam, p.â14; Chew, The Crescent; Matar, N. I.,Â ‘Muslims in seventeenth-century England’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 8:1 (1997), pp.â63–82. 16.âMatar, Islam, p.â14. 17.âVitkus, Three, pp.â7–8; Colley, Captives, p.â125. 18.âColley, Captives, pp.â43–4.

248 NOTES pp. [5–9] 19.â See, for example, Clissold, S., ‘Christian renegades and Barbary corsairs’, History Today, 26:8 (1976), p.â509. 20. âPitts, J., A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans, with an Account of the Author’s being Taken Captive (first pub. 1704), reprinted in Vitkus, Piracy, pp.â218–340. All subsequent references to Pitts’ book refer to this modern edition. The book has also recently been republished in England as Encountering Islam. Joseph Pitts: An English

Slave in 17th Century Algiers and Mecca, ed. P. Â Auchterlonie, New edn, ÂLondon: Arabian Publishing, 2012. 21.âPitts, True, pp.â312–3. 22.âIbid., p.â315. 23.âIbid., p.â313. 24.âMatar, Islam, p.â15. 25. âSee Clissold, Barbary, pp.â86–101; Matar, N., ‘Britons, Muslims and ÂAmerican Indians: gender and power’, The Muslim World [hereafter MW], 91: 3–4 (2001), p.â374. 26.âMatar, Islam, pp.â43–4; Clissold, Barbary, pp.â98–9. 27.âPitts, True, p.â324. 28.âColley, Captives, pp.â122–3. 29.âPitts, True, p.â332. 30.â Quoted in Matar, Islam, p.â28. 31.âSee ibid., pp.â28–31. 32.â Clissold, ‘Christian’, p.â509. 33.âColley, Captives, pp.â52–3. 34.âMatar, Islam, pp.â66–7, 71. 35.âPitts, True, p.â324. 36.âMatar, Islam, ch. 4. 37.âIbid., pp.â46–7. 38.âClissold, Barbary, p.â164.

39.âSee Spear, T. G.Â P.,Â The Nabobs: A Study of the Social Life of the English in Eighteenth Century India, London: Milford/Oxford University Press, 1932; Dalrymple, White; Baron, A., An Indian Affair: From Riches to Raj, ÂLondon: Macmillan/Channel 4 Books, 2001. 40.âBaron, Indian, p.â12. 41.âA mid-eighteenth-century term derived from the Persian and Urdu title ‘nawab’ (lit. ‘prince’; Muslim nobleman/regional governor). Wealthy, India- returned Company agents were dubbed ‘nabobs’ for their plundering of the subcontinent—see Visram, R., Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History, ÂLondon: Pluto Press, 2002, pp.â4–6. 42.â Quoted in Dalrymple, White, p.â41. 43.âIbid., p.â17.

249 pp. [9–13] NOTES 44.âSpear, Nabobs, p.â22. 45.âDalrymple, White, p.â10. 46.âIbid., p.â40. A notable exception was the British Indophile Major General Charles Stuart (1757/8–1828) who, the India Gazette noted upon his death, ‘had studied the language, manners, and customs of the natives of this country with so much enthusiasm that his intimacy with them, and his toleration of, or rather apparent conformity to, their ideas and prejudices, obtained for him the name of Hindoo Stuart’: reprinted in The Asiatic ÂJournal, 26 (1828), p.â606. 47.âSee Dalrymple, White, p.â28. 48.âIbid., pp.â23–6. 49.âIbid., pp.â27–8.

50.âQuoted in Parkes, F., Begums, Thugs and White Mughals, ed. W. Dalrymple,Â New edn, London: Sickle Moon, 2002, p.â219. 51.â Dalrymple, W., ‘Your country needs you. And your beard’, The Guardian, 9 November 2002, p.â32. Conversions to Christianity of the few Indian Muslims resident in Britain in this period were rare. A notable exception was Sake Dean Mahomed (1759–1851), who, in direct contrast with the ‘white Mughals’, attached himself to the East India Company’s Bengal Army and rose through the ranks, emigrated to Europe in 1784, married a white Anglo-Irish gentry woman, converted from Islam to Protestant Christianity

and wore hybrid Indian-Western European dress: Fisher, M. H.,Â The First Indian Author in English: Dean Mahomed (1759–1851) in India, Ireland, and England, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. 52.âSee Dalrymple, White, pp.â296–7. 53.âIbid., p.â50; Spear, Nabobs, pp.â136–8; Baron, Indian, pp.â174–6. 54.âBaron, Indian, pp.â199, 210–1; Macfie, Orientalism, pp.â50–8. 55.âDalrymple, White, p.â454.

56.âSee Mosse, G., ‘Eighteenth-century foundations’, in Bulmer, M. andÂ

ÂSolomos, J. (eds),Â Racism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp.â40–4; Ansari, H., ‘The Infidel Within’: Muslims in Britain since 1800, London: Hurst, 2004, pp.â59–65. 57.âDalrymple, White, p.â500. Like other ‘white Mughal’ offspring, Kirkpat- rick’s children were shipped to England during their infancy, where they were baptised as Christians to facilitate their smooth absorption into the upper echelons of English society. The children were never reunited with their mother or maternal family in India, and therefore lost their Muslim identity (see ibid., pp.âxlv, 340–1).

58.âBrown, C. G.,Â Religion and Society in Twentieth-century Britain, Harlow: Pearson, 2006, p.â9. 59.â Taylor , B., ‘Conversion and cognition: an area for empirical study in the

250 NOTES pp. [13–15] microsociology of religious knowledge’, Social Compass, 23:1 (1976), pp.â16–21; Taylor, B., ‘Recollection and membership: converts’ talk and the ratiocination of commonality’, Sociology, 12:2 (1978), pp.â316–24;

Beckford, J. A.,Â ‘Accounting for conversion’, British Journal of Sociology, 29:2 (1978), pp.â249–62. 60.â Beckford, ‘Accounting’, p.â260.

61.âLofland, J. Â and Skonovd, N., ‘Conversion motifs’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 20:4 (1981), p.â375.

62.âRambo, L. R.,Â Understanding Religious Conversion, New Haven and ÂLondon: Yale University Press, 1993, pp.â137–9. 63.â For useful summaries of theoretical perspectives on religious conversion,

see Rambo, L. Â R., ‘Current research on religious conversion’, Religious ÂStudies Review, 8:2 (1982), pp.â146–59; Heirich, M., ‘Change of heart: a test of some widely held theories about religious conversion’, American ÂJournal of Sociology, 83:3 (1978), pp.â653–80.

64.âLofland, J. andÂ Stark, R., ‘Becoming a world-saver: a theory of conversion to a deviant perspective’, American Sociological Review, 30:6 (1965), p.â874.

65.âSnow, D. A.Â andÂ Phillips, C. L.,Â ‘The Lofland-Stark conversion model: a critical reassessment’, Social Problems, 27:4 (1980), p.â444. 66. âUllman, C., The Transformed Self: The Psychology of Religious Conversion, New York: Plenum Press, 1989, p.â191; Rambo, Understanding, p.â2.

67.â For example, Nock, A. D.,Â Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo, London: Clarendon Press/

Oxford University Press, 1933; Gillespie, V. B.,Â The Dynamics of Religious Conversion: Identity and Transformation, Birmingham, AL: Religious ÂEducation Press, 1991. 68.â Lofland and Skonovd, ‘Conversion’, pp.â373–85. 69.âIbid., pp.â376–81. Ali Köse and Kate Miriam Loewenthal explored the fea- sibility, reliability and validity of Lofland and Skonovd’s ‘motifs’ from the conversion biographies of British converts to Islam in the 1990s and found that the ‘intellectual’, ‘experimental’ and ‘affectional’ motifs were most frequently present in the biographies studied (67 per cent of interviewees):

Köse, A. andÂ Loewenthal, K. M.,Â ‘Conversion motifs among British converts to Islam’, International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10:2 (2000), pp.â101–10. 70.â al-Azmeh, A., Islams and Modernities, London: Verso, 1993, p.â60. 71.âThis important point seldom made in conversion theory literature is empha-

sised by Snow, D. Â A. andÂ Machalek, R., ‘The convert as a social type’, in

Collins, R. (ed.),Â Sociological Theory 1983, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1983, pp.â261–2.

251 pp. [19–22] NOTES 1.âBRITAIN’S FIRST MUSLIM PEER OF THE REALM: HENRY STANLEY AND ISLAM IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN 1. âA short version of this Chapter was published in the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 33:1 (2013), pp.â93–110.

2. âNetton, I. R.,Â ‘The mysteries of Islam’, in Rousseau, G. S.Â Â and Porter,

R. Â(eds), Exoticism in the Enlightenment, Manchester: Manchester Univer- sity Press, 1990, pp.â23–45.

3. âStarkey, P. andÂ Starkey, J., ‘Introduction’, in Starkey, P. Â and Starkey, J. (eds),Â Unfolding the Orient: Travellers in Egypt and the Near East, Reading: Ithaca, 2001, p.â2. 4.âSee Tidrick, K., Heart-beguiling Araby, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 5.âGibb, L., Lady Hester, Queen of the Desert, London: Faber and Faber, 2005. 6.âAllen, A., Travelling Ladies: Victorian Adventuresses, London: Jupiter, 1980, ch. 3. 7.âThe five ‘pillars’ are: the profession of faith (shahada); worship/prayer (salat); almsgiving (zakat); fasting/abstinence during Ramadan (sawm); and the hajj.

8.âFreeth, Z. Â and Winstone, H. V.Â F.,Â Explorers of Arabia: From the Renaissance to the End of the Victorian Era, London: Allen and Unwin, 1978, ch. 4; Trench, R., Arabian Travellers, London: Macmillan, 1986, pp.â59–69. 9.âTaylor, M., ‘Urquhart, David’, in H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, [hereafter ODNB], Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 55, pp.â945–8; Nash, G., From Empire to Orient:

Travellers to the Middle East 1830–1924, London: I. Â B. Tauris,Â 2005, ch. 2.

10.â Quoted in Lovell, M. Â S., A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard and Isobel Burton, London: Abacus, 1999, p.â735. 11.âIbid., pp.â84–5, 734. 12. âColley, L., Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837, New Haven: Yale ÂUniversity Press, 1992, p.â5. 13.âSome forced conversions continued—see, for example, Thompson, J., ‘Osman effendi: a Scottish convert to Islam in early nineteenth-century Egypt’, Journal of World History, 5:1 (1994), pp.â99–123.

14.âNewbould, I. D.Â C.,Â ‘Stanley, Edward John’, and Sutherland, G., ‘Stanley, Henrietta Maria’, in ODNB, 52, pp.â198–9 and pp.â210–1 respectively. 15.âAnon., ‘More or less human’, Times Literary Supplement, 5 September 1968, p.â935.

16. âMitford, N. Â (ed.), The Ladies of Alderley, New edn, London: Hamilton, 1967, p.âxx. 17.âIbid., pp.âxx-xxi.

252 NOTES pp. [22–26]

18. âRussell, B. Â and Russell, P. (eds),Â The Amberley Papers: The Letters andDiaries Â of Lord and Lady Amberley, 1, London: Hogarth Press, 1937, p.â19; ÂRussell, B., The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1872–1914, 1, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967, p.â34. 19.âMitford, Ladies, p.â31. 20.âIbid., p.â67.

21.âAlso see Macfie, A. L.,Â The Eastern Question 1774–1923, Revised edn, ÂHarlow: Longman, 1996.

22.âParry, J. P.,Â Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867– 1875, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p.â124.

23.âChamberlain, M. E.,Â Lord Palmerston, Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1987, pp.â85–6. 24.â Quoted in Parry, Democracy, p.â124. 25.âHenry’s father, Edward John Stanley, took the title Lord Eddisbury of ÂWinnington in 1848. 26.âPrivate Archive [hereafter PA], Henrietta Maria Stanley’s Diary (1832–64), 26 November 1848. 27.âSee Jones, P., The 1848 Revolutions, Second edn, Harlow: Pearson/ÂLongman, 1991. 28.âMitford, Ladies, p.â180. 29.âIbid., p.â230. 30.â See also McLeod, H., Religion and Society in England, 1850–1914, Basing- stoke: Macmillan, 1996, p.â179; Parsons, G., ‘On speaking plainly: “ÂHonest

Doubt” and the ethics of belief’, in Parsons, G. Â (ed.), Religion in Victorian Britain, II: Controversies, Manchester: Manchester University Press/Open University, 1988, pp.â191–219. 31. âMcLeod, Religion, p.â182; Parsons, G., ‘Biblical criticism in Victorian ÂBritain: from controversy to acceptance?’, in Parsons, Religion, II, pp.â238– 57. 32.âCheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies Service [hereafter CCALSS], Stanley of Alderley Papers [hereafter DSA], DSA171, Girgis Yuhanna Qili to Anon [in Arabic], 12 June 1849. 33.âMitford, Ladies, p.â200.

34.âMitford, N. (ed.),Â The Stanleys of Alderley: Their Letters between the Years 1851–1865, New edn, London: Hamilton, 1968, p.â38. 35.âIbid., p.â42. 36.âIbid., p.â46.

37.âBridges, R. C.Â andÂ Hair, P. E.Â H.Â (eds),Â Compassing the Vaste Globe of the Earth: Studies in the History of the Hakluyt Society, 1846–1996, London: Hakluyt Society, 1996.

38.âStanley, H. (ed.),Â Chinese Manual, London: Harris, 1854, p.âv.

253 pp. [26–33] NOTES 39.âMitford, Stanleys, pp.â69–70. 40.âIbid., p.â71.

41.â Stanley , Hon. H. (ed.),Â Rouman Anthology; Or, Selections of Rouman Poetry, Ancient and Modern, Hertford: Austen, 1856, pp.âvi-vii. 42.âSalt, J., Imperialism, Evangelism and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878–1896, London: Frank Cass, 1993, p.â18. 43.âMitford, Stanleys, p.â157. 44.âIbid., p.â139. 45.â British Library [hereafter BL], Sir Austen Henry Layard Papers, Add MSS 39135, Fols. 15–16, Stanley to Layard, 19 January 1859. 46.âMitford, Stanleys, p.â157. 47.â CCALSS, DSA116/6, Maria Josepha Stanley to Ellin Stanley, 23 January 1859.

48.â He returned to this issue in Stanley, Hon. H. (ed.),Â The East and the West: Our Dealings with our Neighbours, London: Hatchard, 1865. 49. âFinch, E., Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: 1840–1922, London: Jonathan Cape, 1938, pp.â34–5; Longford, E., A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, New York: Knopf, 1980, p.â25. 50.â CCALSS, DSA174, Un-referenced Press Cutting [Bombay Telegraph and Courier, May 1859]. 51.â Reprinted in Mitford, Stanleys, p.â221. 52.â Russell and Russell, Amberley, 1, p.â65. 53.âCCALSS, DSA174, Johnny Stanley to Maude Stanley, 22 November 1859. 54.âMitford, Stanleys, p.â218. 55.âIbid., p.â221. 56.âMorning Post [hereafter MP], 30 August 1859, p.â5. 57.âMitford, Stanleys, pp.â219–20. 58.âIbid., p.â226. 59.âIbid., pp.â223–4. 60.âIbid., p.â224. 61.âSee ibid., pp.â227–8. 62.âIbid., p.â228. 63.âIbid., p.â224. 64.âIbid., pp.â224–5. 65.âThe Times, 16 November 1859, p.â9. 66.âSee Mitford, Stanleys, p.â239. 67.â See CCALSS, DSA120, Correspondence between Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley and Ellin and William Stanley, 1869–74. 68.âBL, Oriental and India Office Collections [hereafter OIOC], Sir John ÂLawrence Papers, MSS Eur F90/29, p.â48, Stafford Northcote to Lawrence, 5 October 1868.

254 NOTES pp. [33–37] 69.âThe Times, 25 August 1869, p.â7. 70.â Stanley inherited the Anglesey estate upon the death of his childless uncle, William Owen Stanley (1802–84). 71.â Quoted in Daniel, N., Islam, Europe and Empire, Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press, 1966, p.â378. Also see Shannon, R. T.,Â Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation 1876, London: Nelson, 1963. 72.âBennett, C., Victorian Images of Islam, London: Grey Seal, 1992; Ansari,

K. ÂH., ‘Attitudes to Islam and Muslims in Britain: 1875–1924’, Indo-ÂBritish Review, 23:2 (2001), pp.â58–74.

73.âSee Almond, P. C.,Â Heretic and Hero: Muhammad and the Victorians, ÂWiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1989; Bennett, Victorian; Hourani, A., Islam in European Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp.â19–22. 74.âBennett, Victorian. 75.â ‘Be courteous when you argue with the People of the Book, except with those among them who do evil. Say: “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and which was revealed to you. Our God and your God is one. To Him we submit”’ (Qur’an, 29:46). 76. âBennett, Victorian; Bennett, C., ‘Is Isaac without Ishmael complete? A nineteenth-century debate revisited’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations [hereafter ICMR], 2:1 (1991), pp.â42–55. 77.â Robinson, F., ‘Ahmad Khan, Sir Saiyid’, in ODNB, 1, pp.â469–71. 78. âSee Visram, R., Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History, London: Pluto Press, 2002, ch. 3; Ansari, H., ‘The Infidel Within’: Muslims in Britain since 1800, London: Hurst, 2004, ch. 2.

79.âCited in Clayer, N. Â and Germain, E. (eds),Â Islam in Inter-war Europe, ÂLondon: Hurst, 2008, p.â8. 80.â Ameer Ali, S., The piritS of Islam, Or the Life and Teachings of Mohammed, New edn, Calcutta: Lahiri, 1902. 81.â See, for example, Ameer Ali, ‘Islam and its critics’, The Nineteenth Century [hereafter NC], 38 (1895), pp.â361–80; Forward, M., ‘Syed Ameer Ali: A bridge-builder?’, ICMR, 6:1 (1995), pp.â45–62. 82.â For example, Ahmad, R., ‘England in relation to Mahomedan states’, The National Review [hereafter NR], 21 (1893), pp.â187–95. 83.âThe Times, 29 January 1896, p.â5, 10 July 1897, p.â11 and 11 January 1898, p.â12.

84. âLeitner, G. W.,Â Muhammadanism, Woking: Oriental Nobility Institute, 1889, p.â12. See also Keay, J., Eccentric Travellers, New edn, London: John Murray, 2001, ch. 7; The Times, 25 March 1899, p.â11.

85.âUndated Note from Leitner to W. Â M. WoodÂ [1894], in the author’s possession. 86.âImperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review [hereafter IAQR], 4 [Third Series] (1897), p.â182.

255 pp. [37–40] NOTES 87.â Lubbock, A., ‘The Owens and the Stanleys of Penrhos: an account of its owners from 1513 to 1948’, Unpub. Monograph, 1972, p.â16, suggests that Stanley helped finance the building of the mosque in 1888/89. Although Stanley knew Leitner, this seems unlikely, and all other sources point to the mosque being built at the expense of Her Highness Jehan, Begum of Bhopal (1838–1901) and Leitner himself: The National Archives [hereafter TNA], Treasury Solicitor Records, TS27/520 (1910–13); ÂIllustrated London News, 9 November 1889, pp.â590–1. 88.âThe Crescent [hereafter TC], 1:15 (1893), p.â120. For contemporaneous descriptions of Muslims in the capital, see Salter, J., The Asiatic inÂ England; Sketches of Sixteen Years’ Work Among Orientals, London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1873. 89.âSee Pall Mall Gazette, 27 November 1893, p.â3. 90.âIbid., 30 November 1893, p.â11. 91.âMcLeod, Religion, pp.â180–2. 92.â Quoted in Longford, Pilgrimage, p.â132. 93.âCannadine, D., Ornamentalism: How the British Saw their Empire, ÂLondon: Allen Lane, 2001, p.â74; Mackenzie, J. M., Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, pp.â57–60.

94.âSee especially Blunt, W. Â S., The Future of Islam, London: Kegan Paul, 1882; Longford, Pilgrimage, pt. 2; Hourani, A., Europe and the Middle East, ÂBasingstoke: Macmillan, 1980, ch. 5. 95.â Pr onominal title given to male Muslims (‘hajja’, female) who make the hajj. 96.âTC, 1:7 (1893), p.â52 and 1:15 (1893), p.â116; Browne, Haji A., Bonaparte

in Egypt and the Egyptians of Today, London: T. FisherÂ Unwin, 1907. 97.âSee The Times, 8 October 1887, p.â7 and 26 October 1887, p.â4. 98. âBennett, Victorian, pp.â181–91. Also see Prasch, T., ‘Which God for Africa: The Islamic-Christian missionary debate in late-Victorian England’, ÂVictorian Studies, 33:1 (1989), pp.â51–73.

99.â See, for example, Stanley, H. E.Â J.,Â ‘The Poetry of Mohamed Rabadan, Arragonese’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society [hereafter JRAS], 3 [New Series] (1868), pp.â81–104. 100.â See Anon., ‘The Jubilee of the East India Association’,Asiatic Review, 11 (1917), pp.â1–14. 101.âHourani, Europe, pp.â101–2. 102.âIbid. 103.â West Sussex Record Office [hereafter WSRO], Blunt Papers, Blunt/Box 55/Stanley, Stanley to Blunt, 2 September 1898. 104.â For example, Bodleian Library, Lord Kimberley Papers, MS Eng. c.4267, Fols. 110–42, correspondence between Stanley and Kimberley, 1882–86;

256 NOTES pp. [40–42] The imesT , 19 July 1872, p.â6; BL, Lord Ripon Papers, Add. MSS 43633, Fols. 115–16, Stanley to Ripon, 23 May 1883; PA, Stanley of Alderley Letters to Francis Skrine [hereafter Stanley-Skrine], 17 September 1899;

Stanley, Hon. H. E.Â J.Â (trans.Â and ed.), The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, and his Viceroyalty, London: Hakluyt Society, 1869, p.âlxxvi; The Times, 25 May 1880, p.â6 and 11 November 1884, p.â7. 105.âAnon., ‘A Privy Council for India’, Journal of the East India Association [hereafter JEIA], 9 (1875–76), pp.â323–5; Stanley of Alderley, Lord, ‘A Court of Appeal for Indian Grievances’, JEIA, 13 (1881), pp.â49–74. 106.âStanley of Alderley, Lord, ‘The Privy Council as Judges of Hindu and ÂMussulman Law’, IAQR, 3 (1897), pp.â1–13; The imesT , 10 July 1897, p.â10. 107.âStanley of Alderley, Lord, ‘A Reform in the Privy Council’, IAQR, 8 (1897), p.â235. 108.âFor example, The Times, 23 July 1880, p.â10.

109.âSee Stanley’s ‘Preface’ to Hockley, W. B.,Â Tales of the Zenana, Or a Nuwab’s Leisure Hours, New edn, 2 Vols, London: King, 1874, which he hoped would help ‘the Englishman […] better understand how other classes in India may prefer the chances of success and high preferment, chequered by occasional mishaps, to the monotonous absence of high official employment in the territory under direct British government, and to peaceful yet stagnant security which leaves no prospect for the imagination, and little opening for ambition or enterprise’ (1, pp.âvii-viii). Also see WSRO, Blunt/ Box 55/Stanley, especially Stanley to Blunt, 15 July 1885. 110.â PA, Stanley-Skrine, 19 February 1902.

111.âMackenzie, J. Â M., Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. 112.âThe Times, 20 November 1876, p.â8. See also The Times, 28 July 1877, p.â10; Stanley of Alderley, Lord, Speech of the Right Hon. Lord Stanley of Alderley on Moving for a Paper Respecting the Religious Persecutions in ÂRussia, London: Cornelius Buck, 1877. 113.âThe Times, 16 October 1880, p.â7. 114.âIbid., 1 November 1880, p.â7. 115.âSee ibid., 28 June 1882, p.â8. 116.â WSRO, Blunt/Box 55/Stanley, Stanley to Blunt, 25 December 1884 and 13 July 1885. 117.âIbid., 30 May 1879, p.â10. 118.â PA, Stanley-Skrine, 26 September 1899. 119.âIbid. 120.âIbid., 6 April 1902.

257 pp. [43–46] NOTES 121.â See, for example, The Times, 28 July 1899, p.â6. 122.âDerby, Earl, The Diaries Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826–

93), between 1878 and 1893: A Selection, ed. J. VincentÂ Oxford: ÂLeopard’s Head Press, 2003, p.â240. 123.âIbid., p.â324. 124.â Stanley of Alderley, ‘Privy Council’, p.â13. 125.âAlderley and Wilmslow Advertiser [hereafter AWA], 18 December 1903, p.â4. 126.â Ameer Ali, S., ‘Memoirs of the late Rt. Hon’ble Syed Ameer Ali’, Islamic Culture [hereafter IC], 6 (1932), p.â14. 127.â See Harris, J., Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain, 1870–1914, London: Penguin, 1994, ch. 6. 128.âSee McLeod, Religion, pp.â43–4. 129.âCCALSS, DSA120, Stanley to Ellin Stanley, 23 August 1869 and DSA121, Letters to Ellin Stanley, 1869–70. 130.â CCALSS, DSA120, Fabia Stanley to Ellin Stanley, 5 February 1870. 131.â Quilliam claimed after Stanley’s death that they had been in regular com- munication regarding Islamic matters, and Stanley had visited the ÂLiverpool Muslim Institute, ‘two or three times […] but by his own wish his identity was not made known to the other worshippers’: Moslem Chronicle and Muhammadan Observer [hereafter MCMO], 23 January 1904, p.â55; ÂEvening Express [Liverpool], 15 December 1903, p.â6. There is no evidence to corroborate Quilliam’s claim. 132.âSee The Times, 25 June 1885, p.â12. 133.â For example, Stanley of Alderley, ‘Radical theorists on land’, Fortnightly Review, 37 (1885), pp.â297–308; Stanley of Alderley, ‘A remonstrance

with Mr. Â Jesse Collins’, NR, 20 (1892–93), pp.â345–50; Stanley of Alder- ley, ‘Preservation of the Colonies and the price of bread’, NR, 17 (1891), pp.â424–32. 134.âThe Times, 19 November 1887, p.â8. 135.âIbid., 6 May 1876, p.â8. 136.â de Lamennais, Abbé F., Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion, trans. Lord Stanley of Alderley, London: John MacQueen, 1895; first pub. 1817– 23, pp.âvii-xvi. The Times, 29 November 1895, p.â14 considered Stanley’s introduction ‘a vehicle for half a dozen pages of rather wayward opinions’. 137.âTC, 8:185 (1896), p.â902.

138.âChamberlain, M. E,Â ‘Stanley, Henry Edward John’, in ODNB, 52, p.â214. 139.âDaily Mirror, 11 December 1903, p.â5. 140.âMP, 11 December 1903, p.â5. 141.âAWA, 18 December 1903, p.â4.

258 NOTES pp. [46–49] 142.âEvening Express [Liverpool], 17 December 1903, p.â6. 143.âCited in The Review of Religions [hereafter RoR], 3 (1904), p.â65. 144.âAWA, 11 December 1903, p.â4. 145.âStanley of Alderley, Lord T., The Stanleys of Alderley, 1927–2001: A ÂPolitically Incorrect Story, Revised edn, Altrincham: AMCD, 2004, p.â7. 146.â Russell and Russell, Amberley, 2, p.â272.

147. âBlunt, W. S.,Â My Diaries, being a Personal Narrative of Events, 1888–1914, Second edn, 2, London: Secker, 1921, p.â81. In 1904, Fabia was confirmed to be ‘a person of unsound mind’: CCALSS, DSA178, Papers ÂRelating to Fabia Stanley, 1905–1914. 148.âThe AWA (18 December 1903, p.â4) implied after Stanley’s death that, late in life, he had reaffirmed his profession of faith before the Turkish Ambassador at the Turkish Embassy in London. 149.âRoR, 3 (1904), p.â65. 150.â Paid annually by adult Muslims, assessed at 2.5 per cent of capital assets over and above a minimum known as the nisab.

151.âWhite, G. H.Â (ed.),Â The Complete Peerage, 12:1, London: St. Catherine Press, 1953, p.â255. It emerged after Fabia’s death that none of the various marriage ceremonies had been legal because her first marriage—to Don Ramon in 1851—had never been annulled, and Ramon had not died until May 1870. Even the 1874 Catholic ceremony was void because a registrar was not present! See The Times, 17 November 1908, pp.â3–4. 152.â Anon., ‘Eglwys Llanbadrig Church’ [Pamphlet], n.pl.: n.pub., n.d. 153.âBlunt, Diaries, 2, p.â81. 154.âQuoted in ibid., p.â80. 155.âMCMO, 9 January 1904, p.â22. 156.âQuoted in Macclesfield Courier and Herald, 19 December 1903, p.â6. 157.âPrincipal Registry of the Family Division (Probate) [hereafter PRFD],

Will and Testament of H. E.Â Â J. StanleyÂ of Alderley, 1904. 158.âDaily Express [hereafter DE], 16 December 1903, p.â5. 159.âAWA, 18 December 1903, p.â4 and 25 December 1903, p.â6. 160.âQuoted in CCALSS, DSA171, Unreferenced Press Report [December 1903]. 161.â Sanders, F., ‘Stanley, Henry Edward John’, in Dictionary of National Biog-

raphy: Twentieth Century, 1901–1911, ed. Lee, S. Â London: Oxford Uni- versity Press/Cumberlege, 1920, p.â384. 162.âMP, 12 December 1903, p.â5. 163.âMCMO, 2 January 1904, p.â747.

259 pp. [51–55] NOTES 2.â‘A WITNESS SHALL BE RAISED OUT OF EVERY NATION’:

W. ÂH. ABDULLAHÂ QUILLIAM AND ISLAM, 1856–1932 1. âGeneral Register Office/Family Records Centre [hereafter GRO/FRC],

Birth Certificate of W.H.Â Quilliam,Â 1856; The Crescent[hereafter TC], 17:431 (1901), p.â243. 2.â The Acteffectively licensed prostitutes in and around army barracks and permitted the authorities to confine to hospital women with venereal disease. 3.âTC, 17:431 (1901), p.â243. 4.âSee TC, 15:383 (1900), pp.â307–10.

5.âInformation from K. A.Â Jowett,Â Library and Museum of Freemasonry, ÂLondon, 30 July 2003.

6.âGRO/FRC, Marriage Certificate of W. H.Â QuilliamÂ and H. Johnstone,Â 1879. 7.â Author’s interview with Quilliam’s granddaughter, Patricia Gordon, East Sussex, 16 October 2002. 8. âLane, T., Liverpool: City of the Sea, Second edn, Liverpool: Liverpool ÂUniversity Press, 1997, p.â13. For evidence of Muslims in Victorian Liver- pool, see Salter, J., The Asiatic in England; Sketches of Sixteen Years’ Work Among Orientals, London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1873, pp.â158– 61, 230–3. 9.âMoslem Chronicle and Muhammadan Observer [hereafter MCMO],

23 ÂÂ January 1904, p.â55. 10.âChurchward’s life story is related in Rosenthal, E., From Drury Lane to Mecca, New edn, Cape Town: Timmins, 1982. 11.âMCMO, 23 January 1904, p.â55. 12. âMcLeod, H., Religion and Society in England, 1850–1914, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, p.â181. See also Harris, J., Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain, 1870–1914, London: Penguin, 1994, pp.â170–7. 13.âMcLeod, Religion, ch. 4; Parsons, G., ‘Introduction: from centre to periph- ery, Victorian religious controversies in perspective’, in Parsons, Religion, II, pp.â1–13. 14.âHarris, Private, pp.â171–2. 15. âSellers, I., Nineteenth-century Nonconformity, London: Arnold, 1977, pp.â15–6. 16.âMcLeod, Religion, p.â59. 17.âMuir, W., ‘The “Church of Islam” at Liverpool’, Church Missionary ÂIntelligencer, 17 (1892), p.â413. 18.âTC, 8:205 (1896), p.â1225. 19.âIbid.

20.âQuilliam, W. H.,Â The Faith of Islam: An Explanatory Sketch of the Principal

260 NOTES pp. [55–58] Fundamental Tenets of the Moslem Religion, Second edn, Liverpool: Dodd, 1890, pp.â47–8. 21.âIbid., First edn, Liverpool: Dodd, 1889, p.â20. 22.â See Geaves, R., Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam, Markfield: Kube, 2010, pp.â45–8. 23.âTC, 15:383 (1900), p.â314. 24.âTC, 5:113 (1895), p.â81. 25.â See Beckerlegge, G., ‘Followers of “Mohammed, Kalee and Dada Nanuk”: The presence of Islam and South Asian religions in Victorian Britain’,

in ÂWolffe, J.Â (ed.), Religion in Victorian Britain, V: Culture and Empire, Manchester: Manchester University Press/Open University, 1997, pp.â233– 43.

26.â See Oliver, I. Â P., Buddhism in Britain, London: Rider, 1979. 27.âTC, 5:108 (1895), p.â41. 28.âTC, 7:177 (1896), p.â774. 29.âTC, 5:120 (1895), pp.â137–8. 30.â He was, for example, a trade unionist (and president of the Mersey Quay and Railway Carters’ Union, 1897–1907), established an orphanage (see Chapter Three), and campaigned for prison reform and the abolition of capital punishment.

31. âQuilliam, W. Â H., ‘Islam in England’, Religious Review of Reviews, 1:3 (1891), p.â162. 32.âTC, 20:501 (1902), p.â118. 33.âTC, 29:750 (1907), p.â1195. 34.âTC, 31:799 (1908), p.â313. 35.âTC, 2:30 (1893), p.â235. 36.âPrincipal Registry of the Family Division (Probate) [hereafter PRFD], Will

and Grant of W. H.Â Â Quilliam, 1932. 37.âAuthor’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002. Quilliam’s mother, Harriet, initially ‘tolerated’ her son’s conversion, but on his birthday in 1893 she added her name to the Members’ Allegiance Book of the LMI and became known as ‘Khadijah’, the name of Muhammad’s first wife: TC, 17:431 (1901), p.â244; TC, 17:432 (1901), p.â260. Harriet’s reason for conversion and her commitment to Islam thereafter are dubious. ÂNotably, she received a Christian burial: Liverpool Courier, 16 April 1901, p.â5. 38.âTC, 5:103 (1895), p.â4. The money was used for charitable purposes—see Chapter Three. 39.âTC, 20:496 (1902), p.â35; Author’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16ÂOctober 2002. 40.âIbid.

261 pp. [58–63] NOTES 41. âMohammed-ul-Mamoon, An Account of the Rise of Islam in England, Dacca: East Bengal Press, 1891, p.â1.

42. âQuilliam, W. H.,Â Fanatics and Fanaticism: A Lecture, Second edn, ÂLiverpool: Dodd, 1890, p.â2. 43.âLiverpool Review [hereafter LR], 25 January 1890, p.â9. 44.â Quilliam, ‘Islam in England’, p.â159. 45.âTC, 25:650 (1905), p.â413. Chapter Threeevaluates the success of ÂQuilliam’s propagation of Islam. 46.âQuilliam, Fanatics, p.â2. 47.âIbid., pp.â28–9. 48.âIbid., p.â29. 49.âTC, 18:451 (1901), p.â155. 50.âIslamic World [hereafter IW], 2:17 (1894), p.â138.

51. âQuilliam, W. H.Â A.,Â Studies in Islam: A Collection of Essays, Liverpool: ÂCrescent Printing and Publishing Co., 1895, p.â66.

52.âQuilliam, W. H.,Â The Religion of the Sword: An Enquiry into the Tenets and History of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Liverpool: Dodd, 1891, pp.â1–2. 53.âFor example, Quilliam, Faith, Second edn, pp.â43–4. 54.âTC, 26:672 (1905), p.â342. 55.âReprinted in TC, 17:437 (1901), pp.â346–7. 56.âReprinted in TC, 27:686 (1906), pp.â149–50.

57.âSee also his comparison with other religions—Quilliam, H. E.Â SheikhÂ

A. ÂBey, The Religions of Japan: With Incidental References to Shintoism, ÂConfucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, Liverpool: ÂCrescent Publishing Co., 1906. 58.âTC, 16:404 (1900), p.â234. 59.âIbid. 60.âTC, 20:520 (1902), p.â426. 61.âNevertheless, Quilliam made contact with the marginalised Liverpool ÂJewish community, visited their places of worship and lectured before them. From 1902 he addressed Zionist associations outside of Liverpool and, by 1908, was advising them against Jewish settlement in Palestinian towns: TC, 31:788 (1908), pp.â141–2. See also Geaves, Islam, pp.â139–43. 62.â See his collection of lectures on a scientific theme—Quilliam, Sheikh A., Footprints of the Past, Liverpool: Crescent Publishing Co., 1907, pp.â53–4. 63.âTC, 2:29 (1893), p.â227. 64.âTC, 1:3 (1893), pp.â20–1. 65.âQuilliam, Studies, p.â119. 66.â Quilliam, ‘Islam in England’, p.â162. 67.âTC, 2:48 (1893), p.â383. 68.âManx Sun, 19 October 1901, p.â7.

262 NOTES pp. [63–67]

69.â For example, Quilliam, W. H.,Â ‘Islam’, LR, 13 December 1902, pp.â1–2. 70.âQuilliam, Faith, Second edn, Preface; TC, 17:421 (1901), p.â90. 71.âTC, 8:183 (1896), pp.â374–5. 72.âTC, 30:[754] (1907), p.â9. The Islamic World, which had not appeared regularly since 1898, was discontinued in 1907. 73.âSee TC, 8:189 (1896), p.â972.

74. âPool, J. Â J., Studies in Mohammedanism: Historical and Doctrinal, with a Chapter on Islam in England, Westminster: Constable, 1892, p.â401. 75.âTC, 9:232 (1897), p.â389. Other commitments included sometime presidency and vice-presidency of the Liverpool Geographical Association, Manx Society and Geological Association. By the turn of the century he also had ‘the biggest advocacy practice in the North of England, having frequently 12 or 14 cases a day’: Liverpool Freeman, reprinted in TC, 26:652 (1905), p.â19. 76.âAgnostic Journal, 18 January 1896, p.â37. 77.â Author’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002. 78.âSee TC, 19:492 (1902), p.â393. 79.âSee Behdad, A., Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial ÂDissolution, Cork: Cork University Press, 1994, p.â59. 80.âClayer, N. and Germain, E. (eds), Islam in Inter-war Europe, London: Hurst, 2008, p.â8; Gerholm, T., ‘Three European intellectuals as converts to Islam:

cultural mediators or social critics?’, in Gerholm, T. Â and Lithman,

Y. ÂG. Â (eds), The New Islamic Presence in Western Europe, London: Mansell,

1988, pp.â265–7; Abd-Allah, U. F.,Â A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 81.âMW, 8:2 (1918), p.â203. 82.âReprinted in TC, 7:177 (1896), p.â778 and 9:215 (1897), p.â125. 83.âTC, 9:232 (1897), p.â392. 84.âTC, 17:420 (1901), p.â68; IW, 6:70 [1902], p.â257. 85.âTC, 17:432 (1901), p.â265. 86.âIn 1893, Quilliam claimed that he was ‘in regular correspondence with over 500 of the leaders of Moslem thought in all parts of the world’: TC, 2:39 (1893), pp.â308–9. For links between the LMI and Muslims in Cape Town and Perth, see Germain, E., ‘Southern hemisphere diasporic communities in the building of an international Muslim public opinion at the turn of the twentieth century’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 27:1 (2007), pp.â126–38. 87.âThe Times, 14 June 1895, p.â10. 88.âThe Manxman, 12 February 1898, p.â3. 89.âRobert Ahmad later accepted an invitation from the sultan to study ÂTurkish and Arabic in Constantinople: TC, 13:336 (1899), p.â389.

263 pp. [67–73] NOTES 90.âThe Manxman, 12 February 1898, p.â3. 91.â See, for example, ibid., 14 May 1898, p.â21.

92.âSee Gbadamosi, T. Â G. O.,Â The Growth of Islam among the Yoruba, 1841– 1908, London: Longman, 1978, pp.â66, 104–5, 167–8. 93.âMeanwhile, he was silent on important domestic issues and legislation such as the 1905 Aliens Act (which restricted settlement of foreign immigrants), which undoubtedly affected his Muslim sensibilities.

94.âSee Shaw, S. Â J. andÂ Shaw, E. K.,Â History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, pp.â200–5. 95.âTC, 5:103 (1895), pp.â4–5. 96.âIbid., p.â5. 97.âTC, 5:122 (1895), pp.â156–7. 98.âTC, 7:160 (1896), pp.â506–7. 99.â See Shaw and Shaw, History, 2, pp.â208–9.

100. âQuilliam, W. H.,Â The Troubles in the Balkans: The Turkish Side of the ÂQuestion, Liverpool: Crescent Printing Co., n.d. (1904), pp.â38–9. Also see The Times, 23 October 1903, p.â9; LR, 31 October 1903, p.â11; MCMO, 12 December 1903, p.â713. 101.âTC, 8:194 (1896), p.â1045. 102.â For Muslims, the greater jihad is to overcome personal weaknesses. 103.âLiverpool Shipping Telegraph, 24 September 1896, p.â4. 104.âCited in TC, 8:194 (1896), p.â1046. 105.â An offensive ethnic slur used yb Muslims in Turkey and the Balkans to describe non-Muslims. 106.âTC, 7:167 (1896), p.â617. 107.âTC, 7:171 (1896), pp.â681–2. 108.âCited in TC, 7:178 (1896), p.â793. 109.âIbid. 110.âTC, 8:185 (1896), pp.â905–6. 111.â Reprinted in Quilliam, Troubles, p.â59. 112.âIW, 4:39 (1896), p.â77. 113.âTC, 9:217 (1897), p.â155. 114.âTC, 9:224 (1897), p.â266. 115.âDaily Mirror, 9 May 1906, p.â3. 116.âTC, 27:695 (1906), p.â291. 117.â TNA, Foreign Office Records [hereafter FO], FO372/34, 33977 (1906).

118.â TNA, FO372/34, 37105, Letter from L. Â Dunning, 3 December 1906. 119.â See Minutes in TNA, FO372/34, 37105. 120.â TNA, FO372/84, 875, Minutes, 5 March 1907. 121.â See correspondence between Rutherford and the Foreign Office in ibid. 122.â TNA, FO369/107, 25532 (1907).

264 NOTES pp. [73–77]

123.âIbid., Minutes by G. Kenrick,Â 3 August 1907. 124.âLiverpool Courier, 21 November 1908, p.â10, 24 November 1908, p.â3 and 25 November 1908, p.â3; Liverpool Echo, 24 November 1908, p.â7. 125.âLiverpool Courier, 21 November 1908, p.â10. 126.âTC, 31:799 (1908), p.â313. 127.â Shaw and Shaw, History, 2, p.â266. The sultan had dispatched Quilliam to Salonika (central Macedonia) in 1905, ‘in order to obtain an independent and thoroughly reliable report as to the condition of affairs in ÂEastern Roumelia’. Quilliam’s enquiries into murders committed by Bulgarian rev- olutionists apparently made him the target of an assassination attempt (but he sustained little more than a cold from the trip), prompted the ÂBulgarian government to ban the import of the Crescent because of its potential to ‘irritate the Greek and Muslim inhabitants of Bulgaria against the Government of Bulgaria’, and aroused the interest—but not the support—of the British press: Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Mercury [hereafter LDPLM], 27 April 1905, p.â10; TC, 25:644 (1905), p.â314; Daily Express [hereafter DE], 24 April 1905, p.â5 and 27 April 1905, p.â5. 128.âTC, 31:799 (1908), p.â313. 129.âTC, 31:800 (1908), p.â329. 130.âLDPLM, 1 September 1908, p.â8. 131.âLiverpool Echo, 31 October 1908, p.â9. 132.âPorcupine, 28 November 1908, n.p. 133.âLDPLM, 17 May 1909, p.â9. 134.âThe Times, 9 June 1909, p.â3. 135.â Evidently tired of her wayward husband, Hannah had appointed two of their children trustees and executors of her will, in which she stated that she wished her body ‘to be buried in the manner used amongst ÂChristians’:

PRFD, Will and Grant of H. Â Quilliam, 1909. 136.â Author ’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002.

137.â GRO/FR C, Marriage Certificate of W. H.Â QuilliamÂ and M. Â Lyon, 1909. 138.âAuthor’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002; Islamic Review and Muslim India [hereafter IRMI], 2:3 (1914), p.â97. 139.â See Booth, M., A Magick Life: A Biography of Aleister Crowley, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000, especially pp.â302–6. 140.âIRMI, 2:3 (1914), pp.â97–8. 141.â Author’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002. 142.âA strange article about radiography, written by ‘Henri Haleem Leon,

M. D.Â (Paris)’,Â appeared in IW, 4:47 (1897), pp.â339–42. Geaves also believes that a genuine ‘Leon’ existed—see Geaves, Islam, pp.â260–2. 143.â For example, John Yehya-en Nasr Parkinson (Chapter Three) originally penned articles under the pseudonym ‘Ingomar’.

265 pp. [77–83] NOTES 144.âDaily Telegraph [hereafter DT], 26 April 1932, p.â14. 145.âDaily Mail [hereafter DM], 27 April 1932, p.â2. 146.âQuoted in Daily Sketch, 27 April 1932, p.â3. 147.âSee Who Was Who, 3, London: Black, 1941, p.â802. 148.â Author ’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002. 149.âSee The Courier [Isle of Man], 18 August 1967, p.â2. 150.âQuoted in DE, 8 March 1922, p.â5. 151.â Morning Post [hereafter MP], 10 December 1926, p.â12. 152.âIbid. 153.âThe Philomath, 17:201 (1913), front cover, and 6:264 (1919), p.â18. 154.âThe Philomath, 2:219 (1914), p.â184; Manx National Heritage Library,

MS 1088/27C, Léon to Mr. Kneen,Â 26 January 1915. 155.âThe Physiologist, 1 [New Series] (1917), front cover. 156.âSee Who Was Who, 3, p.â802. 157.âIRMI, 2:3 (1914), pp.â97–8. 158.âIRMI, 2:11–12 (1914), pp.â546–7, and 3:1 (1915), pp.â4–5. 159.âSee IRMI, 3:1 (1915), pp.â24–5 and 3:6 (1915), pp.â310–2, 3:9 (1915), pp.â445–7. A short conversion testimony written by Léon emphasising

these themes was published posthumously in Khulusi, S. A.Â (ed.),Â Islam Our Choice, Woking: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1961, pp.â102–4. 160.âSee, for example, The Review of Religions[her eafter RoR], 20:8 (1921), p.â331, and 28:6 (1929), p.â191.

161.â Exceptions included articles about Muslim poets, such as: Léon, H. M.,Â ‘The life and poetry of Sheikh Haroun Abdullah, a Turkish poet’, Asiatic

Review, 6 (1915), pp.â430–6; Léon, H. M.,Â ‘Abu’l-‘Atahiya, “Al-Jarrar”: The poet who sold earthen-pots’, Islamic Culture [hereafter IC], 5:4 (1931), pp.â631–50.

162.â TNA, FO371/2173, 44432, R. A.Â QuilliamÂ to Grey, 28 August 1914. 163.âIbid., Resolution of the British Muslims Association, 1914. 164.â See TNA, FO371/2127, 3721 (1914).

165.â TNA, FO371/2488, 50954, H. Â Wheeler to India Office [hereafter IO], 12 March 1915. 166.â TNA, FO371/2146, 68803, Léon to Grey, 6 November 1914. 167.âIbid., Léon to Field, 5 November 1914. 168.âIbid. 169.â TNA, FO371/2482, 9577, Letter from Field, January 1915. 170.âIbid., Léon to Grey, 23 January 1915. 171.âDaily Herald, 23 September 1933, p.â1. 172.â Léon’ s numerous wartime lecture engagements are listed in the Philomath and Physiologist.

266 NOTES pp. [83–88] 173.âTNA, FO371/4161, 168774, Intelligence Report, 12 December 1919. 174.âSee Chapter Six; Ali, M., The Khilafat in Islam, Lahore: Ahmadia ÂAnjuman Ishaat-i-Islam, 1920; Iqbal, A., Life and Times of Mohamed Ali, Second

edn, Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture, 1979; Wasti, S. T.,Â ‘The circles of Maulana Mohamed Ali’, Middle Eastern Studies, 38:4 (2002), pp.â51–62. 175.âIslamic Review [hereafter IR], 8:4 (1920), p.â139; Iqbal, Life, pp.â207–9. 176.âIslamic News [hereafter IN], 23 (7 April 1921), p.â4. 177.âMuslim Outlook, 6 (27 November 1919), p.â7. 178.âIR, 19:8 (1931), pp.â298–9.

179.âGRO/FRC, Death Certificate of Abdulla [sic] W. Â H. Quilliam,Â 1933;

PRFD, Will of W. Â H. Â Quilliam, 1932. 180.âIbid. 181.â Author ’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002. 182.âDM, 29 April 1932, p.â9. 183.âDE, 26 April 1932, p.â11; DM, 27 April 1932, p.â2. 184.âSee DT, 23 September 1933, p.â10. 185.âEast Sussex News, 29 September 1933, p.â2.

3.â‘UPHOLDING THE BANNER OF ISLAM’: THE LIVERPOOL MUSLIM INSTITUTE AND BRITISH CONVERTS, 1887–1908

1.âThe only substantive account is in Geaves, R., Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam, Markfield: Kube, 2010, ch. 3. 2.â The quantitative and qualitative database identifies individual converts by Muslim name and/or date of conversion to Islam and, when possible, records each Muslim by: first name; surname; Muslim name; gender; year of birth; previous religious affiliation(s); date of public conversion to Islam; date of first citation in The Crescent or Islamic World; geographical location; occupation; Masonic affiliation(s); year of first known visit to the LMI; connection with the WMM (after 1912—see Chapter Four); publications for the LMI/ about Islam/Muslims; year first lectured for/at the LMI; official positions held at the LMI; year of death.

3.âBelcham, J., ‘Celebrating Liverpool’, in Belcham, J. (ed.),Â Liverpool 800: ÂCulture, Character and History, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006, p.â14. 4.â A Christian missionary who visited Brougham Terrace in 1891 alleged that the shahada was mis-translated as, ‘There is no God but God, and ÂMohammed was His Prophet’: ‘I called the President’s attention to the words “ÂMohammed was His Prophet,” and asked whether it was a mistake or not. I was told that “is” would be at once substituted for “was,” as the Faithful believe that Mohammed not only “was” but “is” the Prophet of God. The word was an

267 pp. [89–93] NOTES unfortunate printer’s error’: Pool, J. J., Studies in Mohammedanism: ÂHistorical and Doctrinal, with a Chapter on Islam in England, Westminster: ÂConstable, 1892, pp.â396–7. 5.âQuilliam, W. H., ‘Islam in England’, Religious Review of Reviews, 1:3 (1891), pp.â160–1. 6.â Muslims who call co-religionists to congregational prayer. 7.â For example, ‘Tom Hood: his life and works from an Islamic standpoint’ (1895). 8.â The Crescent [hereafter TC], 1:14 (1893), p.â107. 9.â See McLeod, H., ‘White collar values and the role of religion’, in Crossick,

G. Â(ed.), The Lower Middle Class in Britain, 1870–1914, London: Croom Helm, 1977, p.â68. 10.â This general point about the working classes is highlighted in lythe,B R., Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village, New edn, London: Penguin, 1999, p.â33. The number of religious institutions open to the public on a undayS was even greater in religiously pluralistic urban centres such as Liverpool than rural villages like Blythe’s ‘Akenfield’. 11.âReprinted in TC, 29:741 (1907), p.â1048. 12.âIslamic Review and Muslim India [hereafter IRMI], 2:4 (1914), p.â168. Though, as was noted in Chapter Two, Quilliam proposed to build a ‘cathedral mosque’ in Brougham Terrace. In 1899, he purchased land in nearby Shiel/Geneva Road and commissioned an architect to plan an even more ambitious ‘future “Cathedral” of Islam in the British Isles’, which foun- dered due to financial difficulties: TC, 13:336 (1899), pp.â387–8 and 15:376 (1900), pp.â196–9. 13.âTC, 7:156 (1896), pp.â442–3 and 7:181 (1896), p.â843. Further renova- tions to the lecture hall were made in 1904, and heating installed: TC, 24:615 (1904), p.â267. 14.âTC, 8:186 (1896), p.â919. 15.âIbid., p.â923. 16.â Islamic World [hereafter IW], 4:40 (1896), p.â108. 17.âTC, 21:533 (1903), p.â204. 18.âTC, 7:182 (1896), p.â858. 19.â Liverpool Review [hereafter LR], 25 January 1890, p.â9. 20.âQuoted in Muir, W., ‘The “Church of Islam” at Liverpool’, Church ÂMissionary Intelligencer, 17 (1892) , p.â415. 21.âPool, Studies, p.â399. 22.â Muslim World [hereafter MW], 4:2 (1914), pp.â195–6. 23.âSee ibid. 24.â Ahmed, Haji R., The Moslem Guide, Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1891.

268 NOTES pp. [93–98] 25.âTC, 8:186 (1896), p.â919. 26.âIbid. 27.âTC, 14:347 (1899), p.â147. 28.âLR, 29 August 1891, p.â13. 29.âDE, 1 July 1904, p.â7.

30. âSee IW, 6:77 [1905], pp.â179–92. For more on Yusuf Ali, see Sherif, M. Â A., Searching for Solace: A Biography of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Interpreter of the Qur’an, Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 1994. 31.âTC, 21:529 (1903), p.â138. 32.â Daily Express [hereafter DE], 1 July 1904, p.â7. 33.â Cited in Muir, ‘“Church”’, p.â416. 34.âReprinted in TC, 20:501 (1902), p.â118. 35.âLiverpool Mercury, 29 April 1898, p.â8. 36.âTC, 26:668 (1905), p.â280. Three children were admitted in the first week and, despite a lack of external funding, eight children (all of whom were given Muslim names) were being cared for by September 1897. Quilliam received over thirty requests for taking in children in 1902/03 alone, but could only afford to take one child: TC, 21:535 (1903), pp.â235–6. 37.â In 1908, Quilliam claimed that the Institute had fed ‘no less than 21,569 persons’ on Christmas day’ since 1888: TC, 31:780 (1908), p.â7. 38.âSee also TC, 16:408 (1900), p.â298. 39.â Cited in Muir, ‘“Church”’, p.â416; Pool, Studies, p.â404. 40.â Quoted in Muir, ‘“Church”’, p.â417. 41.âPool, Studies, p.â404. 42.âTC, 2:29 (1893), p.â229. 43.âTC, 7:181 (1896), p.â842. 44.âIbid.; IW, 4:39 (1896), p.â72. 45.âTC, 13:336 (1899), p.â387. 46.âTC, 19:484 (1902), pp.â259–60. 47.âSee TC, 20:501 (1902), p.â118. 48.âTC, 21:535 (1903), p.â235. 49.âTC, 27:678 (1906), p.â30. 50.â Of the 255 individuals who were not listed as having adopted a Muslim name or converted, 143 (56 per cent) were women and ninety-five (37 per cent) were men (the sex of seventeen is unknown). The majority were ÂLiverpool-based. Only three contributed an article pertaining to Islam in either The Crescent or Islamic World; five lectured on Islam or a related topic at the Institute (four of them men); and eighteen held an official position at the Institute. 51.â It is unlikely that any (Quilliam included) changed their names legally. 52.â This figure cludesex Quilliam and hajji Browne, both of whom converted before 1887.

269 pp. [93–103] NOTES 53.âGeaves estimates that the LMI community comprised between 200 and ‘over’ 250 converts (Geaves, Islam, pp.â292 and 126 respectively). 54.âFive converts were described as being Christian; five Roman Catholic; three Church of England; two Primitive Methodist; two Unitarian; one AgnosticÂ from Christianity; one Christian Spiritualist; one Evangelical Church of England; one Methodist; one New Jerusalem Church; one United ÂMethodist Free Church; and one Wesleyan Methodist. 55. âZebiri, K., British Muslim Converts: Choosing Alternative Lives, Oxford: Oneworld, 2008, p.â14; Bourque, N., ‘Being British and Muslim: dual

identity amongst new and young Muslims’, in Jones, A. (ed.),Â University Lectures in Islamic Studies, 2, London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 1998, pp.â2, 15. See also Köse, A., Conversion to Islam: A Study of Native British Converts, London: Kegan Paul, 1996, pp.â80–1. 56.âKöse, Conversion, p.â47. In her more recent survey of conversion, Zebiri suggests that the average age of contemporary British converts is, increasingly, even lower: Zebiri, British Muslim, pp.â42–3. 57.âThis figure excludes Quilliam’s own children, some of whom were born before their father’s conversion to Islam. 58.â Ver y little has been written about the children of converts past or present, but this pattern of Muslim parents not forcing Islam on their offspring appears to persist into the twenty-first century—see Rosser-Owen, I., ‘Just a few minor conversions’, emel, 5 (2004), pp.â6–11. 59.âPrincipal Registry of the Family Division (Probate) [hereafter PRFD], Will

and Grant of F. E.Â Â Cates, 1900. 60.âReprinted in TC, 29:741 (1907), p.â1048. 61.âTC, 7:160 (1896), p.â508. 62.â Quoted in Muir, ‘“Church”’, pp.â415–7. 63.âTC, 18:445 (1901), p.â55. 64.âIncluding plumbers, painters and nurses, a stonemason, railway porter, and several low-ranking soldiers and police officers. This finding contrasts with the profile of contemporary British Muslim converts, who are typically from the broad middle classes—see Köse, Conversion, p.â80; Franks, M., ‘ÂCrossing the borders of whiteness? White Muslim women who wear the Hijab in Britain today’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23:5 (2000), p.â918. 65.âManchester Guardian, reprinted in Oliver, G., ‘Robert Reschid Stanley’, Cheshire Ancestor, September 2005, pp.â24–5. 66.âTC, 24:615 (1904), p.â266 and 29:741 (1907), pp.â1043–74. Stanley was a publican at the time of the 1891 Census: information from Gay Oliver, 11 November 2005. 67.âKilmarnock Standard and Ayrshire Advertising Leader, 2 March 1907, p.â3;

IW, 6:83 [c.1906], pp.â381–3 and 8:87 [c.1907], p.â88; Parkinson, J. Y.,Â Muslim Chivalry, Rangoon: British Burma Press, 1909.

270 NOTES pp. [104–109] 68.âTC, 13:318 (1899), p.â100. 69.âThe Reporter [Salford], 3 June 1905, p.â5; The imesT , 29 May 1905, p.â6; TNA, General Register Office Records [hereafter RG], RG48/310 (1905). 70.âIW, 4:39 (1896), p.â72. 71.âTC, 1:17 (1893), pp.â135–6. 72.âTC, 13:328 (1899), p.â60. 73.âTC, 26:667 (1905), p.â260. 74.âTC, 15:388 (1900), pp.â397–8. 75.âTC, 26:667 (1905), p.â260. 76.âTC, 24:611 (1904), pp.â195–7 and 1:6 (1893), pp.â46–8. 77.âTC, 14:341 (1899), p.â58. 78.â See, for example, Yehiya McQuinn’s lecture on ‘The Unbelievers’, TC, 1:8 (1893), p.â62. 79.â Several shared Quilliam’s penchant for freemasonry on the grounds that it advocated friendship, though they did not feel the need to justify its exclu- sion of women. By 1902, twelve of the twenty members of the ÂLiverpool Ancient Order of Zuzimites were British Muslims. According to Quilliam, Zuzimite Worshipful Grand Master, the Order was completely non-sectarian and taught the virtues of friendship, truth and love: TC, 20:498 (1902), p.â74 and 22:550 (1903), p.â76. 80.âTC, 15:387 (1900), pp.â379–80. 81.âTC, 10:253 (1897), p.â731. 82.â See, for example, TC, 1:3 (1893), p.â24 and 19:487 (1902), pp.â315–7 for a detailed account of Cecil/Abdul-Hamid Le Mesurier’s adoption of Islam over Christianity, Buddhism, Theosophy and Hinduism, while living in the East. The simple formal conversion process is detailed in TC, 7:159 (1896), p.â491. 83.âTC, 15:387 (1900), pp.â379–80. 84.âTC, 26:667 (1905), p.â259. 85.â Published posthumously in IW, 4:47 (1897), pp.â321–39. 86.âTC, 2:45 (1893), p.â358.

87.â Bryson, A., ‘Riotous Liverpool, 1815–1860’, in Belcham, J. (ed.),Â Popular Politics, Riot and Labour: Essays in Liverpool History 1790–1940, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992, pp.â98–134; Geaves, Islam, pp.â42–8. 88.âAbd-Allah, U. F., A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of AlexanderRussell Â Webb, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.â236, 261–2. 89.âIbid., p.â171. 90.âTC, 16:410 (1900), p.â323. 91.âTC, 16:408 (1900), p.â298. 92.âTC, 13:328 (1899), p.â260. 93.âTC, 2:48 (1893), p.â383.

271 pp. [109–114] NOTES 94.âLiverpool Daily Post [hereafter LDP], 29 October 1891, p.â6. 95.âTC, 2:42 (1893), pp.â334–5. Williamson’s story is sensationally documented in Hope, S., Arabian Adventurer: The Story of Haji Williamson, London: Robert Hale, 1951. 96.âTC, 7:163 (1896), pp.â550–1, 556–7 and 15:377 (1900), pp.â213–4. Le Mesurier later took a successful libel action against the proprietor of the Ceylon Independent, who had accused him of having abused his position to purchase land from the ‘natives’ for a nominal sum: The Times, 1 April 1899, p.â9, 11 June 1902, p.â4, 12 June 1902, pp.â3–4, 22 November 1902, p.â14, 10 June 1903, p.â3, 11 June 1903, p.â14, 12 June 1903, p.â3 and 11 December 1903, p.â6. 97.âSee, for example, IW, 3:31 (1895), pp.â214–22; TC, 19:485 (1902), p.â278 and 30:774 (1907), p.â334. 98.âLR, 28 November 1891, p.â14. 99.âIbid. 100.âLR, 12 December 1891, p.â6. 101.âLR, 19 December 1891, p.â6. 102.âTC, 2:43 (1893), p.â337. 103.âTC, 1:11 (1893), pp.â83–4. 104.âTC, 5:104 (1895), p.â15. 105.âQuoted in TC, 5:106 (1895), p.â27. 106.âTC, 15:383 (1900), p.â316 107.âSunday Telegraph [Sheffield], 29 October 1899, âp. 5. 108.âTNA, RG48/310. 109.â See, for example, TC, 7:161 (1896), p.â526.

110.âBrann, A. Â C., Muslim Liturgical Prayer, Liverpool: Crescent Publishing Company, 1906, pp.â17–8. 111.âTC, 1:2 (1893), pp.â12–3. 112.â On the growing phenomenon of Christian militarism in this period, see McLeod, H., Religion and Society in England, 1850–1914, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, pp.â152–4. 113.âTC, 5:103 (1895), back cover. 114.âThe Light [hereafter TL], 9:29 (1930), p.â4. 115.â This and the following information is based on entries in burial ground order books and registers in Liverpool Record Office: 352 CEM 10/4/32; 352 CEM 6/5/47; 352 CEM 6/4/170; 352 CEM 9/4/70; 352 CEM 6/5/45; 352 CEM 8/2/59; 352 CEM 3/1/10; 352 CEM 10/5/6. 116.âTC, 1:2 (1893), p.â14. 117.âLDP, 18 January 1893, p.â7. 118.âTC, 1:2 (1893), pp.â14–6. 119.âLR, 18 April 1891, p.â7.

272 NOTES pp. [114–118] 120.â On Muslim death and burial, see Ansari, H., ‘“Burying the Dead”: making Muslim space in Britain’, Historical Research, 80:210 (2007), pp.â545–66. 121.âDaily Dispatch [Manchester], 1 November 1900, p.â4. 122.â The Review of eligionsR [hereafter RoR], 9:12 (1910), p.â513. 123.âKilmarnock Standard and Ayrshire Advertising Leader, 2 March 1907, p.â3. 124.âHajji Browne went further than most converts in his support of the ÂBritish Empire by arguing that British occupation of Egypt was justified. Browne regretted that occupation had failed to qualify Egyptians to undertake government of their country, but praised Lord Cromer for granting the ‘natives’ civil liberties and personal freedoms: Browne, Haji A., Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of Today, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907, pp.â387–96. 125.âFor example, IW, 3:34 (1896), p.â293. 126.âReprinted in TC, 7:167 (1896), p.â615. 127.âTC, 24:607 (1904), p.â135. 128.âTC, 28:706 (1906), p.â468. 129.â See, for example, TC, 1:1 (1893), p.â3. 130.âAbd-Allah, Muslim, p.â72. 131.âThis figure cludesex those converts who delivered papers solely for the Institute’s Debating Society, which covered a wide range of topics not Ânecessarily related to Muslim/Islamic issues. 132.âAll twenty-one women were elected to the Medina Home and/or the Ladies Committee, with a few retaining additional posts including an Institute Executive Committee member and several assistant librarians. Data for the sixty men who held positions indicates that, as might be expected, the male converts filled a broader range of roles than women, including positions as teachers, auditors, secretaries, treasurers and committee members for the Institute, the Medina Home and the College. Only male converts acted as imams and muezzins, and officiated during Muslim funerals. 133.âTC, 25:650 (1905), pp.â403, 413. 134.âTC, 26:660 (1905), pp.â150–1. 135.âIbid. 136.âSee IW, 8:87 [c.1906], pp.â82–8. 137.âIbid., p.â82.

138.â See Ariff, A. C.,Â ‘Introduction’, in Parkinson, Muslim Chivalry, p.âiv. 139.âMW, 1:3 (1911), p.â345. 140.âIbid., pp.â345–6. 141.â Frederick Hameed-Ullah Bowman, for example, attended the LMI with his convert mother, Bertha Amina Bowman, between 1903 and 1908. As

273 pp. [118–121] NOTES he recalled in the IR in 1939, ‘So interested did I become that I even tried to emulate the local Sheikh, and, in a home-made robe, I mounted a box at home to address my own meeting of neighbours and spread the truths of the Muslim faith. The mosque eventually closed, and, for some time, I was out of touch with the Faith.’ Bowman saw a Woking missionary lecture on Islam at Southport in 1939, which rekindled his Muslim faith: ‘in maturity I see no reason to abandon the teachings of my childhood’. IR, 28:3 (1940), pp.â82, 116. 142.âTitle for a Muslim religious scholar.

143.âKidwai, M. H.,Â Islam in England, Lucknow: Newul Kishore Press, 1929, p.â3. 144.âAs far as can be ascertained, only one living descendant of the Institute’s British Muslim community adheres to Islam today, though the allure of Islam apparently skipped two generations before the three-times great- grandson of Reschid Stanley converted from Christianity after studying comparative religion and living in Egypt. It was only after his conversion that Stanley’s descendant discovered details of his Muslim heritage: ÂOliver, ‘Robert’, p.â27. 145.âRoR, 10:7 (1911), pp.â302–5. 146.âRoR, 11:7 (1912), p.â287. 147.âKidwai, Islam, p.â3. 148.âIR, 21:10 (1933), p.â362. 149.âInformation from Duna Sabri and Richard Cain. 150.âThe Philomath, 7:270 (1920). 151.âTNA, FO371/5723, A1644 (1921); DE, 7 March 1922, p.â7; The imesT , 13 December 1922, p.â12, 23 June 1927, p.â13, 18 December 1937, p.â3 and 20 December 1937, p.â9; Isle of Man Weekly Times, 5 March 1938, p.â11; Author’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002. 152.âTC, 26:660 (1905), p.â158; The Philomath, 5:255 (1917), p.â319; Author’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002.

153.âPRFD, Will and Grant of L. A.Â Quilliam,Â 1935. 154.âAuthor’s interview with Patricia Gordon, 16 October 2002.

155.âIbid.; PRFD, Will and Grant of M. Quilliam,Â 1952. 156.âInformation from Ian Simpson, Brookwood Cemetery Society, 20 June 2003. 157.âLDP, 21 July 1960, p.â6.

158.âInformation from Dr Â Mohammad Akbar Ali, Abdullah Quilliam Society, 9 November 2005; Daily Telegraph [hereafter DT], 1 January 2009: http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4060015/Englands-oldest-mosque-to-get-3-million-refurbishment.html, last accessed 15 July 2012.

274 NOTES pp. [123–127] 4.â‘BUCKLING ON THE ARMOUR OF ISLAM’: BRITISH CONVERSIONS, 1908–1953 1.âAs with the LMI database (Chapter Three), the WMM database determines British converts to Islam through specific reports of their conversion and/ or by inference from their adoption of Muslim names (267 of the 483 individuals in the database took a Muslim name), as recorded in WMM publications and other sources—primarily the Review of Religions (1902–47); The Light (1921–65); press cuttings; wills; and miscellaneous publications by British Muslims listed hereafter. The WMM database excludes those British Muslims connected with the WMM but known to have converted before its foundation in 1913 (for example Quilliam/Léon and Sheldrake) and other prominent British Muslims discussed later in this Chapter, such as Lady Evelyn Cobbold and Harry St John Bridger Philby, who were connected to the WMM but converted independently of it. 2.â Central Islamic Society, ‘The Central Islamic Society’ [Booklet], London: Central Islamic Society, 1916. 3.âMuslim India and Islamic Review [hereafter MIIR], 1:11 (1913), p.â427. 4.â The Crescent [hereafter TC], 27:679 (1906), p.â42. 5.âRoR, 11:7 (1912), pp.â288–9. 6.âRoR, 11:9 (1912), pp.â395–6. 7.â Ameer Ali, S., ‘Memoirs of the late Rt. Hon’ble Syed Ameer Ali’, Islamic Culture 6, 1932, pp.â503–4. See also the primary documents in Ansari,

H. Â(ed.), The Making of the East London Mosque, 1910–1951: Minutes of the London Mosque Fund and East London Mosque Trust Ltd, Camden Fifth Series, Vol.â38, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Royal Historical Society, 2011, especially pp.â81–101 for the years 1910–11. 8.âTNA, TS27/520. 9.â See Robinson, F., ‘Ahmad and the Ahmadiyya’, History Today, 40:6 (1990), pp.â42–7; Adamson, I., Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, n.pl.: Elite

ÂInternational Publications, 1989; Valentine, S. Â R., Islam and the ÂAhmadiyya Jama’at: History, Belief, Practice, London: Hurst, 2008. 10.âSee RoR, 8:3 (1909), pp.â104–5. 11.âQuoted in RoR, 12:12 (1913), p.â522. 12.âRoR, 10:2 (1911), pp.â45–54. 13.âMIIR, 1:2 (1913), pp.â75–8. 14.âMIIR, 1:5 (1913), pp.â173–86. 15.âReprinted in MIIR, 1:6 (1913), p.â209. 16.â Robinson, ‘Ahmad’, p.â47. 17.âMIIR, 1:1 (1913), pp.â3–4. 18.âIbid., pp.â5–6. 19.âMIIR, 1:5 (1913), pp.â167–9.

275 pp. [128–134] NOTES 20.âMIIR, 1:6 (1913), pp.â238–40 and 1:7 (1913), pp.â261–3. 21.â Islamic Review [hereafter IR], 21:3 (1933), p.â63. 22.âReprinted in MIIR 1:11 (1913), p.â405. 23.âRoR, 12:12 (1913), pp.â519–20. 24.âFor more on these issues, see Powell, D., TheEdwardian Crisis: Britain, 1901–1914, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996. 25.âIRMI, 4:1 (1916), p.â2 and 3:11 (1915), p.â551. 26.âRoR, 13:1 (1914), p.â39. 27.âQur’an, 2:256. 28.âReprinted in Muslim World [hereafter MW], 8:2 (1918), pp.â204–5. 29.â For more on Headley, see IR, 23:9 (1935), pp.â322–8; The imesT , 24 June 1935, p.â9; Tomes, J., ‘Winn, Rowland George Allanson Allanson-’, in ÂMatthew, H. C. G. and Harrison, B. (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter ODNB], 59, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp.â744–6. 30. â“A[llanson]. W[inn].”, Thoughts for the Future, London and Felling-on- Tyne: Walter Scott, 1913, pp.â10–1. 31.âMIIR, 1:11 (1913), pp.â409–10. 32.âAuthor’s interview with Headley’s great-granddaughter, Pat Scott, ÂBerkshire, 14 February 2003.

33.â“A. ÂW.”, Thoughts, p.â12. 34.âIR, 21:4–5 (1933), p.â109. 35. âHeadley, Lord, A Western Awakening to Islam, Second edn, Woking: ÂWoking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1949, pp.â72–3. 36.âMIIR, 1:9 (1913), pp.â355–7. 37.â Islamic Review and Muslim India [hereafter IRMI], 3:1 (1915), p.â9. 38.âIR, 14:9 (1926), p.â348. 39.âMIIR, 1:10 (1913), pp.â377–81. 40.âIbid., pp.â381–4. 41.âSee The Near East[hereafter NE], 6:134 (28 November 1913), p.â106 42.âMIIR, 1:11 (1913), pp.â403–13. 43.âReprinted in ibid., p.â410. 44.âIbid., p.â414. 45.âThe Observer [hereafter TO], 23 November 1913, p.â4. 46.âHeadley, Al-Hajj Lord, The Affinity between the Original Church of Jesus Christ and Islam, Woking: Trust for the Encouragement and Circulation of Muslim Religious Literature, 1927, p.â11. 47.âReprinted in MIIR, 2:3 (1914), pp.â98–9. 48.âIbid., p.â99. 49.âTO, 23 November 1913, p.â4. 50.âIRMI, 4:4 (1916), pp.â147–50.

276 NOTES pp. [134–140] 51.âTO, 23 November 1913, p.â4. 52.âReprinted in MIIR, 1:11 (1913), p.â407. 53.âIbid., p.â408. 54.âReprinted in IR, 11:9 (1923), p.â314. 55.âMW, 4:2 (1914), p.â201. 56.âMIIR, 1:12 (1914), p.â441. 57.âIbid. 58.âQuoted in MIIR 1:11 (1913), p.â404. 59.âReprinted in ibid., p.â411. 60.âIbid., p.â401. 61.âTO, 23 November 1913, p.â4. 62.âMIIR, 1:12 (1914), pp.â459–63. 63.âMW, 4:2 (1914), pp.â198. 64.âIRMI, 3:3 (1915), p.â111. 65.âReprinted in IRMI, 2:2 (1914), pp.â54–5. 66.âIRMI, 2:9 (1914), pp.â454–5. 67.âIRMI, 2:11–12 (1914), p.â529. 68.âIbid., p.â530. 69.âIbid. 70.âIRMI, 3:1 (1915), pp.â9–11. 71.âIbid., p.â8. 72. âLavan, S., The Ahmadiyah Movement: A History and Perspective, Delhi: Manohar, 1974; Robinson, ‘Ahmad’, p.â44. 73.â For an explanation of the differences between Sunni and Shi’a Islam, see

Esposito, J. L.,Â Islam: The Straight Path, Third edn, New York: Oxford ÂUniversity Press, 1998, pp.â43–5. 74.â See, for example, TC, 8:186 (1896), p.â919. 75.â For a good (and contemporaneous) comparative study of the Qadianis and

Lahoris, see Addison, J. T.,Â ‘The Ahmadiya movement and its Western propaganda’, Harvard Theological Review, 22:1 (1929), pp.â1–32. Also see

ÂWalter, H. A.,Â The Ahmadiya Movement, London: Milford/Oxford ÂUniversity Press, 1918. 76.âRoR, 21:6–8 (1922), pp.â198–9. 77.âSee IR, 28:7 (1940), pp.â241–51. 78.â See, for example, RoR, 18:3–4 (1919), p.â127. 79.âRoR, 15:2 (1916), p.â79. 80.âRoR, 15:9 (1916), p.â350. 81.âRoR, 20:2 (1921), p.â74. 82.âThe Times, 2 October 1926, p.â7; RoR, 1:1 [New Series] (1924), frontispiece. 83.â TNA, FO371/11433, E5667 (1926); RoR, 24:11 (1925), pp.â6–10.

277 pp. [141–148] NOTES 84.â Two of the unknowns converted in 1917, and one in 1933. 85.âMuslim Times [hereafter MT], 2:25–26 (1937), p.â6. 86.âRoR, 40:1 (1941), pp.â1–10. 87.âRoR, 97:7 (2002), p.â55. 88.âWMM and LMM sources rarely provided details of previous religious affiliation of new converts, inferring that most were Christians. Of the twenty-nine converts in the WMM database whose previous religion is known, all were Christians, four of them Roman Catholics and one ÂScottish Presbyterian. 89.âIR, 18:1 (1930), p.â18. 90.âIRMI, 7:6 (1919), p.â206. 91.âIRMI, 5:2–3 (1917), p.â62. 92.âIR, 22:3 (1934), pp.â62–3. 93.âIRMI, 3:9 (1915), p.â469. 94.âIR, 27:2 (1939), p.â47. 95.âIR, 21:11 (1933), p.â367. 96.âIRMI, 4:6 (1916), p.â263. 97.âRoR, 33:9–10 (1934), pp.â345–50. 98.âIR, 21:9 (1933), pp.â285–6. 99.âIRMI, 4:3 (1916), p.â108. 100.âIR, 20:6–7 (1932), p.â214. 101.âIRMI, 4:11 (1916), p.â508.

102.âIRMI, 3:1 (1915), p.â17; Lovegrove, J. W.,Â What is Islam?, Second edn, Woking: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1934, p.â19. 103.â For more on the psychological effect of war on religious belief/behaviour,

see Loewenthal, K. M,Â The Psychology of Religion: A Short Introduction, Oxford: Oneworld, 2000, pp.â32–3; in the context of the First World War, see Brown, C. G., Religion and Society in Twentieth-century Britain, Harlow: Pearson, 2006, ch. 3. 104.âCobbold, Lady E., Pilgrimage to Mecca, London: John Murray, 1934, p.âxiii. 105.â PA, Lady Evelyn Cobbold Papers [hereafter LECP], Untitled poem dated 7 May 1889, transcribed on Holkham [Hall], Norfolk, notepaper. 106.â Cobbold, Lady E., Wayfarers in the Libyan Desert, London: Humphreys, 1912, pp.â4, 71. 107.âIbid., p.â51. These sentences are omitted from Alexander’s edition of the text. 108.âIbid., p.â120. Alexander substitutes Cobbold’s last sentence here with: ‘But the modern spirit of unbelief is beginning to attack the Mohammedan

world’: Alexander, F. Â G., Wayfarers in the Libyan Desert, New York: ÂPutnam’s/Knickerbocker Press, 1912, p.â248.

278 NOTES pp. [148–156]

109. âLawrence, M. Â R. Â (ed.), The Home Letters of T.E.Â Â Lawrence and his ÂBrothers, Oxford: Blackwell, 1954, p.â287. 110.âCobbold, Pilgrimage, pp.âxiii-xiv. 111.âIbid., p.âxiv. It is unclear whether Cobbold made a public profession of Islam. 112.âPickthall, M., Oriental Encounters: Palestine and Syria (1894–5–6), New edn, London: Heinemann, 1929, p.âvii. 113.âIbid., p.âix. 114.âIbid., p.âxi. 115.âFremantle, A., Loyal Enemy, London: Hutchinson, 1938, p.â59. 116.âPickthall, Oriental, p.â63. 117.â Quoted in Fremantle, Loyal, p.â30. 118.âIbid., pp.â81–2. 119.âNew York Times [hereafter NYT], 28 August 1907, p.â7. 120.âSee Clark, P., Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim, London: Quartet, 1986, pp.â26–8. 121.âPickthall, M., With the Turk in Wartime, London: Dent, 1914, p.âix. 122.â Pickthall, M., ‘Letters from Turkey’, IC, 11:4 (1937), p.â420. 123.âFremantle, Loyal, p.â224. Fremantle converted to Islam in 1920. Though only ten years old, she was introduced to Islam and then Kamal-ud-Din by Pickthall, and repeated the shahada. At such a young age and without family support, she quickly left Islam, eventually settling on Catholicism: Fremantle, A., Three-cornered Heart, New York: Viking Press, 1970, p.â197. 124.âIbid., p.â227. 125.âRoR, 12:12 (1913), p.â520. 126.âFremantle, Loyal, p.â252. 127.â Somerset Archive and Record Service [hereafter SARS], Aubrey Herbert Papers [hereafter DD/HER], DD/HER/52, Pickthall to Herbert, 15Â January 1915. 128.âIRMI, 6:1 (1918), p.â4. 129.âIbid., p.â5. 130.âIbid., pp.â5–6; Clark, Marmaduke, p.â46. 131.âIRMI, 3:1 (1915), p.â27. 132.âIRMI, 4:10 (1916), p.â453. 133. âStevenson, J., British Society 1914–45, New edn, London: Penguin, 1990, pp.â356–7. 134.âIRMI, 2:11–12 (1914), p.â601. 135.âIRMI, 3:2 (1915), pp.â63–8. 136.âSee IRMI, 2:1 (1914), p.â1. 137.âIRMI, 3:1 (1915), p.â1. 138.âIRMI, 2:10 (1914), pp.â488–90.

279 pp. [156–159] NOTES 139.âNote, for example, the caption to the frontispiece of IR, 19:7 (1931), which shows Muslims ‘of all nationalities’ standing behind the imam to pray during eid al-adha at Woking: ‘Islam is the only solution of the colour problem.’ 140.âIRMI, 4:9 (1916), frontispiece. 141.âReprinted in IRMI, 6:10–11 (1918), p.â354. 142.âIRMI, 6:5 (1918), p.â197. 143.âIRMI, 5:8 (1917), pp.â317–8. 144.âIRMI, 7:10 (1919), p.â358. 145. âTidrick, K., Heart-beguiling Araby, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, ch. 8. 146.âIbid., pp.â209–15. 147.â See Monroe, E., Philby of Arabia, New edn, Reading: Ithaca, 1998, ch. 1. 148.âIbid., p.â36. 149.âIbid., pp.â54–5, 91. 150.âIbid., pp.â16–7. 151.â The propagandist nature of missionary source material means that examples of opportunistic conversions at Woking and elsewhere are not documented. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that there were a number of questionable conversions at Woking. David/Dawud Cowan considered late in life that some British Muslims were ‘just interested in the exotic people of the mosque’: Author’s interview with David Cowan, London, 21 October 2002. 152.â Quoted in Monroe, Philby, pp.â2, 139. 153.âIbid., p.â131. 154.âIbid., pp.â135–6. 155.â Middle East Centre Archive, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford [hereafter MECA], Philby Collection [hereafter PC], Islam in England

Box [hereafter IEB], Philby, H. Â St J. Â B., ‘The London Mosque: inaugura- tion by the Amir Faisal Ibn Saud’, Unpublished MS. [c.1926], n.p. 156.â Quoted in Monroe, Philby, p.â151. 157.âIbid., p.â141. 158.âQuoted in ibid., p.â157. 159.âMECA, PC, Unboxed 1/4/5/2, Philby’s Diary of a Visit to the Hijaz, 3ÂAugust 1930, pp.â83–4. 160.âDaily Herald, 8 September 1930, p.â9. 161.â TNA, Colonial Office Records [hereafter CO], CO732/45/7, Hope Gill to George Rendel [1889–1979], FO, 30 August 1930. 162.â TNA, FO967/38, Ryan to Oliphant, 10 August 1930. 163.â TNA, CO732/45/7, Hope Gill to Rendel, 19 August 1930. 164.âIbid., 30 August 1930.

280 NOTES pp. [159–163] 165.âOIOC, Political and Secret Department Papers [hereafter L/PS], L/ PS/12/15, PZ1654, British Legation Jidda to IO, 12 February 1931. 166.âMonroe, Philby, p.â286. 167.âSee Stevenson, British, pp.â358, 362. On Church anxieties in this period, see Brown, Religion, pp.â106–12. 168. âHeadley, Lord, The Three Great Prophets of the World: Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, Woking: Islamic Review, 1923, p.â7. 169.âWolffe, J., God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland 1843–1945, London: Routledge, 1994, p.â241. 170.âMcLeod, Religion, p.â193. 171. âStevenson, British, p.â371; Brown, Religion, pp.â117–9; Oliver, Buddhism, pp.â49–53. 172.âIR, 23:10 (1935), p.â395.

173.âIsherwood, C., Diaries, Volume One: 1939–60, ed. K. Bucknell,Â London: Vintage, 1996, pp.âxiii-xiv.

174.âRodinson, M., Europe and the Mystique of Islam, trans. R. Â Veinus, New edn, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1991, p.â73. 175.â Lit. ‘the way’, used to describe the inner path of purification that parallels with maintenance of sharia and, for Sufis, constitutes the correct or complete practice of Islam. 176.â See Anon., ‘Sufism in the West’, MW, 7:1 (1917), pp.â29–35; Sedgwick, M., ‘European neo-Sufi movements in the inter-war period’, in Clayer, N. and Germain, E. (eds), Islam in Inter-war Europe, London: Hurst, 2008, pp.â183–215; Geaves, R., The Sufis of Britain: An Exploration of Muslim Identity, Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press, 2000, ch. 5. 177.âParkinson, for example, argued that, ‘The Suffi [sic] was right in the attempt to attain pure selflessness. He was wrong when he attempted to lose himself in the Divine, in the thought of God alone. It should have been always remembered that we are of this earth, earthy; part of the human family, and that we have a duty to perform towards others: a duty that the Prophet made one of the pillars of Islam.’ IRMI, 3:3 (1915), p.â148. 178.â See, for example, ibid., pp.â132–3.

179. âRodinson, Europe, p.â73; Winter, T., ‘Review of Rosher, L. andÂ ÂCherqaoui, F., D’Une foi l’autre: Les Conversions à l’Islam en Occident’, Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 10:1 (1989), p.â292.

180.â See also Lawless, R. I.,Â From Ta‘izz to Tyneside: An Arab Community in the North-east of England during the Early Twentieth Century, Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1995, especially pp.â219–20. 181.âIR, 33:4 (1945), pp.â102–4. 182.âSee Anon., ‘Introduction’, in Faridi, S., Inner Aspects of Faith, Delhi: Noor Publishing House, 1985, n.p. 183.âIRMI, 3:3 (1915), pp.â135–6.

281 pp. [163–169] NOTES 184.âSee Melman, B., Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties: ÂFlappers and Nymphs, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988, pp.â94–104. 185.âJournal of the Central Asian Society [hereafter JCAS], 7:4 (1920), p.â108. 186.âWolffe, God, p.â241; Hazelgrove, J., ‘Spiritualism after the Great War’, Twentieth Century British History, 10:4 (1999), pp.â404–30. 187.âThe Physiologist, 5:21 (1928), p.â199. See, for example, IRMI, 5:7 (1917), pp.â296–304. 188.âHeadley, Affinity, pp.â140, 149. 189.âWhymant, N., Psychic Adventures in New York, London: Morley and ÂMitchell, 1931. 190.âIR, 20:12 (1932), pp.â427–30. See also IR, 19:1 (1931), pp.â70–6. 191.âWhile gambling continued to grow, illegitimacy levels fell dramatically in the early 1920s: Brown, Religion, pp.â122, 149. 192.âIRMI, 6:10–11 (1918), p.â369. 193.âIR, 21:3 (1933), p.â86. 194.âIR, 12:2 (1924), pp.â77–8. 195.âDewey, P., War and Progress: Britain 1914–1945, Harlow: Longman, 1997, p.â188; Brown, Religion, 160. 196.âStevenson, British, p.â357. 197.âIR, 28:3 (1940), p.â118. 198.âIR, 29:2 (1941), p.â47. 199.âReprinted in ibid., p.â49. Halifax’s private secretary replied that his ÂLordship did not intend to be, ‘unfriendly to the Muslim or to any other religion’; he believed that, ‘all true religions alike are faced by common danger—such as materialism and excessive nationalism—against which it is in the interest of all of them to make common cause. He who in this war fights for any one of them is […] fighting for all alike’ (ibid.). 200.âIR, 29:3 (1941), p.â157. 201.âIR, 29:11–12 (1941), p.â450. 202.âSee, for example, letters from Private Gilbert Eric/Osman Smith in IR, 30 (1942). 203.âSee IR, 33:3 (1945), p.â92. On the East London Mosque, see Ansari, Making. 204.âIR, 29:9 (1941), p.â356. 205.âIR, 27:2 (1939), p.â49. 206.âIR 37:4 (1949), pp.â49–50. 207.âLewisham Islamic Community Website: http://lkic.org/british_muslims. htm, last accessed 26 July 2006. 208.âRoR, 97: 7 (2002), pp.â49–53. 209.âIR, 40:6 (1952), pp.â14–5.

210.âArberry, A. J.,Â An Introduction to the History of Sufism, New edn, London: Sangam, 1999, pp.â2–4.

282 NOTES pp. [169–174] 211.âIR, 27:7 (1939), pp.â269–74. 212.âRodinson, Europe, p.â73; Waterfield, R., René Guénon and the Future of the West, n.pl.: Crucible, 1987. 213.âThe Times, 25 May 2005, p.â30; The Guardian, 27 May 2005, p.â31. 214.âEaton, G., Islam and the Destiny of Man, Cambridge: Islamic Texts ÂSociety, 1994, p.â9.

215.âEaton, H. LeÂ G., ‘Tribute to Martin Lings’, Q News, 363 (2005), p.â60. 216.âRofé, H., The Path of Subud, London: Rider, 1959, pp.â7, 18, 27. 217.â Of central importance is a spiritual exercise called latihan, through which individuals feel an inner vibration directing them to move, laugh, cry, sing, dance or pray. These experiences are believed to be the working of God within the individual: Rofé, H., Reflections on Subud, n.pl.: ÂHumanity Publishing Group, 1960. 218.âRofé, Path, pp.â8, 49. 219.âIR, 42:7 (1954), p.â39; MECA, PC, IEB, Rofé to Philby, 22 June 1954. 220.â Of the four undated marriages, three were recorded in the Islamic Review after the outbreak of war. 221.â Murray Abdullah, M., My Khyber Marriage: Experiences of a Scotswoman as the Wife of a Pathan Chieftain’s Son, New edn, London: Octagon, 1990, p.â10. 222.âIbid., p.â73. 223.â Evans, N., ‘The South Wales race riots of 1919’, Llafur, 3:1 (1980), p.â6. 224.âLittle, K., Negroes in Britain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society, Revised edn, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972; ÂCollins, S., Coloured Minorities in Britain: Studies in British Race Relations based on African, West Indian and Asiatic Immigrants, London: ÂLutterworth, 1957. 225.âLittle, Negroes, pp.â136–7; Lawless, Ta‘izz, p.â175. 226.âLawless, Ta‘izz, p.â175.

227.âCollins, S. F.,Â ‘The social position of white and “Half-Caste” women in colored groupings in Britain’, American Sociological Review, 16:6 (1951), p.â797. 228.âCollins, Coloured, p.â160. 229.âReprinted in IR, 19:6 (1931), p.â188. 230.âIR, 22:1–2 (1934), p.â23. 231.â TNA, FO370/470 (1935). 232.âSee IR, 39:11 (1951), p.â44. 233.âReprinted in RoR, 36:5 (1937), p.â193. 234.â Tarja Moles has estimated that 232 people converted to Qadiani Islam in Britain between 1914 and 1961, though not all were of British origin: Moles, T., ‘The evolution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in the

283 pp. [174–181] NOTES UK, 1913–2003’, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of London, 2009, p.â206. 235.âWebsite of Bashir Ahmad Rafiq, ‘Biography’: http://www.bashirrafiq.com/ page2/page24/index.html, last accessed 5 December 2009. 236.âIRMI, 5:11 (1917), p.â485. 237.âHe polled just 86 votes: The Times, 5 July 1892, p.â13. 238.âSee TL, 10:43–44 (1931), pp.â1–2; IR, 24:7 (1936), p.â274.

239.âReprinted in Massingberd, H. (ed.),Â The Daily Telegraph Book of Obituar- ies: A Celebration of Eccentric Lives, London: Macmillan, 1995, pp.â72–5. 240.âWho Was Who, 8, p.â624. 241.âIbid. 242.âSee Lovegrove’s obituary in Tailor and Cutter and Women’s Wear, 3 Janu- ary 1941, n.p. 243.âThe WMM also sent missionaries into mainland European countries such as France, Belgium, Holland and Germany in the interwar years. It found considerable support in Germany, establishing a mosque and mission in Berlin in the early 1920s. See TL, 4:10 (1925), p.â1 and 17:37 (1938), pp.â9–10.

5.â‘SENDING UP A SILENT PRAYER FOR ALLAH’: BRITISH MUSLIM LIVES, 1908–1953 1.âSee The eviewR of Religions [hereafter RoR], 33:6 (1934), pp.â229–39. 2.âRoR, 29:7 (1930), frontispiece. 3.â Islamic Review [hereafter IR], 12:11 (1924), p.â376; IR 17:10 (1929), p.â382. 4.âThe Times, 10 January 1935, p.â12. 5.âMECA, PC, IEB, Un-referenced press cutting [c.1935]. 6.âIR, 20:2–3 (1932), pp.â76–7. 7.âAuthor’s interview with David Cowan, 21 October 2002; Egyptian Gazette, 27 August 1934, n.p.; IR, 29:11–12 (1941), pp.â402–3. The letter accom- panying his declaration form was published (with Cowan’s name spelt ‘Conan’) in IR, 19:6 (1931), p.â219. 8.âSee IR, 21:12 (1933), p.â425. 9.âThe gender of three (2.3 per cent) is unknown. 10.â Islamic Review and Muslim India [hereafter IRMI], 8:8–9 (1920), p.â308. 11.âSee Bibliography. 12.âThe East and the estW , 25 (1927), p.â374. 13.âAddison, J. T., ‘The Ahmadiya movement and its Western propaganda’, Harvard Theological Review, 22:1 (1929), p.â5.

14.âForster, E. M.,Â Abinger Harvest, London: Arnold, 1936, p.â250. 15.âSee Clark, P., Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim, London: Quartet, 1986, for summaries of Pickthall’s main publications.

284 NOTES pp. [181–185] 16.âIRMI, 6:1 (1918), pp.â5–11. See also his ‘Islam and progress’, IRMI, 5:8 (1917), pp.â337–52 and 5:9 (1917), pp.â368–84. 17.âIRMI, 7:7–8 (1919), p.â305. 18.â Quoted in Pickthall, M[urial]., ‘A great English Muslim’, Islamic Culture [hereafter IC], 11:1 (1937), p.â140.

19. âBosworth, C. E.,Â ‘Pickthall, Mohammed Marmaduke William’, in The

ÂEncyclopaedia of Islam, eds Bosworth, C. E.,Â van Donzel, E., Heinrichs,

W. ÂP., and Lecomte, G., New edn, 8, Leiden: Brill, 1995, p.â306.

20.â The lectures erew quickly published collectively as Pickthall, M. Â M., The Cultural Side of Islam, Madras: Committee of Madras Lectures on Islam, 1927. 21.â Pickthall, ‘Great English Muslim’, p.â141.

22.âPickthall, M. (trans.),Â The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory

Translation, London: Alfred A. Knopf,Â 1930; Pickthall, M. M.,Â TheÂMeaning

of the Glorious Qur’an: Text and Explanatory Translation, rev. and ed. A. K.Â El-Â

Ashi, Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 2002; Pickthall, M. M,Â Cultural Side of Islam, New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1990. 23.âShields Gazette and Shipping Telegraph [hereafter SGST], 22 February 1937, p.â3. 24.âCollins, S. F., ‘The social position of white and “Half-Caste” women in colored groupings in Britain’, American Sociological Review, 16:6 (1951), pp.â799–800; Halliday, F., Arabs in Exile: Yemeni Migrants in Urban Brit-

ain, London: I. B.Â Tauris,Â 1992, p.â42. 25.â Collins, ‘Social position’, p.â800.

26.âIbid. See also Serjeant, R. B.,Â ‘Yemeni Arabs in Britain’, Geographical ÂMagazine, 17:1–2 (1944–45), pp.â143–7. 27.â See Collins, ‘Social position’, p.â799. 28.âCollins, S., Coloured Minorities in Britain: Studies in British Race Relations based on African, West Indian and Asiatic Immigrants, London: Lutterworth, 1957, pp.â167–8. 29.â Collins, S., ‘Social processes integrating coloured people in Britain’, ÂBritish Journal of Sociology, 3:1 (1952), p.â28; Collins, Coloured, p.â197. 30.âSee Lawless, R. I., From Ta‘izz to Tyneside: An Arab Community in the ÂNorth-east of England during the Early Twentieth Century, Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1995, chs, 4–6. 31.âReprinted in ibid., p.â97. 32.â The Light[hereafter TL], 10:26 (1931), p.â6; Lawless, Ta‘izz, chs, 5–6. 33.âSGST, 16 August 1937, p.â2; IR, 40:8 (1952), p.â37. 34.â See, for example, Asad, M., Islam at the Crossroads, Revised edn, Selangor: The Other Press, 1982. Asad remains one of the best-known European con-

verts to Islam—see Nawwab, I. I.,Â ‘Berlin to Makkah: Muhammad Asad’s journey into Islam’, Saudi Aramco World, 53:1 (2002), pp.â6–32.

285 pp. [185–191] NOTES 35.âIRMI, 3:1 (1915), pp.â13–16. 36.âIR, 17:6 (1929), p.â192. 37.âIR, 15:3 (1927), p.â88; Kamal-ud-Din, K., Islam and the Muslim Prayer, Woking: The Mosque, 1914. Some of the photographs are reproduced in this book. 38.âIRMI, 3:1 (1915), p.â14. 39.âIR, 21:8 (1933), p.â279. 40.âIR, 27:1 (1939), pp.â25–6. 41.âIRMI, 4:1 (1916), p.â20. 42.âIRMI, 3:3 (1915), p.â149. 43.âIRMI, 4:4 (1916), p.â146.

44.â Quoted in Tibawi, A. L.,Â ‘History of the London Central Mosque and the Islamic Cultural Centre, 1910–1980’, Die Welt des Islams, 21:1–4 (1981), p.â195.

45.âHe also published on the subject, most notably Allanson-Winn, R. G.,Â ÂBoxing, London: George Bell, 1889. 46.âSee IR, 17:9 (1929), pp.â340–2. 47.â See Tibawi, ‘History’, pp.â193–208. 48.âIR, 11:9 (1923), p.â328. 49.âIR, 9:6–7 (1921), p.â202. 50.âIRMI, 8:12 (1920), pp.â459–60. 51.âIR, 21:1–2 (1933), p.â30. 52.âRoR, 97:7 (2002), p.â53. 53.â See her correspondence with Philby in MECA, PC, IEB. 54.âHalliday, Arabs, p.â42; RoR, 97:7 (2002), p.â58. 55.âPickthall, Cultural, p.â61. 56.âThe Times, 30 August 1923, p.â7. 57.â New York Times [hereafter NYT], 21 October 1923, XX, p.â3. 58.â TNA, FO686/134 (1923) and FO371/8990, E7615, E7667 (1923). 59.â Headley , Lord, ‘Pilgrimage to Mecca’, Journal of the Central Asian Society [hereafter JCAS], 11:1 (1924), p.â21. See also Intelligence Reports in TNA, FO371/8946, E7439, E8413, E11919 (1923). 60.âOther accounts included Murray Abdullah, M., Valley of the Giant ÂBuddhas: Memoirs and Travels, London: Octagon, 1993, ch. 4, and Rutter, E., The Holy Cities of Arabia, 2 Vols, London: Putnam’s, 1928. Eldon Rutter (converted to Islam c.1922) performed the hajj in 1925. 61.âThe Times, 18 April 1935, p.â15; Cobbold, Lady E., ‘Pilgrim to Mecca’, Geographical Magazine, 1 (1935), pp.â107–16. 62.â Cobbold, Lady E., Pilgrimage to Mecca, London: John Murray, 1934, p.â27. 63.âEgyptian Gazette, 23 August 1934, p.â2. 64.âCobbold, Pilgrimage, p.â133.

286 NOTES pp. [191–195] 65.âMonroe, E., Philby of Arabia, New edn, Reading: Ithaca, 1998, pp.â154–

5; Philby, H. StÂ J. B.,Â A Pilgrim in Arabia, London: Robert Hale, 1946. 66.âIRMI, 3:1 (1915), pp.â13–4. 67.âThe Times, 11 December 1916, p.â5. 68.â See, for example, The East and the West, 15 (1917), p.â108. 69.âIRMI, 5:10 (1917), p.â428. 70.â Fremantle, A., Three-cornered Heart, New York: Viking Press, 1970, p.â196. 71.âAuthor’s interview with Cobbold’s granddaughter, Pamela Gibson-Watt, by telephone, 18 February 2003; Cobbold, Lady E., Kenya: The Land of Illusion, London: John Murray, 1935, pp.â25, 44. 72.â Quoted in Monroe, Philby, p.â190. 73.âIbid., p.â286. 74.âRoR, 97:7 (2002), p.â49. 75.âFremantle, Three-cornered, p.â196. 76.â See Charles Buchanan-Hamilton’s article justifying the injunction from a medical perspective in IR, 2:2 (1935), pp.â42–5. Muslim dietary laws concerning the slaughter of permitted animals stipulate that they should be drained of blood. The Qur’an forbids the eating of pig, carrion and birds of prey. 77.â Collins, ‘Social position’, p.â799. 78.âMuslim Times [hereafter MT], 2:15–16 (1937), p.â2. Kosher is permitted for Muslims. 79.âOn purdah, see IRMI, 6:10–11 (1918), pp.â361–2. 80. âPickthall, M., Veiled Women, London: Eveleigh Nash, 1913, pp.â122–3. See also Pickthall, M., Knights of Araby, London: Collins, 1917, p.â232. 81.âIRMI, 5:8 (1917), p.â343. 82.âIbid., pp.â343–8. 83.âIRMI, 7:12 (1919), p.â441. 84.âPickthall, Cultural, p.â135. 85.âCobbold, Lady E., Wayfarers in the Libyan Desert, London: Humphreys, 1912, pp.â42–3. 86.âCobbold, Pilgrimage, p.â185. 87.â Oddly, Pickthall considered the ‘adventures as described [in Pilgrimage to Mecca …] delightful and the propaganda rather an intrusion. I know those people, and their way of spoiling things by insisting upon missionising everywhere, in and out of season’: PA, LECP, Pickthall to Cobbold, 5 July 1934. 88.âCobbold, Pilgrimage, p.â150. 89.âIbid., p.â187. 90.â See, for example, IRMI, 4:8 (1916), photograph facing p.â343. 91.âSee RoR, 14:10 (1915), pp.â398–9.

287 pp. [196–199] NOTES 92.âCobbold, Pilgrimage, pp.â48, 79–80. 93.âIbid., p.â86. 94.â Headley , ‘Pilgrimage’, p.â29. 95.âSee the photograph of British wives of Yemenis in ceremonial dress, South Shields, c.1930s, reproduced in Halliday, Arabs, Plate 4. 96.â See, for example, IR, 27:6 (1939), frontispiece and 37:7 (1949), p.â39. On British Muslim convert women and headscarves in modern Britain, see Zebiri, K., British Muslim Converts: Choosing Alternative Lives, Oxford: Oneworld, 2008, pp.â105–10. 97.â Cobbold’s obituary in the Lahori’s Urdu journal, Paigham Sulh, suggests that she only visited Woking Mosque once—‘during the time of Maulana Sadr-ud-Din’, which would have been during or just after the First World War: trans. and reprinted in TL, May 2006, p.â6.

98.âQuoted in Facey, W. Â and Taylor, M., ‘Introduction: From Mayfair to Mecca—The Life of Lady Evelyn Cobbold’, in Cobbold, Lady E., Pilgrim- age to Mecca, New edn, London: Arabian Publishing, 2008, p.â38. 99.âAuthor’s interviews with Angus Sladen, Cobbold’s great-grandson, by telephone, 21 June and Hampshire, 13 December 2002; Author’s interview with Pamela Gibson-Watt, 18 February 2003. 100.âAuthor’s interview with Martin Dean, Cobbold’s lawyer, by telephone,

8 ÂJuly 2002. During his court case for drunkenness in 1916, Headley declined to take an oath on the Bible, preferring instead to swear, ‘on his honour as a peer of the realm’: The Times, 11 December 1916, p.â5. 101.âFollowing separation from her husband in 1921, Cobbold acquired a 15,000-acre Highland estate as well as a mews house in London’s May- fair, thereafter dividing her time between Scotland and England. 102.âDaily Sketch, 11 September 1961, p.â4; PA, WMM Papers [hereafter WMMP], Anthony Gilbey (Daily Sketch) to Tufail, 11 September 1961. 103.âPrincipal Registry of the Family Division (Probate) [hereafter PRFD],

Will and Grant of Lady E. Cobbold,Â 1963. 104.âSee IR, 51:4–6 (1963), p.â34. 105.âAuthor’s interview with Angus Sladen, 13 December 2002. The politician Tom Driberg (1905–76) recalled that his convert brother’s funeral in 1946 also experienced a hitch: ‘There was a contretemps: the undertakers, despite my careful instructions, had laid on a standard, i.e. Christian, coffin, and as it was removed from the hearse at the graveside, we were shocked to see on the top of it a large brass cross. The imam seemed distressed: we hastily hid the cross with flowers’: Driberg, T., Ruling Passions, London: Jon- athan Cape, 1977, p.â32. 106.âBesides Quilliam/Léon, other British Muslims buried in Brookwood include Safia Ahmad Faris (d. 1915; widow of the Arabic scholar Ahmad

288 NOTES pp. [199–204] Faris [1805/6–87]), Marmaduke Pickthall, Khalida Buchanan-Hamilton, Archibald Hamilton and Saira Shah. See IR, 27:6 (1939), p.â206, for a rare insight into Muslim funeral arrangements by WMM staff. As in earlier periods, most British Muslims were not given Muslim funerals, though exceptions included some of the wives of Muslims in Cardiff and South Shields, where bodies were ritually prepared and buried in Nonconform- ist areas of local cemeteries (see Lawless, Ta‘izz, pp.â209–12), and converts who lived in Muslim countries. The Qadianis did not secure a British burial ground until after the Second World War. 107.âIR, 15:11 (1927), p.â420. 108.âIbid., p.â421. The italics in the quote are as published in theIslamic Review. 109.âIRMI, 8:10 (1920), pp.â365–6.

110.â For example, Léon, H. M.,Â ‘The solidarity of Islam’, IRMI, 4:6 (1916), pp.â284–6. 111.âIRMI, 6:10–11 (1918), pp.â372–3. 112.âIRMI, 5:7 (1917), p.â298. 113.â TNA, FO371/1973, 85051, Sheldrake to FO, 19 December 1914. 114.âOIOC, L/PS/11/125, 3273, Metropolitan Police Report, 6 September 1915. 115.âRoR, 24:1 (1925), pp.â13–4. 116.âTL, 5:13 (1926), p.â5 and 5:15 (1926), p.â4; advert in The Muslim Review, 1:3 (1927), n.p. 117.â TNA, FO371/13871, J316, Day to Sudan Agent (Khartoum), 1929. 118.âThe Young Islam [hereafter YI], 1:9 (1934), supp., p.â1. Cowan became associated with the WMM around this time, recalling decades later that the squabbling continued: ‘Sheldrake was considered a bit of a charlatan. I remember Woking published a memorandum—it said “Is religion a business?” Various people said Sheldrake talked about Islam for the profit of the British secret service’: Author’s interview with David Cowan, 21 ÂOctober 2002. 119.â TNA, FO371/13871, J316, Day to Sudan Agent, 1929. 120.âThe imesT , 9 May 1931, p.â4; IR, 19:8 (1931), pp.â298–9; Daily Telegraph [hereafter DT], 9 May 1931, p.â5. 121.âTL, 5:14 (1926), p.â4. 122.âTL, 5:20 (1926), p.â5. 123.âIR, 15:7 (1927), pp.â245–6. 124.âIbid., p.â246. 125.âIR, 16:3 (1928), p.â119. 126.âReprinted in MW, 19:1 (1929), p.â76. 127.âIR, 16:9 (1928), p.â329. 128.âIR, 17:12 (1929), pp.â426–7.

289 pp. [204–210] NOTES 129.âGenuine Islam [Singapore], 1:1 (1936), p.â28. 130.âYI, 1:3–4 (1934), pp.â4, 10. 131.âSee YI, 2:16 (1936), p.â2; The Times, 12 December 1935, p.â18. 132.âWho Was Who, 8, p.â624. 133.âIR, 24:7 (1936), p.â274. 134.âMT, 1:16 (1936), p.â4. 135.â PA, WMMP, MSBG Booklet, n.d. (c.1937). 136.âIR, 25:9 (1937), pp.â347–8. 137.âIbid., pp.â348–50. 138.âReprinted in IR, 26:3 (1938), p.â118. 139.â The closest equivalent to ickard’sP ‘Council’, the umbrella organisation, Muslim Council of Britain, was inaugurated in 1997 with limited British convert involvement and no Ahmadi (Lahori or Qadiani) representation. 140.âSee IR, 27:1 (1939), pp.â24–30. 141.â Author ’s interview with David Cowan, 21 October 2002. 142.âOn discrimination against Muslims in more recent years, see Abbas,

T. Â(ed.), Muslim Britain: Communities under Pressure, London: Zed Books, 2005. 143.âPA, WMMP, Un-referenced press cutting [Woking News and Mail, 1914]. 144.âIR, 25:5 (1937), p.â188. 145.âIbid., p.â189. 146.âRoR, 20:7 (1921), p.â281. 147.âRoR, 11:7 (1912), p.â289. 148.â Annie Sheldrake’s Autograph Book, n.d. (c.1909–12), in the possession of Jim Howard, Sheldrake’s great-nephew. 149.âIRMI, 2:10 (1914), p.â499. 150.âIR, 20:5 (1932), p.â143. 151.âIbid., p.â146. 152.âTNA, FO372/2068, T10485, Undated Minutes [1923] and FO371/8946, E7439. 153.âIR, 15:7 (1927), p.â242. Following an unsuccessful appeal against his prosecution for drunkenness in 1916, Headley suspected that he was targeted by the police—‘possibly my position as an English Muslim offered irre- sistible attractions for assault from below’: IRMI, 5:10 (1917), p.â422. 154.âIR, 16:11 (1928), p.â392. The Islamic Review editor considered that ÂMarguerite-Lee’s letter, ‘needs no comment except that we should like our Muslim friends to appreciate the nature of obstacles which one has to surmount before one feels oneself free to openly cherish that which one holds to be true’ (ibid., p.â393). 155.âReprinted in IR, 21:12 (1933), p.â407. 156.âIbid.

290 NOTES pp. [210–216] 157.âIR, 27:2 (1939), p.â80. 158.âSee Ansari, H., ‘The Infidel Within’: Muslims in Britain since 1800, ÂLondon: Hurst, 2004, pp.â92–3. This was not necessarily a one-way process. For example, a Miss Formsby of Yorkshire married the Indian Khilafat leader (and elder brother of Mohamed Ali), Maulana Shaukat Ali (1873–1938), in India in 1932. Although she first converted to Islam, there was, ‘vehement opposition in orthodox circles, and when the marriage took place in an upper room of Shaukat Ali’s office [in Bombay,] armed men stood on guard on the stairway’: The Times, 28 November 1938, p.â16. See also Evening Standard, 25 April 1932, pp.â1, 4. 159.â Murray Abdullah, M., My Khyber Marriage: Experiences of a Scotswoman as the Wife of a Pathan Chieftain’s Son, New edn, London: Octagon, 1990, p.â20. 160.âIbid., pp.â19–20. 161.â Collins, ‘Social processes’, p.â25. 162.âEvans, N., ‘The South Wales race riots of 1919’, Llafur, 3:1 (1980); ÂLawless, Ta‘izz, esp. chs, 4–6; Tabili, L., “We Ask for British Justice”: ÂWorkers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain, New York: Cornell ÂUniversity Press, 1994; Byrne, D., ‘The 1930 ‘Arab Riot’ in South Shields: a race riot that never was’, Race and Class, 18:3 (1977), pp.â261–77. 163.â Evans, N., ‘Regulating the reserve army: Arabs, blacks and the local state in Cardiff, 1919–45’,Immigrants and Minorities, 4:2 (1985), pp.â86–98; Lawless, Ta‘izz, ch. 7. 164.â Quoted in Evans, ‘Regulating’, pp.â88–9. 165.âHalliday, Arabs, ch. 2; Lawless, Ta‘izz, ch. 7; Ansari, ‘Infidel’, especially pp.â201–4.

6.â‘LOYAL ENEMIES’? IDENTITIES, ALLEGIANCES AND THE ECLIPSE OF BRITISH MUSLIMS IN LATE-IMPERIAL BRITAIN 1.â Islamic Review and Muslim India [hereafter IRMI], 2:8 (1914), p.â395. 2.âIRMI, 2:10 (1914), p.â509. 3.âIRMI, 2:9 (1914), p.â445. 4.âTNA, FO371/2202, 52211, BMS Resolution, September 1914, and ÂHeadley to Grey, 22 September 1914. 5.â Muslim India and Islamic Review [hereafter MIIR], 1:11 (1913), p.â425. 6.âIRMI, 2:9 (1914), pp.â421–4. 7.âIRMI, 2:10 (1914), p.â493. 8.âIRMI, 2:11–12 (1914), p.â588. 9.âIbid., p.â589. 10.âIRMI, 3:1 (1915), p.â12.

291 pp. [216–221] NOTES 11.â TNA, FO371/1973, 85051, Sheldrake to Grey, 19 December 1914. 12.âOIOC, L/PS/11/125, 3273, Sheldrake to Arthur Balfour, 26 August 1917.

13.âIbid., Crabtree to Sir A. HirtzellÂ (IO), 31 July 1917 and 10 August 1917. 14. âHope, S., Arabian Adventurer: The Story of Haji Williamson, London: ÂRobert Hale, 1951, pp.â234, 282.

15.âEvans-Pritchard, E. E.,Â ‘Obituary [of J. H.Â Â Driberg]’, MAN, 47 (January 1947), pp.â11–13; Author’s interview with David Cowan, 21 October 2002. 16.âSee IRMI, 3:1 (1915), p.â12. 17.âAfrican Times and Orient Review [hereafter ATOR], 1:1 (1912), front cover. 18.âPickthall, M., ‘The black crusade’, The New Age, 12:1 (1912), p.â8. 19.â Pickthall, M., ‘The outlook in the earN East: for El Islâm’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 72:430 (1912), p.â1145. 20.âThe imesT , 18 January 1913, p.â5. See also Somerset Archive and Record Service [hereafter SARS], DD/HER/52, Pickthall to Herbert, 16 January 1913. 21.âClark, P., Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim, London: Quartet, 1986, pp.â25, 95. 22.âPickthall, M., With the Turk in Wartime, London: Dent, 1914, pp.Â155, xii. 23.âThe Near astE [hereafter NE], 6:142 (1914), p.â391. 24.âNE, 6:145 (1914), p.â475, 7:159 (1914), p.â75 and 7:160 (1914), p.â108; ATOR, 2:17–18 (1913), p.â184. 25.â The pen name of Frenchman Julien Viaud. 26.âNE, 6:133 (1913), p.â75. 27.âNE, 6:137 (1913), p.â233. 28.â SARS, DD/HER/52, Pickthall to Herbert, 20 March 1914. 29.âIbid., 15 January 1915. 30.â New York Times [hereafter NYT], 30 April 1916, p.â18. 31.â TNA, FO371/3015, 147160, AOS to Russian Foreign Minister, 24 July 1917. 32. âPickthall, M., Muslim Interests in Palestine, Woking/London: Central Islamic Society, 1917, p.â1. See also OIOC, L/PS/11/125, 3270 (1917). 33.âPickthall, Muslim Interests, p.â3. 34.âIbid., p.â10. 35.â TNA, FO371/3054, 217355, IS Resolution, 7 November 1917. 36.âIbid., Undated Minutes [1917]. 37.âSee, for example, TNA, FO371/2486, 34982 (1915); FO371/2488, 50954 (1918); FO371/3419, 197557 (1918).

38.âWinstone, H. Â V. F.,Â The Illicit Adventure: The Story of Political and Military Intelligence in the Middle East from 1898 to 1926, London: Jonathan Cape, 1982, pp.â310–1.

292 NOTES pp. [221–226] 39.â See Police Reports in OIOC, L/PS/11/125, 3273. 40.â TNA, FO371/3419, 199619 (1918). 41.â See, for example, TNA, FO371/4197, 52433 (1919). 42.â OIOC, L/PS/11/125, 3273, Minutes, October 1917. 43.âIbid., War Office to IO, 1 January 1918. 44.â See correspondence and notes in ibid. 45.â TNA, FO371/18604, W2570, MI5 Report, January 1934. 46.âSee TNA, FO371/18056, 1542, 1786, 1787 (1934); FO371/18057, 2015, 2381, 2790 (1934); FO371/18058, 3775, 3776 (1934); FO371/18210, F2297, Memo from British Legation Bangkok, 13 March 1934. Also, OIOC, L/PS/12/2363 (1934); Everest-Phillips, M., ‘The suburban King of Tartary’, Asian Affairs 21:3 (1990), pp.â324–5. 47.âSunday Express, 11 March 1934. 48.â See Pickthall, M., ‘The truth about the Turk’, Asiatic Review, 9–10 [Fourth Series] (1916), pp.â240–4. 49.â Quoted in Fremantle, A., Loyal Enemy, London: Hutchinson, 1938, p.â7. 50.âWinstone, Illicit, p.â434, fn. 179. 51.â SARS, DD/HER/52, Pickthall to Herbert, 15 January 1915. 52.âSaturday Review, 124:3241 (December 1917), pp.â461–2. 53.â TNA, FO371/2777, 116911, Undated Minutes, [1916]. 54.âIbid. 55.â Quoted in Fremantle, Loyal, p.â276.

56.â TNA, FO371/2778, 122654, Sykes to G. ClerkÂ (FO), 24 June 1916. 57.âIbid. 58.âIbid., 123141, Undated Memo [1916]. 59.âSaturday Review, 124:3241 (December 1917), pp.â461–2. 60.â TNA, FO395/144, 235916, FO to Wingate, 11 December 1917. 61.âIbid., Undated Minutes [1917]. Also see OIOC, L/PS/11/129, 4974 (1917). 62.âTNA, FO395/144, 235916, 238406, Eastern Report XLVI (1917). 63.âThe Worker’s Dreadnought, 4:50 (1918), p.â964. 64.â TNA, FO395/242, 55499, Undated Minutes [1918]. 65.âSee Fremantle, Loyal, pp.â289–90.

66. âMacfie, A. L.,Â The End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1923, Harlow: ÂLongman, 1998, pp.â116–7; Macfie, A. L.,The Eastern Question 1774– 1923, Revised edn, Harlow: Longman, 1996, p.â63.

67.âSee Abbasi, M. Y.,Â London Muslim League, 1908–1928: An Historical Study, Islamabad: National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, 1988, pp.â344–7. 68.â For example, TNA, FO371/4155, 168818, IS Resolution [1919]; IRMI, 7:7–8 (1919), p.â243. 69.â See TNA, FO371/4177, 15942 (1919).

293 pp. [226–230] NOTES 70.â Quoted in Fremantle, Loyal, p.â302. 71.âSee IRMI, 7:10 (1919), pp.â406–8. 72.â TNA, FO371/5202, E1073, Director of Intelligence, Scotland Yard [hereafter DoI], to FO, 5 March 1920. 73.âSee ibid.; TNA, FO371/4161, 168774. 74.â See, for example, TNA, FO371/5178, E11702 (1920). 75.â OIOC, L/PS/11/158, 6220, Undated Minutes [1919]. 76.â TNA, FO371/4154, 163700, de Robeck to Grey, 7 December 1919. See

Kidwai, M. H.,Â The Future of the Muslim Empire: Turkey, Woking/ÂLondon: Central Islamic Society, n.d. [1919]. 77.â TNA, FO371/4154, 163700, Minutes, 23 December 1919. 78.âIbid., Undated Minutes [1919]. 79.â TNA, FO371/4233, 141286, Undated Minutes, [1919]. 80.âIbid. 81.âDuffield, I., ‘Dusé Mohamed Ali, Afro-Asian solidarity and Pan-ÂAfricanism

in early twentieth-century London’, in Gundara, J. Â S. Â and Duffield, I. (eds),Â Essays on the History of Blacks in Britain: From Roman Times to the Mid- Twentieth Century, Aldershot: Avebury, 1992, p.â141. 82.â TNA, FO371/4155, 169869, DoI to FO, January 1920. 83.â TNA, FO371/5202, E1073, DoI to FO, 5 March 1920. 84.â TNA, FO371/4155, 169869, DoI to FO, January 1920. 85.âTNA, FO371/4154, 162692, Ispahani et al. to Lloyd George, 15 ÂDecember 1919. 86.âAfrica and Orient Review, 1:1 (1920), pp.â33–4. Sheldrake echoed ÂPickthall in Britain and India, 1:5 (1920), p.â166. 87.âFor details of surveillance of the delegation/Pickthall, see TNA, FO371/6549, 1013, Undated IO Memo [1921]. 88.âMacfie, Eastern Question, p.â65. 89.âThe Times, 18 October 1948, p.â6. 90.âMuslim Standard, 7:45 (10 November 1921), p.â4. 91.â Pickthall, ‘Great English Muslim’, p.â140.

92.âKing’s College Cambridge Archives, E. Â M. Â Forster Papers, EMF/18/430/1, Pickthall to Forster, 3 August 1921. 93.â Quoted in Fremantle, Loyal, p.â330. 94.â See, for example, Pickthall’s article in Muslim Standard, 7:45 (November 1921), p.â4. 95.â Quoted in Fremantle, Loyal, p.â366. 96.âPickthall, M., ‘Foreword’ to Anon., Non-Co-operation in Congress Week, Bombay: National Literature Publishing, n.d. [c.1921], p.â4. 97.âIR, 9:1 (1921), p.â15. 98.â Quoted in Fremantle, Loyal, p.â363.

294 NOTES pp. [230–234] 99.âThe Times, 27 January 1923, p.â11. 100.âTL, 6:12 (1927), p.â7. 101.â See TNA, FO371/5140, E139 (IS to FO, 15 February 1920), E1186 (IS Resolutions, 1920), E1854 (IS Resolution, 18 March 1920); FO371/5141, E3782, Undated IS Resolution [1920]; IN, 23 (7 April 1921), p.â4; and, on modest BMS activism, IR, 10:5 (1922), p.â199 and 10:11 (1922), p.â451; The Times, 22 September 1922, p.â12. Later in the decade, a small number of British Muslims also protested at British intrigues in Palestine—Â see IR, 17:11 (1929), pp.â422–44 and 18:6 (1930), pp.â222–3. 102.âSee Macfie, Eastern Question, pp.â70–1. 103.âSee TNA, FO370/470. 104.âTNA, FO370/433, L5317, IO to FO, 20 September 1933; TNA, FO371/18604, W1200, Undated Minutes [1934]. 105.â Monroe, E., Philby of Arabia, New edn, Reading: Ithaca, 1998, p.âix. 106.âIbid., pp.â94–102. 107.âQuoted in ibid., pp.â196–7.

108.âFor example, Philby, H. Â St. J. B.,Â ‘A survey of Wahhabi Arabia, 1929’, Journal of the Central Asian Society [hereafter JCAS], 16:4 (1929), pp.â468–81. 109.â TNA, CO732/45/7, Hope Gill to Rendel, 30 August 1930. 110.â TNA, FO967/16, Oliphant to Stonehewer-Bird, 3 May 1928. 111.â TNA, FO371/20842, E585 (1937) [written 1934]. 112.âReprinted in MT, 1:5 (1935), p.â6. 113.âIR, 25:7 (1937), pp.â333–5. 114.âMonroe, Philby, p.â209. 115.âIbid., pp.â209–10. 116.âQuoted in ibid., p.â214. 117.â TNA, FO371/24589, 2554, Undated Memo [February 1940]. 118.âSee ibid., 710, British Legation Jidda to FO, 18 February 1940. 119.â TNA, FO371/24586, E3049, Minutes, 9 December 1940. 120.âIbid., E1524, Undated Minutes [April 1940]. 121.â TNA, FO371/27270, E269, British Legation Jidda to FO, 12 July 1940. 122.âIbid., 21 July 1940. 123.âMonroe, Philby, p.â287. Thisconclusion contrasts with that of Anthony Cave Brown, who argues in his sensationalist dual biography of Philby and his son Kim, that there was a treacherous gene in the Philby blood—

see Cave Brown, A., Treason in the Blood: H. Â St. John Philby, Kim Philby, and the Spy Case of the Century, London: Hale, 1995. 124.â TNA, FO371/24586, E3049, Minutes, 9 December 1940. 125.âIbid., Lord Lloyd to FO, 7 December 1940. 126.âIbid., Lord Lloyd to Harker, 14 November 1940.

295 pp. [234–239] NOTES 127.âTNA, Security Service Records, KV2/1118, Vivian to FO, 7 October 1940 and Young to Vivian, 21 October 1940. 128.âTNA, FO371/24586, E3049, Undated Minutes [December 1940]. 129.âTNA, FO371/27270, E1668 (1940). 130.âSee, for example, Philby, H. St J. B., A Pilgrim in Arabia, London: ÂRobert Hale, 1946. 131.âOn unity, see IR, 30:12 (1942), pp.â426–41. 132.âAnother exception was Abdullah Williamson, who was appointed inspector of Gulf Agencies for the Anglo-Persian (later Anglo-Iranian) Oil Com- pany after 1918. Following his retirement in 1937, Williamson settled near Basra, where he was a regular at the local mosque, ‘and seldom missed the opportunity of attending a well-delivered class on religion. Back at home, he would sit with his amber and black prayer beads, his collection of religious books, and […] a set of penny-Westerns.’: Family Website of Haji Williamson: http://www.haji-williamson.com/profile.php, last accessed 31 July 2012. Also see OIOC, L/PS/12/233, PZ4841/37 (1937). 133.âSee TNA, FO371/114902, E51611/1 (1955); Monroe, Philby, pp.â267– 71. 134.âTNA, FO371/114902, E51611/2, British Embassy Jidda to FO, 21 March 1955. 135.âIbid., E51611/5, British Embassy Damascus to FO, 29 April 1955. 136.âMonroe, Philby, pp.â128, 285–6. 137.âThe Times, 30 August 1923, p.â7. 138.âCobbold, Lady E., Pilgrimage to Mecca, New edn, London: Arabian ÂPublishing, 2008, pp.â237, 244–5. 139.âEverest-Phillips, ‘Suburban’, p.â333. 140.âFor more on post-war Muslim community formation in Britain, see Nielsen, J., Muslims in Western Europe, Second edn, Edinburgh: ÂEdinburgh University Press, 1995, ch. 4; Ansari, H., ‘The Infidel Within’: Muslims in Britain since 1800, London: Hurst, 2004, part II; Lewis, P., Islamic ÂBritain:

Religion, Politics and Identity among British Muslims, London: I. Â B. ÂTauris, 1994. On sectarianism, see Geaves, R., Sectarian Influences within Islam in Britain, with Reference to the Concepts of ‘Ummah’ and ‘Community’, Leeds: Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds, 1996. 141.âSee IR, 31:12 (1943), pp.â414–5. 142.âIR, 33:3 (1945), p.â77. 143.âIR, 35:3 (1947), pp.â82–3. 144.âIR, 40:9 (1952), pp.â20–2.

145.âAnsari, K. H.,Â ‘The Woking Mosque: a case study of Muslim engagement with British society since 1889’, Immigrants and Minorities, 21:3 (2002), pp.â14–5.

296 NOTES pp. [239–241] 146.âKahlon, A., Eighty Years Around the World, Karachi: Privately Published, 2004, pp.â38–40. 147.âRoR, 51 (1957), p.â415. 148.âIRMI, 2:3 (1914), p.â99. 149.âIR, 14:9 (1926), p.â350. 150.âThe Times, 9 February 1927, p.â17. 151.âReshid later changed his name to Robert: Author’s interview with a granddaughter of Sheldrake, by telephone, 13 January 2002.

152.âRahman, S., ‘The talented Mr GaiÂ Eaton’, emel, 1 (2003), p.â46. 153.âAuthor’s correspondence with Smith’s family, 24 November 2006. 154.âCollins, S. F., ‘The social position of white and “Half-Caste” women in colored groupings in Britain’, American Sociological Review, 16:6 (1951), p.â799. 155.âCollins, S., Coloured Minorities in Britain: Studies in British Race Relations based on African, West Indian and Asiatic Immigrants, London: ÂLutterworth, 1957, pp.â170–1. 156.âIbid. 157.âCollins, S., ‘Social processes integrating coloured people in Britain’, ÂBritish Journal of Sociology, 3:1 (1952), p.â25. 158.âLawless, R. I., From Ta‘izz to Tyneside: An Arab Community in the ÂNorth-east of England during the Early Twentieth Century, Exeter: Exeter University

Press, 1995, pp.â249–50; Davies, M. W.,Â Islam UK: An Introduction to Islam and the Muslim Community in the UK, London: BBC Adult ÂLearning, 2001, pp.â4–5. 159.âHalliday, F., Arabs in Exile: Yemeni Migrants in Urban Britain, London: I. B. Tauris, 1992, p.â40; Gilliat-Ray, S., ‘An iconic Welsh figure in the history of Islam’, clickonwales website: http://www.clickonwales.org/2011/05/ an-iconic-welsh-figure-in-the-history-of-islam-2/, last accessed 31 July 2012. In Birmingham too, the influence of al-Hakimi and Hassan was felt for many decades through Yemen-born Sheikh Muhammad Qassim al-’Alawi (1909–99), who moved to Cardiff between the wars. In 1941, he accepted Sheikh Hassan’s advice to settle in Birmingham, where it was believed that local issues including intermarriage had led many Yemenis to adopt a ‘non-Islamic’ lifestyle. Qassim established Birmingham’s first zawiya at his home and remained spiritual leader of the community until his death in 1999. See Al-Masyabi, M., ‘Shaikh Muhammad Qassim al- ’Alawi’, The British-Yemeni Society website: http://www.al-bab.com/bys/ obits/alawi.htm, last accessed 10 August 2013.

297 p. [146] NOTES EPILOGUE 1.âSee, for example, Ansari, H., ‘The nfidelI Within’: Muslims in Britain since

1800, London: Hurst, 2004; Abbas, T. (ed.),Â Muslim Britain: Communities

under Pressure, London: Zed Books, 2005; Seddon, M. S.,Â Hussain, D. andÂ

Malik, N. (eds),Â British Muslims: Loyalty and Belonging, Markfield: Islamic Foundation, 2003; Seddon, M. S., Hussain, D. and Malik, N. (eds), British Muslims between Assimilation and Segregation: Historical, Legal and Social Realities, Markfield: Islamic Foundation, 2004; Lewis, P.,Islamic Britain: Religion, Politics and Identity among British Muslims, London: I. B. Tauris, 1994; Gilliat-Ray, S., Muslims in Britain: An Introduction, Cambridge: ÂCambridge University Press, 2010, part II. 2.âAssociation of British Muslims website: http://www.aobm.org/about/, last accessed 26 July 2012. See also Lewis, Islamic, pp.â199–200. 3.âSee also the Abdullah Quilliam Society website: http://abdullahquilliam. com/wp/, last accessed 5 May 2012. 4.âQuilliam website: http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/, last accessed 12ÂDecember 2009. 5.âWilliam Abdullah Quilliam Appreciation Society Facebook page: http:// www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5085329173, last accessed 12 ÂDecember 2009. 6.âAhmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore (UK), ‘The Woking Muslim ÂMission’ website: http://www.wokingmuslim.org/, last accessed 5 May 2012 and ‘The Islamic Review Archive’: http://www.wokingmuslim.org/work/ islamic-review/index.htm, last accessed 5 May 2012.

298 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ÂManuscript Sources and Unpublished Collections Official Records and Private Papers Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Kimberley Papers: Papers of John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley British Library, London Carnarvon Papers: Papers of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, 4th Lord Carnarvon Escott Papers: Papers of Thomas Hay Sweet Escott Gladstone Papers: Papers of William Ewart Gladstone Layard Papers: Papers of Sir Austen Henry Layard Murchison Papers: Papers of Sir Roderick Impey Murchison Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies Service, Chester Stanley of Alderley Papers (DSA) John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester Stanley of Alderley Deeds and Papers King’s College Cambridge Archives, University of Cambridge Forster Papers: Papers of Edward Morgan Forster Liverpool Record Office (LRO) Private Papers Manx National Heritage Library (MNHL), Douglas, Isle of Man Private Papers

299 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Middle East Centre Archive (MECA), St Antony’s College, University of Oxford The Harry St John Bridger Philby Collection The National Archives (TNA), London Colonial Office Records (CO) Foreign Office Records (FO) General Register Office Records (RG) Security Service Records (KV) Treasury Solicitor Records (TS) National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh Balfour Papers: Papers of Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), British Library, London Political and Secret Department Papers (L/PS) Lawrence Papers: Papers of Sir John Lawrence Private Collections and Archives Cobbold Papers: Papers of Lady Evelyn Cobbold Headley Papers: Papers of the Family of Lord Headley Henrietta Maria Stanley’s Diary, 1832–64 Quilliam Papers: Papers of the Family of William Henry Quilliam Sheldrake Papers: Papers of the Family of Khalid Sheldrake Stanley-Skrine Correspondence: Correspondence of Henry Edward John ÂStanley, 3rd Lord Stanley of Alderley to Francis Henry Skrine, 1899–1902 Somerset Archive and Record Service, Taunton Herbert Papers: Papers of Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert West Sussex Record Office, Chichester Blunt Papers: Papers of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Organisational Records Private Collections and Archives Shah Jehan Mosque, Woking: Visitors Book, c.1948–54 Woking Muslim Mission Papers, c.1913–70 Other Records General Register Office/Family Records Centre, London Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages

300 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY General Register Office for Scotland, Edinburgh Register of Deaths Liverpool Record Office 352 CEM, Burial Ground Order Books and Registers Principal Registry of the Family Division (Probate), London Probate Records Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh SC6/44/83, Inventory of the Personal Estate of John Parkinson, 1919

II. ÂContemporary Printed Sources Works of Reference

Ansari, H. Â (ed.), The Making of the East London Mosque, 1910–1951: Minutes of the London Mosque Fund and East London Mosque Trust Ltd, Camden Fifth Series, Vol.â38, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Royal Historical Society, 2011.

The Koran, trans. N. J.Â Â Dawood, New edn, London, Penguin, 1999; first pub. 1956. Who Was Who, 1897–1990, 8 Vols, London: Black, 1920–1991. Newspapers and Journals* Africa and Orient Review African Times and Orient Review Agnostic Journal Alderley and Wilmslow Advertiser American Sociological Review Architect and Contract Reporter Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald/Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald and West Coast Advertiser Asiatic Quarterly Review Asiatic Review Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine Britain and India British Journal of Sociology The Builder Cheshire Life

*âFor individual items from contemporaneous newspapers and journals, see footnotes of main text.

301 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Church Missionary Intelligencer The Courier [Douglas, Isle of Man] The Crescent Daily Dispatch [Manchester] Daily Express Daily Herald Daily Mail Daily Mirror Daily Post [Liverpool] Daily Sketch Daily Telegraph The East and the West East Anglian Daily Times East Liverpool Magazine East Sussex News Egyptian Gazette Evening Express [Liverpool] Evening Standard Everyman Fortnightly Review The Freethinker The Gentlewoman Genuine Islam The Geographical Journal The Geographical Magazine Geography The Guardian Harvard Theological Review Highland News and Football Times Illustrated London News Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review Islamic Culture Islamic News Islamic Review Islamic Review and Muslim India Islamic World Isle of Man Examiner Isle of Man Weekly Times Jewish Chronicle Journal of the Central Asian Society Journal of the East India Association

302 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Journal of the Moslem Institute Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society Kilmarnock Standard and Ayrshire Advertising Leader The Light The Liver Liverpool Courier Liverpool Daily Post Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury Liverpool Echo Liverpool Freeman Liverpool Mercury Liverpool Review Liverpool Shipping Telegraph and Daily Commercial Advertiser Macclesfield Courier and Herald MAN [Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland] Manchester Guardian The Manxman Manx Sun Morning Leader Morning Post Moslem Chronicle and Muhammadan Observer The Moslem Sunrise The Moslem World (later The Muslim World) Muslim India and Islamic Review Muslim Outlook The Muslim Review [Journal of the Moslem Institute, Calcutta] Muslim Standard Muslim Times The Muslim World The National Review The Near East The New Age New York Times The Nineteenth Century The Nineteenth Century and After Notes and Queries The Observer Pall Mall Gazette/Pall Mall Gazette and Globe The Philomath

303 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY The Physiologist Picture Post The Porcupine Religious Review of Reviews The Reporter [Salford] The Review of Religions Saturday Review Scottish Geographical Magazine Shields Gazette and Shipping Telegraph The Sociological Review The Sphere Sunday at Home Sunday Express Sunday Telegraph [Sheffield] Tailor and Cutter and Women’s Wear The Times Times Literary Supplement Tit-Bits Woking News and Mail The Worker’s Dreadnought The Young Islam Books, Pamphlets and Articles “A[llanson]. W[inn].”, Thoughts for the Future, London and Felling-on-Tyne: Walter Scott, 1913.

Addison, J. Â T., ‘The Ahmadiya movement and its Western propaganda’, ÂHarvard Theological Review, 22:1 (1929), pp.â1–32. Ahmad, R., ‘England in relation to Mahomedan states’, The National Review, 21 (1893), pp.â187–95. ———â‘A Moslem’s view of the Pan-Islamic revival’, The Nineteenth Century, 42 (1897), pp.â517–26. Ahmed, Haji R., The Moslem Guide, Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1891. Ali, M., The Khilafat in Islam, Lahore: Ahmadia Anjuman Ishaat-i-Islam, 1920. Ameer Ali, ‘The real status of women in Islam’, The Nineteenth Century, 30 (1891), pp.â387–99. ———â‘Islam and its critics’, The Nineteenth Century, 38 (1895), pp.â361–80. ———â‘Islâm and Canon MacColl’, The Nineteenth Century, 38 (1895), pp.â778–85. Ameer Ali, S., The Spirit of Islam, Or the Life and Teachings of Mohammed, New edn, Calcutta: Lahiri, 1902.

Arberry, A. J.,Â An Introduction to the History of Sufism, New edn, London: ÂSangam, 1999; first pub. 1943.

304 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnold, T. W.,Â The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith, Second edn, London: Constable, 1913.

Blunt, W. Â S., The Future of Islam, London: Kegan Paul, 1882.

Brann, A. C.,Â Muslim Liturgical Prayer, Liverpool: Crescent Publishing ÂCompany, 1906. Browne, Haji A., Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of Today, London:

T. ÂFisher Unwin, 1907. Buchanan-Hamilton, K., My Belief, Woking: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, n.d. Central Islamic Society, ‘The Central Islamic Society’ [Booklet], London: ÂCentral Islamic Society, 1916. Cobbold, Lady E., Wayfarers in the Libyan Desert, London: Humphreys, 1912. ———âPilgrimage to Mecca, London: John Murray, 1934. ———âKenya: The Land of Illusion, London: John Murray, 1935. ———â‘Pilgrim to Mecca’, The Geographical Magazine, 1 (1935), pp.â107–16.

Collins, S. F.,Â ‘The social position of white and “Half-Caste” women in colored groupings in Britain’, American Sociological Review, 16:6 (1951), pp.â796– 802. Collins, S., ‘Social processes integrating coloured people in Britain’, British Journal of Sociology, 3:1 (1952), pp.â20–9. ——— Coloured Minorities in Britain: Studies in British Race Relations based on African, West Indian and Asiatic Immigrants, London: Lutterworth, 1957. de Lamennais, Abbé F., Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion, trans. Lord Stanley of Alderley, London: John MacQueen, 1895; first pub. 1817–23. Eaton, G., Islam and the Destiny of Man, Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1994. Faridi, S., Inner Aspects of Faith, Delhi: Noor Publishing House, 1985.

Forster, E. M.,Â Abinger Harvest, London: Arnold, 1936. Headley, Al-Hajj Lord, The Affinity between the Original Church of Jesus Christ and Islam, Woking: Trust for the Encouragement and Circulation of Muslim Religious Literature, 1927. ——— Is Our House in Order? Woking: Trust for the Encouragement and Circulation of Muslim Religious Literature, 1928. Headley, Lord, A Western Awakening to Islam, London: Phillips, 1914. ———âSister Religions, London: Central Islamic Society, 1916. ———âThe Three Great Prophets of the World: Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, Woking: Islamic Review, 1923. ———â‘Pilgrimage to Mecca’, Journal of the Central Asian Society, 11:1 (1924), pp.â20–35. ———âA Western Awakening to Islam, Second edn, Woking: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1949; first pub. 1914.

305 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Kamal-ud-Din, Al-Hajj K., Islam and the Muslim Prayer, Seventh rev. edn, Lahore: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1960. Kamal-ud-Din, K., Islam and the Muslim Prayer, Woking: The Mosque, 1914.

Khulusi, S. Â A. Â (ed.), Islam Our Choice, Woking: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1961.

Kidwai, M. H.,Â The Future of the Muslim Empire: Turkey, Woking/London: Central Islamic Society, n.d. [1919]. ———âIslam in England, Lucknow: Newul Kishore Press, 1929.

Leitner, G. W.,Â Muhammadanism, Woking: Oriental Nobility Institute, 1889.

Léon, H. Â M., ‘The life and poetry of Sheikh Haroun Abdullah, a Turkish poet’, Asiatic Review, 6 (1915), pp.â430–6. ———âThe sychologyP of Oriental Peoples, n.pl.: n. pub. (Reprinted from The Ethological Journal), 1926. ———âSome Arabian Poets, Dunfermline: Regality Press, 1930. ———â‘Abu’l-‘Atahiya, “Al-Jarrar”: the poet who sold earthen-pots’, Islamic Culture, 5:4 (1931), pp.â631–50. Little, K.,â‘Loudoun Square: a community survey—I (An aspect of race relations in English society)’, The Sociological Review, 34:1–2 (1942), pp.â12–33. Little, K. L.,â‘Loudoun Square: a community survey—II (An aspect of race relations in English society)’, The Sociological Review, 34:3–4 (1942), pp.â119–46. ——— Negroes in Britain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society, Revised edn, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972; first pub. 1948.

Lloyd, A. Â L., ‘Down the bay’, Picture Post, 47:4 (1950), p.â18.

Lovegrove, J. W.,Â What is Islam?, Second edn, Woking: Woking Muslim ÂMission and Literary Trust, 1934. Mohammed-ul-Mamoon, An Account of the Rise of Islam in England, Dacca: East Bengal Press, 1891. Muir, W., ‘The “Church of Islam” at Liverpool’, Church Missionary Intelligencer, 17 (1892), pp.â413–7.

Parkinson, J. Y.,Â Al-Ghazali: A Psychological Study of the Man, Woking: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, n.d. ———âEssays on Islamic Philosophy, Rangoon: British Burma Press, 1909. ———âMuslim Chivalry, Rangoon: British Burma Press, 1909. Philby, H. St. J., ‘The Golden Jubilee in Sa‘udi Arabia’,Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 37:2 (1950), pp. 112–23. ———â‘The triumph of the ahhabis’,W Journal of the Central Asian Society, 13:4 (1926), pp.â293–319. ———â‘A survey of Wahhabi Arabia, 1929’, Journal of the Central Asian Society, 16:4 (1929), pp.â468–81. ———â‘Rub’ Al Khali’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 19:4 (1932), pp.â569–86.

306 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ———â‘Mecca and Madina’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 20:4 (1933), pp.â504–18. ———âA Pilgrim in Arabia, London: Robert Hale, 1946. ——— ‘The Golden Jubilee in Saudi Arabia’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 37:2 (1950), pp.Â112–23.

Pickard, W. B.,Â Layla and Majnun: An English Poem in the Persian Vein, Woking: Basheer Muslim Library, 1924. ———âThe Adventures of Alcassim: An Iranian Entertainment, London: ÂJonathan Cape, 1936. ———âFundamentals of World Peace, Woking: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, n.d. Pickthall, M., Saïd the Fisherman, London: Methuen, 1903.

———âThe ouseH of Islam, New York: D. Â Appleton, 1906. ———âThe Children of the Nile, London: John Murray, 1908. ———âTheValley of the Kings, London: John Murray, 1909. ———â‘The black crusade’ [Part 1], The New Age, 12:1 (1912), p.â8. ———â‘The outlook in the Near East: for lE Islâm’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 72:430 (1912), pp.â1141–9. ———â‘The hope of Moslem progress’, The Nineteenth Century and After, 74 (1913), pp.â472–9. ———âVeiled Women, London: Eveleigh Nash, 1913. ———â‘Turkey, England, and the present crisis’, Asiatic Review, 5 (1914), pp.â365–76. ———âWith the Turk in Wartime, London: Dent, 1914. ———âTales from Five Chimneys, London: Mills and Boon, 1915. ———âThe ouseH of War, London: Eveleigh Nash, 1916. ———â‘The truth about theTurk’, Asiatic Review, 9–10 [Fourth Series] (1916), pp.â240–4. ———âKnights of Araby, London: Collins, 1917. ———âMuslim Interests in Palestine, Woking/London: Central Islamic Society, 1917.

———â‘Preface’ to Kidwai, M. H.,Â The Future of the Muslim Empire: Turkey, Woking/London: Central Islamic Society, n.d. [1919], n.p. ———âSir Limpidus, London: Collins, 1919. ———âThe arlyE Hours, London: Collins, 1921. ———â‘Foreword’ to Anon., Non-Co-operation in Congress Week, Bombay: National Literature Publishing, n.d. [c.1921], pp.â1–5. ———âAs Others See Us, London: Collins, 1922. Pickthall, M. M.,âOriental Encounters: Palestine and Syria (1894–5–6), New edn, ÂLondon: Heinemann, 1929. ———â(trans.), The Meaning of the loriousG Koran: An Explanatory Translation,

London: Alfred A. Knopf,Â 1930.

307 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ——— The Cultural Side of Islam, Madras: Committee of Madras Lectures on Islam, 1927. ——— ‘The Muslims in the modern world’, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 23:2 (1936), pp.Â221–35. Pitts, J., A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the ÂMohammetans, with an Account of the Author’s being Taken Captive, first pub.

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Quilliam, H. Â E. SheikhÂ A. Bey,Â The Religions of Japan: With Incidental References to Shintoism, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, ÂLiverpool: Crescent Publishing Co., 1906. Quilliam, Sheikh A., Footprints of the Past: A Series of Lectures Demonstrating how the Discoveries of Geologists and Archaeologists are Conformable with the Islamic Faith, Liverpool: Crescent Publishing Co., 1907.

Quilliam, W. H.,Â The Faith of Islam: An Explanatory Sketch of the Principal Fundamental Tenets of the Moslem Religion, First edn, Liverpool: Dodd, 1889. ———âFanatics and Fanaticism: A Lecture, Second edn, Liverpool: Dodd, 1890. ———âThe aithF of Islam: An Explanatory Sketch of the Principal Fundamental Tenets of the Moslem Religion, Second edn, Liverpool: Dodd, 1890. ———â‘Islam in England’, Religious Review of Reviews, 1:3 (1891), pp.â159– 64. ———âThe aithF of Islam: An Explanatory Sketch of the Principal Fundamental Tenets of the Moslem Religion, Indian edn, Lahore: Islamia Press, 1891. ———âThe Religion of the Sword: An Enquiry into the Tenets and History of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Liverpool: Dodd, 1891. ———âThe aithF of Islam: An Explanatory Sketch of the Principal Fundamental Tenets of the Moslem Religion, Third edn, Liverpool: Willmer Brothers, 1892. ———â‘Islam’, Liverpool Review, 13 December 1902, pp.â1–2. ———âThe Troubles in the Balkans: The Turkish Side of the Question, Liverpool: Crescent Printing Co., n.d. [1904]. Quilliam, W. H. A.,âStudies in Islam: A Collection of Essays, Liverpool: Crescent Printing and Publishing Co., 1895. ———âThe First Book of the Iliad, London: La Société Internationale de ÂPhilologie, Sciences et Beaux-Arts, 1918. Rofé, H., The Path of Subud, London: Rider, 1959. ———âReflections on Subud, n.pl.: Humanity Publishing Group, 1960. Rutter, E., The Holy Cities of Arabia, 2 Vols, London: Putnam’s, 1928.

308 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Salter, J., The Asiatic in England; Sketches of Sixteen Years’ Work among Orientals, London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1873.

Serjeant, R. B.,Â ‘Yemeni Arabs in Britain’, The Geographical Magazine, 17:1–2 (1944–45), pp.â143–7. Snow, H., The Prayer Book for Muslims, Lahore: Islamia Press, 1893.

Stanley, H. (ed.),Â Chinese Manual, London: Harris, 1854. ——— (ed.), Rouman Anthology; Or, Selections of Rouman Poetry, Ancient and Modern, Hertford: Austen, 1856. ——— (ed.), The East and the West: Our Dealings with our Neighbours, London: Hatchard, 1865. ——— â‘Account of an Embassy from Marocco to Spain in 1690 and 1691’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3 [New Series] (1868), pp.â359–78. ———â‘The Poetry of Mohamed Rabadan, Arragonese’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3 [New Series] (1868), pp.â81–104. ———â‘The Poetry of Mohamed Rabadan, of Arragon’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3 [New Series] (1868), pp.â379–413. Continues Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 4 (1870), pp.â138–77; 5 (1871), pp.â119–40 and pp.â303–37; 6 (1873), pp.â165–212. ———â‘The establishmentof a “Musafir-khaneh”, or “Guest-house”, for ÂAsiatics in London’, Journal of the East India Association, 3 (1869), pp.â40–8. Stanley, Hon. H. E. J.,â(trans. and ed.), The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, and his Viceroyalty, London: Hakluyt Society, 1869. Stanley of Alderley, Lord (ed.), Travels to Tana and Persia, by Josafa Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini, London: Hakluyt Society, 1873.

———â‘Preface’ to Hockley, W. Â B., Tales of the Zenana, Or a Nuwab’s Leisure Hours, New edn, Vol.Â1, London: King, 1874. ———â(ed.) The irstF Voyage around the World, by Magellan, London: Hakluyt Society, 1874. ———âSpeech of the Right Hon. Lord Stanley of Alderley on Moving for a Paper Respecting the Religious Persecutions in Russia, London: Cornelius Buck, 1877. ———â‘A Court of Appeal for Indian grievances’, Journal of the East India Association, 13 (1881), pp.â49–74. ———â(trans. and ed.), Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia during the Years 1520–1527, by Father Francisco Alvarez, London: Hakluyt Society, 1881. ———â‘Farming and taxation’, The Nineteenth Century, 12 (1882), pp.â939– 46. ———â‘Radical theorists on land’, Fortnightly Review, 37 (1885), pp.â297– 308. ———â ‘Two days in the Brixworth Union’, Fortnightly Review, 38 (1885), pp.â 42– 55.

309 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ———â‘Preservation of the colonies and the price of bread’, National Review, 17 (1891), pp.â424–32. ———â‘The House of Commons and the Church’, The Nineteenth Century, 30 (1891), pp.â777–82.

———â‘A remonstrance with Mr. JesseÂ Collins’, National Review, 20 (1892– 93), pp.â345–50. ———â‘The Royal Welsh Land Commission’, National Review, 21 (1893), pp.â827–40. ———â‘The storage of grain against famine’, Journal of the East India Associa- tion, 25 (1893), pp.â1–18. ———â‘A reform in the Privy Council’, Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, 8 [Third Series] (1897), pp.â233–6. ———â‘The Privy Council as judges of induH and Mussulman law’, Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, 3 (1897), pp.â1–13.

Walter, H. Â A., The Ahmadiya Movement, London: Milford/Oxford University Press, 1918. Whymant, N., Psychic Adventures in New York, London: Morley and Mitchell, 1931.

Wright, M. Â S. D.,Â Studies in Islam and Christianity, Lahore and Woking: Wok- ing Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, n.d. Biographies, Memoirs, Collections of Letters and Diaries Ameer Ali, S., ‘Memoirs of the Late Rt. Hon’ble Syed Ameer Ali’, Islamic Cul- ture, 5 (1931), pp.â509–42; 6 (1932), pp.â1–18, 163–82, 333–62, 503–25.

Blunt, W. Â S., My Diaries, being a Personal Narrative of Events, 1888–1914, Second edn, 2 Vols, London: Secker, 1921. Fremantle, A., Loyal Enemy, London: Hutchinson, 1938. ——— Three-cornered Heart, New York: Viking Press, 1970. Hope, S., Arabian Adventurer: The Story of Haji Williamson, London: Robert Hale, 1951.

Mitford, N. (ed.),Â The Ladies of Alderley, New edn, London: Hamilton, 1967; first pub. 1938. ———â(ed.), The Stanleys of lderley:A Their Letters between the Years 1851– 1865, New edn, London: Hamilton, 1968; first pub. 1939. Murray Abdullah, M., My Khyber Marriage: Experiences of a Scotswoman as the Wife of a Pathan Chieftain’s Son, New edn, London: Octagon, 1990; first pub. 1934. ———âValley of the Giant Buddhas: Memoirs and Travels, London: Octagon, 1993. Pickthall, M., ‘Letters from Turkey’, Islamic Culture, 11:4 (1937), pp.â419– 32.

310 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Pickthall, M[urial],â‘A great English Muslim’, Islamic Culture, 11:1 (1937), pp.â138–42. Russell, B., The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1872–1914, Vol.Â1. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967.

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317

INDEX

Abdullah, Qazi Muhammad: 140 opposition to, 201–3; Qadiani, Abdullah Quilliam Society: 121 81, 138–40, 144, 146, 158–9, Abdullah/Shah, Syed: 171, 210 168, 173–4, 178, 180, 189, 195, Aborigines Protection Society: 40 201–4, 208, 239 Abraham: 35, 153 Albania: 153 Addison, James Thayer: 181 Algeria: 33, 147 Afghanistan: 63, 66, 90, 171, 216; Ali, Abdullah Yusuf: 94; family of, borders of, 222 171 African Society: 79 Ali, Dusé Mohamed: 217, 227–8 Agnostic Journal: 64–5 Ali, Maulana Muhammad: 181, Aguéli, Ivan/Abdul Hadi 200, 204 al-Maghrabi: 169; conversion to Ali, Mohamed: role in establishment Islam, 65 of Khilafat Movement (1919), 84 Ahmad, Aftab-ud-Din: editor of bin Ali, Sayyid Hussein: King of the Islamic Review, 238 Hejaz, 190, 224 Ahmad, Rafiüddin: 36 Abd Allah, Muhammad Ahmad ibn Ahmad, Mirza Ghulam: 126; death Sayyid: 42 of, 125; founder of Ahmadiyya, Allanson-Winn, Rowland George 125, 138 Allanson (Baron Headley): Ahmad, Mirza Bashir-ud-Din 133–4, 144, 161, 164, 174, 180, Mahmud: 139 197–8, 202–3, 205, 214–15, Ahmadiyya: 128, 181, 200, 205; 237, 240, 246; arrest of, 192; beliefs of, 125; founding of, 125; background of, 188; conversion growth of, 138; khalifa, 138–40, to Islam, 130–6, 142; death of 144, 168, 178, 201; Lahori, 80, (1935), 165, 204; family of, 130; 138–9, 181, 200–2, 246; London hajj experience of (1923), 190; Mosque, 81, 174, 178, 195; President of BMS/MSGB, 85,

319 INDEX

137, 185, 230; Thoughts for the Bakhsh, Data Ganj: tomb complex Future, 130–2 of, 163 All-India Muslim Conference: 226 Balfour Declaration (1917): Ameer Ali, Saiyid/Syed: 45, 53, provisions of, 221 136, 194, 226; family of, 171; Balkan League: members of, 152 retirement of (1904), 124; role in Barbary corsairs: captives of, 5–7 establishment of London Mosque Bedouins: 20, 38; tribal culture of, Funding Committee (1910), 125; 157 Spirit of Islam (1891/1902), 36 Belkhassan, Mohammed Ben: 104, Anglicanism: 113; decline in 111 membership of, 54, 90, 166; Bengal: 33 High, 22; Low, 22, 130; opposi- Bennett, Arthur Charles/Ahmad: tion to, 45 MSGB Secretary, 165, 204 Anglo-French Declaration (1918): Blackwelle, Josua: conversion to provisions of, 232 Islam (1649), 9 Anglo-Ottoman Society (AOS): Blunt, Wilfred Scawen: 40, 45, 48, 217–19, 226; Committee, 82; 56; background of, 38; conver- founding of (1913), 81; members sion to Islam, 38 of, 81–4, 217 Bolsheviks: 227 Anglo-Zulu War (1879): 42 Bosnia and Herzegovina: Christian Arabic (language): 20, 112, 148–9, population of, 34 157, 179, 199 Brahmanism: 55 Arberry, A.J.: 169 British Empire: 1–2, 10, 27, 116, Arnold, Thomas Walker: 140 124, 126, 133, 188, 214–16, Asad, Muhammad/Leopold Weiss: 236; Muslim population of, 69, 185 238; territory of, 22, 175–6 Ashton, Alfred Charles: conversion British Muslim Society (BMS): to Islam, 101 79–81, 203, 214, 216; as MSGB, Ashraf, Muhammad: 145 137, 178; members of, 84–5, Association of British Muslims 137, 165, 185, 200, 230 (ABM): aims of, 246; members British People’s Party: supporters of, of, 246 234 Assyrian Empire: Nimrud, 23 British Union of Fascists (BUF): members of, 166 Bahrain: 235 Browne, Alfred H./Abdullah: 113; Baig, Abbas Ali: 125; death of visit to Egypt (1876), 38 (1932), 165 Browne, Edward Granville: 127 Baines-Hewitt, Lt.-Col. Abdullah Brunton, Jalal-ud-Din Lauder/Sir F.B.: President of MSGB, 184, Thomas Stopford: 204; conver- 205 sion to Islam, 174 Bairam, Muhammad: 47 Buchanan-Hamilton, Deputy

320 INDEX

Inspector-General Charles Central Asian Society (CAS): 79, William: conversion to Islam, 190; members of, 163 174; family of, 174 Central Islamic Society (CIS): 217; Buchanan-Hamilton, Khalida: 174; formerly Pan-Islamic Society, 124, President of MSGB, 204 219; lectures hosted by, 221; Buddha: 54 members of, 220, 226; supporters Buddhism: 55, 163, 169; conver- of, 198 sion to, 204 Central London Mosque Trust: Buddhist Society of Great Britain funds held by, 188 and Ireland: 162 China: 33, 40, 59; Beijing (Peking), Bulgaria (Varna): 26, 34, 152 222; Xinjiang Province, 222 Bulwer, Sir Henry: 27–8; special Chipperfield, Patrick Ernest/Sa‘eed: mission to Danubian provinces, conversion to Islam, 168 26 Chirol, Sir Valentine: 230 Burckhardt, Johann Ludwig: 23; Christian Scientists: conversion to, travels of, 20 151 Burma: 168 Christian Soldier: 65–6, 70 Christianity: 3–4, 14, 21, 25, 27, Burton, Sir Richard Francis: interest 35–6, 38–9, 43, 45–6, 55, 57, in Islam, 21; visit to India, 21 60–1, 84, 88, 96–9, 105, 107, Byrne, Thomas Omar: hon. 113, 119, 126–7, 130, 133, secretary of LMI, 91 +1 138–9, 144, 152–4, 162, 165–6, 181, 202–3, 244; as Abrahamic Calvinism: 20 faith, 35, 61, 134; Bible, 24, Canada: 120 35–6, 38, 53, 62, 91, 105, 129, Canning, Stratford: British Ambas- 137, 198; conversion to, 8, sador to Ottoman Empire, 25 11–12; doctrine of, 145; Evan- Carlyle: 53, 60–1; On Heroes and gelical, 34, 91–2, 161, 207, 245; Hero Worship (1841), 35 Methodist, 51–4; Unitarian, 54, Casey, Clara: 104, 111 91, 103, 126, 139, 161 Cates (née Murray), Francess Churchward, Hedley: conversion to Elizabeth/Fatima: 108, 209; Islam, 53; visit to Cordoba, 53 burial of, 114; conversion to Cobbold, Lady Evelyn/Zainab: 164, Islam, 99; death of (1900), 108, 195–6, 198–9, 228, 246; 114; family of, 100, 104; treasurer conversion to Islam, 149; death of of LMI, 94, 95 (1963), 199; family of, 147–8; Cates, H. Haschem: death of hajj experience of, 190–1, 196–7, (1895), 100; family of, 100 237; Pilgrimage to Mecca, 195–6; Cates, Hubert Haleem: 120; family Wayfarers in the Libyan Desert, of, 100 194–5 Catholicism: 5, 21, 33, 38, 44, 48, Cobbold, John Dupuis: 148, 153–4, 156, 198 174

321 INDEX colonialism: 4, 8, 35 Darwin, Charles: 103; theories of, Committee for the Abolition of the 38 Slave Trade: Quaker members of, Davidson, Lt. Joseph Abdullah: 59 conversion to Islam, 156 Congress of Berlin (1878): Treaty of Day, Abdullah: 202; General- Berlin (1878), 42 Secretary of WIA, 201 Congress of Muslims in Great Digby el-Mesreb, Hon. Jane: 148; Britain: Assembly (1952), 239 travels of, 20 Conservative Party (Tories): 45; Disraeli, Benjamin: 218; Eastern members of, 174, 215, 222; policy, 34 presence in WMM, 215; Selsey Dollie, Mohammed: 100–1 Conservative Association, 174 Driberg, Jack: 216 Cornwallis, Lord: Governor General of Bengal, 11 East India Association: 40; founding Cowan, David/Dawud: 15, 216, of (1866), 39 239; conversion to Islam, 179 East India Company: 1, 8, 10–11; Cox, Percy: 231; Chief Political personnel of, 8–9, 11 Officer in Mesopotamian East London Mosque: 167 Expeditionary Force, 157 Eastern Question: 33, 36; discussion Crabtree, Frank Mohammed: 216, of, 115 221–2 Eaton, Hasan/Charles Le Gai: 170, Crescent Printing Company: 112; 240; conversion to Islam, 169 Crescent, A Weekly Record of Islam Ebráhim, Fátima Violet: 128, 144; in England, The, 63–4, 66, 72, 74, 87, 94, 97, 102, 113, 118–19 conversion to Islam, 152 Crimean War (1853–6): belligerents Edward VII, King: 66 of, 27; political impact of, 27, Egypt: 28, 32, 38, 66, 106, 109, 33–4; Treaty of Paris (1856), 27, 147, 156, 171, 193, 216–17, 42 230; British Occupation of Crowley, Aleister: 76 (1882–1952), 42, 71; Cairo, 20, Cunliffe, W. Obeidullah: 105, 107; 148–9, 151, 169–70, 190, 223; conversion to Islam, 100; death Port Said, 190; Suez Canal, 36 of, 100 Elizabeth II, Queen: coronation of Curzon, Marquess George: Viceroy (1953), 1 of India, 174 European Grand Tour: 20 Cyprus: 230 Fabia, Lady Stanley of Alderley Dalrymple, William: 10, 12; White (Serafina Fernandez Funes): 47; Mughals, 9 family of, 33, 44, 48–9 Dansken, Joan Fatima: 145 Faisal, Prince: King of Transjordan, Dard, Abdur Rahim: 158; private 231 secretary of khalifa, 140 Farmer, Major John W.B. Farouk:

322 INDEX

145–6, 239; conversion to Islam, British rate of conversion to 167–8 Islam, 165 Field, Arthur: 218, 228; hon. Greco-Turkish War (1897): 71 secretary of AOS, 82 Greece: 152; Athens, 26; Crete, 71; First Balkan War (1912–13): 217; Salonika, 153; Thrace,153 belligerents of, 152 Grenier, Dr Philippe: conversion to First World War (1914–18): 16, 66, Islam, 65 120, 172, 198, 200, 209, 213; Grey, James: conversion to Islam, 6 Armistice of Mudros (1918), 225; Grey, Sir Edward: 82, 216, 219; belligerents of, 2, 81, 84, 137, British Foreign Secretary, 81 155, 214–15, 217, 225–6; impact Griffiths, Rahima: 210 on British rate of conversion to Guénon, René/Abdel Wahed Yahia: Islam, 147, 149, 156, 166, 172; influence of, 169 Paris Peace Conference (1919), 226, 229 al-Hakimi, Sheikh Abdullah Ali: Firth, Salim R. de Grey: 146 162, 172, 182–3; head of Zaouia Fisher, John Omar: 145 Islamia Allawouia Religious Flight, Henson/Omar: 125, 221 Society, 178 Forster, Charles: 35 Hakluyt Society: 39; Council of, 26 Forster, E.M.: 181, 229 Halifax, Lord: British Foreign Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1799): Secretary, 166 11 Hall, Michael: conversion to Islam, France: 23, 120; Muslim population 113–14 of, 36; Nice, 120; Paris, 25 al-Hamid II, Abdul: 42, 65–7, 71, Freemasonry: 56, 76; lodges of, 52 76–7, 217; accession of, 67, Fuelling, Mubarak Ahmad: 180, 93–4; domestic policies of, 34; 204 popular hatred of, 34 Hamilton, James Jones/Djem Ali: Gandhi, Mahatma: 229, 231 90, 105, 108, 113 Gardner, Colonel William Linnaeus: Hamilton, Sir (Charles Edward) conversion to Islam, 10 Abdullah Archibald (Watkin): Germany: 137, 152, 155, 214–15, 174; conversion to Islam, 165; 234; Berlin, 185 death of (1939), 165 Gladstone, William Ewart: 41, 69; harem: 10; criticisms of, 194–5; Bulgarian Horrors, and the defence of concept of, 193 Question of the East (1876), 34, Harker, Oswald ‘Jasper’: Director- 67, 218 General of MI5, 235 Good Templar Order: lodges of, 52 Hassan, Sheikh Ismail: 241 Granville, Lord: British Foreign Hastings, Warren: Governor Secretary, 25 General of Bengal, 8–9 Great Depression: 184; impact on Hedley, Colonel: head of MO4, 223

323 INDEX

Herbert, Aubrey: 153, 219, 226 Irish Free State: 175 Hewitt, J.F.: 119; visit to Brougham Isherwood, Christopher: family of, Terrace, 118 162 Hinduism: 9, 36, 39–41, 55, 162, Islam: 3–4, 7, 19, 21, 23–5, 34–6, 169 38–41, 43–4, 46–7, 55, 60, Hindustani (language): 90 66–8, 80, 84–5, 88–93, 100–1, Hope Gill, Cecil G.: 160–1, 232 105–7, 115–16, 118, 128, 135, Hourani, Albert: 40 139, 142, 147, 149, 155, 157, Howell, C. Harold Qasim: family 159, 167, 176, 180, 185, 205–7, of, 208 239, 241, 243–4, 246; as Howell, Olive Zaitun: family of, Abrahamic faith, 35, 61, 134, 208 147, 181; Christian concept of, 4; Huxley, T.H.: 103 conversion to, 1–3, 5–6, 8–15, 19, 21, 29–30, 37–8, 43, 46, 51, Ibn Sharif, Moulay Ismail: Sultan of 53, 63, 77, 85, 87–9, 94–9, Morocco, 6 101–3, 109, 111, 113–14, 123–4, imperialism: 1–2, 28, 36, 40, 42–3; 130–6, 141, 144–7, 149, 152–3, British, 20; high, 41; use of 156–62, 164–9, 171–5, 179, religious conversion, 11–12, 27 182–3, 193, 208–10, 217, 222, India: 9, 38–9, 44, 48, 59, 95, 106, 232, 236, 243–5; dietary practices 109, 116, 125, 135, 171, 182, of, 192–3; discrimination against, 200, 216–17, 235; Amritsar 107–10; eid al-adha, 94, 189, Massacre (1919), 226; Bengal, 239; eid al-fitr, 80, 137, 189, 239; 117; Bombay, 10, 29; borders of, hadith, 47, 57, 153, 193; hajj, 222; British Raj (1858–1947), 1, 20–1, 48, 113, 189–91, 196–8, 36, 42, 127, 226; Calcutta, 237; pillars of, 20, 47, 185, 192; 10–11, 31, 203; Delhi, 203; prohibition against alcohol, 192; Hindu population of, 229; prophet succession lineage, 62, Hyderabad, 10, 182, 188, 231; 95, 129, 138, 147; purdah, 193, justice system of, 40; Lahore, 80, 195; Qur’an, 5, 38, 47, 53, 55, 203, 238; Madras, 10, 70, 182, 58, 62–3, 89, 91, 103, 105, 108, 194; Muslim population of, 80, 129, 137, 147, 153, 181–3, 117, 126–7, 158, 201, 229; 193–4, 198, 200, 210, 214; Punjab, 125; Revolt (1857–9), 1, Ramadan, 48, 58, 80, 95, 193; 27, 68, 243 salat, 112, 186–8; sharia, 47; Indian Convention of Religions Shi’a, 139, 205; sunna, 47, 57, (1911): attendees of, 126 153, 194; Sunni, 93, 112, 139; Indian National Congress: 41, 49, theology of, 146; zakat, 47–8, 56, 229–30 58, 189 Indonesia: 170 Islamic Information Bureau: 228; Iraq: 231 formation of (1919), 227

324 INDEX

Islamic World: 64, 77, 87, 98, 115; 165, 204; hajj experience of articles in, 127 (1923), 190; lectures of, 126–7; Ismail, Sheikh Said Hassan: death of missionary activity of, 128–9; (2011), 241; family of, 241 views of gender equality, 193–5 Isphani, Mirza Hashim: 228; Kemal, Mustafa (Atatürk): abolition President of CIS, 220; role in of Ottoman sultanate (1922), 84, formation of Islamic Information 230–1 Bureau, 227 Khan, Nasrullah: visit to England Italo-Turkish War (1911–12): (1895), 66 Italian Invasion of Tripolitania Khan, Inayat: 162 (1911), 151 Khan, Sir Sayid Ahmad (Syed Italy: Muslim population of, 36 Ahmed): Biblical commentary of, 35–6; Series of Essays on the Life of jama‘at: 140, 178, 195, 239; Muhammad (1870), 36; visit to financial donations made to, 189; London (1869), 36 members of, 174; Qadiani, 139 Khilafat Movement: aims of, 226; Jamset, Basil Ivan: 167 end of, 230–1; founding of Japan: 170, 222 (1919), 84, 226 Jeffery, James B./Djemal-ud-deen Kidwai, Mushir Hussain: 124, 217, Bokhari: 113 228; role in formation of Islamic Jesuits: 26 Information Bureau, 227 Jesus Christ: 53, 63, 129, 153; Kirkpatrick, Major James Achilles: debates regarding divinity of, 62; 12; British Resident at Court of Islamic view of, 62, 95, 129 Hyderabad, 10–11; conversion to Johnson, Prof H.H. Yeyiha: Islam, 10–11; death of (1805), 11 background of, 101–2 Köse, Ali: 99 Johnstone, Hannah: 58, 120; death Krishna: 54 of (1909), 76; family of, 52 Jordan: Petra, 148 Labour Party (UK): 175, 234 Josepha, Maria (Lady Stanley of de Lamennais, Abbé F.: Essay on Alderley): 31; family of, 22, 32–3 Indifference Toward Religion, 45–6 Judaism: 61, 97, 191, 234; as Lausanne Conference (1923): 230; Abrahamic faith, 62, 134; outcome of, 190, 230–1 persecution of Jews, 69 Law Society: Rolls, 76; Statutory jurisprudence: Hanafi school of, 93 Committee, 76 Lawrence, T.E.: 148 Kamal-ud-Din, Khwaja: 128, 131, Lawrenson, James: conversion to 133, 135–6, 142, 152, 174, 179, Islam, 99; death of, 99 181, 188, 190, 192, 199, 203–4, Layard, Sir Austen Henry: 23–4, 27 214, 244; arrival in England Lebanon: 20, 151; Beirut, 192 (1912), 125–6; death of (1932), Leitner, Gottlieb Wilhelm: death of

325 INDEX

(1899), 125, 134; family of, 125; Lloyd George, David: 226; adminis- 37; founder of Oriental Nobility tration of, 220 Institute, 37 London College of Physiology: Le Mesurier, Cecil/Abdul-Hamid: faculty of, 79; Physiologist, 79 dismissal from civil service London Mosque Funding Commit- (1894), 109 tee: establishment of (1910), 125; Lennard, Ahmad: 162, 172, 184; members of, 125 death of (1945), 163 London Mosque Mission (LMM): Lennard, John/Shahidullah Faridi: 16, 123–4, 142, 155, 163, 173–4, 162; death of (1978), 163 184–5, 195, 207, 210, 236, 244; Léon, Dr Edith Miriam: death of, Ahmadi connections of, 239; 120; relationship with William members of, 140, 163; Mubarak Henry Abdullah Quilliam, 77–8 Fuelling, 204; Review of Religions, Levant Consular Service: personnel 139–40, 173, 180, 195, 239 of, 149 Loti, Pierre: 219 Liberal Party (UK): 45, 175 Lovegrove, James William/Habeeb- Libya: Tripolitania, 151 Ullah: 147, 181, 202; conversion to Islam, 209; death of, 209 Lings, Dr Martin/Abu Bakr Siraj Lyceum Club: members of, 126 ad-Din: conversion to Islam, 169 Lyon, Mary: 58, 76, 85; death of Liverpool Church Missionary (1952), 120; family of, 52, 56 Society: 119; members of, 118 Liverpool Muslim Institute (LMI): MacColl, Canon Malcolm: 34 16, 44, 49, 57–8, 66, 68, 74, 77, Machell, Lady Valda: family of, 151, 87–9, 94, 97–8, 101, 108, 111, 229 116–17, 129, 173–4, 200, 207, MacKenzie, Elizabeth/Saira 244, 246; as British Muslim Elizabeth Luiza Shah (Moorag Institute, 100; Brougham Terrace, Murray Abdullah): 171; family of, 88, 90, 92, 95, 106, 109, 111, 210, 240 118, 121; Executive Committee, Majid, Abdul: 144, 202 100, 112, 117; founding of, 57, Malaya: 171 88; funding of, 90–1, 114–15; Malaysia: Penang, 30 ‘illegal marriage’ ceremony Marguerite-Lee, Halima: 210 incident (1905), 72, 111; lectures Marxism: 161 hosted by, 64, 94–5, 115, 136; Maurice, F.D.: 35 Medina Home, 95; members of, Mesopotamia: 156 90–2, 94–6, 99, 107, 110, 124; Mitford, Nancy: 22 missionary activity of, 178; Montagu, Edwin: British Secretary ‘Moslem College’, 112, 117; of State for India, 229 Osmanali Regiment, 112; public Montenegro: 152 services of, 91–3; targeting of, Morocco: 3, 53, 66, 170; French 109–10 Protectorate of (1912–56), 221

326 INDEX

Mortimore, Frank/Djaffar: 105, un-Nissa, Khair: 11 107, 119, 127–8 Nizamah London Mosque Trust: Moses: 153 Board of, 203; establishment of, Moslem Patriotic League: aims of, 188 36 Nonconformists: 56, 63, 113, 139; Moslem World: 65 denominations of, 166; practices Mosley, Sir Oswald: leader of BUF, of, 59, 114 166 Non-Cooperation Movement: 229 Mughal Empire: 10; Hindu Northern Ireland: Belfast, 119 population of, 182 Nur-ud-Din, Hakim: death of Muhammad, Mary: conversion to (1914), 138 Islam, 171 Muhammad, Prophet: 29, 36–7, 47, O’Dwyer, Sir Michael: Lt-Governor 55, 57, 59, 61–2, 84, 105, 129, of the Punjab, 140 138, 153, 170, 181, 193, 195, Oliphant, Lancelot: 160 208; birthday of, 179; denigration Onierological Society: establishment of, 34; successors to, 34 of (1915), 163 Muir, Sir William: 34, 53; Life of Orchard, Bashir: 180, 189; conver- Mahomet, 36 sion to Islam, 168 Müller, Friedrich Max: 35 Ordo Templi Orientis: Soveriegn Murray, Charles Adolphus (Earl of Sanctuary of the Ancient and Dunmore): family of, 148 Primitive Rite, 76 Murray, Clara: family of, 100, 104 Oriental Nobility Institute: found- Muslim Education Society: person- ing of (1884), 37 nel of, 117 orientalism: 26, 35, 37, 59, 79, 81, Muslim Society of Great Britain 127, 140, 162, 169, 180; concept (MSGB): 178–9, 198, 231, 233; of, 4 as Muslim Society in Great Ottoman Association: Executive Britain, 204–5; establishment of Committee, 218 (1914), 137; members of, 137, Ottoman Empire: 3, 24, 33, 36, 174, 184, 204 42–3, 64, 82, 115, 155, 217, 225; abolition of (1922), 84, 230; Naoroji, Dadabhai: 41 Algiers, 3, 6–8; Armenia, 67–9; National Union of Seamen: 184 Christian population of, 34, nationalism: 41, 68, 217; Turkish, 67–8, 74, 218; collapse of (1922), 230 149, 152; Constantinople, 6, 25, Nejd: 157 27, 29, 33, 42, 47, 67, 74, 83, Nelson, John: conversion to Islam, 3 92, 102, 227, 229; Constitution Nicholson, Reynold A.: Mystics of of, 34; Eastern Anatolia, 67; Islam, The, 162 government of, 68; Macedonia, Nigeria: Lagos, 67 67, 74, 115; Mecca, 8; military

327 INDEX

of, 41, 67–8; Muslim population Pickthall, Marmaduke/Mohammad: of, 68, 93; territory of, 6, 20, 27, 2, 153–4, 162, 164, 175, 181, 71, 151, 153; Tripoli, 3, 74; 192–3, 205, 220–4, 226, 228–9, Tunisia, 3; Young Turk Revolu- 231, 239, 245–6; background of, tion (1908), 75, 81, 218 149; ‘Black Crusade, The’, 217; conversion to Islam, 153, 193; Pakistan: 239; Karachi, 163 death of (1936), 165, 240; family Palestine: 149, 151, 191, 220–1, of, 152, 229; imam at Woking 234 Mosque, 226; ‘Islam and Prog- Palmerston, Lord: 22–3; British ress’, 193–4; lectures of, 182, 194, Foreign Secretary, 25 221; role in formation of Islamic pan-Arabism: 232 Information Bureau, 227; support Pan-Islamic Society (Anjuman-i for Non-Cooperation Movement, Islam): 44, 125, 132–3, 201, 217; 229–30; travels of, 149–50, 182, aims of, 36, 84; as CIS, 124, 219; 218; Veiled Women, 193 personnel of, 48 Pitts, Joseph: A True and Faithful Parkinson, John Yehya-en Nasr: 90, Account of the Religion and 116, 118, 124, 164, 215–16, Manners of Mohammetans (1704), 246; conversion to Islam, 115; 5–6; forced conversion to Islam, return to Scotland, 124; vice- 5–6 president of MSGB, 137; writings Pool, John J.: 92, 96 of, 127 Presbyterianism: 20 Patriotic Association: 42 Protestantism: 5, 7, 24, 111, 154, Peach, Abdul-Aziz: 156 156; view of Holy Trinity, 62 Persia: 31, 66, 125 Persian (language): 90, 112; poetry, Quakers: 59, 126 79 Quilliam, Henry Mahomed: family Philby, Dora: 159, 192 of, 120 Philby, H.A.R. ‘Kim’: family of, 232 Quilliam, John Owen/Omar: Philby, Harry St John/Abdullah conversion to Islam, 100; death Bridger: 140, 161, 233, 237, of, 117; family of, 100, 117 245–6; background of, 157–8, Quilliam, Robert Ahmad: 74, 81, 231–2; banishment to Lebanon, 119; family of, 67, 72; president 236; conversion to Islam, of Société Internationale de 157–61; death of (1960), 237, Philologie, Sciences et Beaux- 240; family of, 158, 192, 232; Arts, 79; return to UK (1908), hajj narratives, 191; lectures of, 74–5 163; political activity of, 234–6 Quilliam, William Henry Abdullah: Philippines: 65 16, 38, 46, 54–5, 58–9, 63, 65, Pickard, William Burchell/Bashyr: 73, 76, 82, 87, 91–3, 95, 101–3, 187–8, 205, 238 107, 110, 114–15, 127–9, 133,

328 INDEX

145, 162, 175, 181, 244–6; as dhism, 204; conversion to Islam, ‘Dr/Prof Henri M. Léon’, 76–7, 175, 179; political activity of, 79, 81, 83–6, 98, 119, 124, 128, 175; president of MSGB, 204 138, 140, 162, 164, 185, 200–1, Rashids: 157 213–14, 216–18, 221–2, 234, Rawlinson, Sir Henry: 32; British 237, 246; background of, 51–3, Minister to Persia, 31 56; conversion to Islam, 51, Republic of Ireland: 68 54–7, 77, 85, 243; death of Richardson, Omar: co-founder of (1932), 77, 85, 165; departure WIA, 201 from UK (1908), 73–5, 117; de Robeck, John: British High dubbed ‘Sheikh-ul-Islam’, 63, 65, Commissioner in Constantinople, 69, 72, 77–8, 85, 201; Faith of 227 Islam, The (1889), 63; family of, Rofé, Husein F.: conversion to 51–2, 58, 67, 72, 75, 77, 100, Islam, 170; travels of, 170 117; fatwas issued by, 69–71 head Rosser-Owen, David/Daoud: of LMI, 44, 49, 57–8; lectures of, founder of Association of British 59–61, 63–4, 76, 84, 89, 105; Muslims, 246 Royal Asiatic Society: 39; members relationship with Dr Edith of, 26 Miriam Léon, 77–8; return to Russell, Bertrand: 22 UK (1909), 75–6, 78, 138; Russian Empire: 23–4, 27, 68; secrétaire général of Société borders of, 222; February Internationale de Philologie, Revolution (1917), 220; govern- Sciences et Beaux-Arts, 78; travels ment of, 42; Jewish population of, 52–3, 67; vice-president of of, 69; Provisional Government, AOS, 81, 83–4; vice-president of 220 BMS, 84; view of gender equality, Rutherford, William Watson: 72–3 194; writings of, 58–9 Ryan, Sir Andrew: 160, 198 Quilliam, William Henry Billal: 104; death of (1965), 120; family Sadr-ud-Din, Maulana: 128, 144; of, 72, 75; fraud case (1922), 78; visit to Liverpool, 118 marriage services conducted by, Said, Edward: Orientalism (1978), 4 104 Sardinia: 27 Quilliam-Cates, Hubert Haleem: ibn Saud, King Abd al-Aziz: 157, 120 231–2, 235; conquering of the Hijaz (1924), 158, 191; death of Radford, A. Hassan: assault of (1953), 236–7 (1894), 111 Saudi Arabia: Jidda, 20, 28, Rankin, James/Djemal-ud-deen: 159–60, 190–1, 232, 234, 237; 107; conversion to Islam, 106 Mecca, 20, 28–9, 59, 158, 190–1, Rankin, Sir Omar Hubert: 180, 224, 237; Medina, 59, 158, 206, 244; conversion to Bud- 196–7; Riyadh, 234, 237

329 INDEX

Sayal, Chaudhrey Fateh Muham- Skrine, Francis Henry: 41 mad: 136, 144, 244; leader of Smith, Captain Basil Marchant/ LMM, 140 Badr el-Murad: conversion to Schleich, Charles Salman: conver- Islam, 168 sion to Islam, 156; BMS Secre- Smith, George Khalid: hon. tary, 200 secretary of LMI, 110 Scottish Communist Party: 175 Smith, Reginald Bosworth: 35 Scottish Nationalist Party: 175 Société Internationale de Philologie, Second Anglo-Maratha War Sciences et Beaux-Arts: 81, 83, (1803–5): 11 120, 217; members of, 78–9, 164 Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780– Society for the Propagation of Islam 4): 9 in the North-West Province: Second World War (1939–45): 179, Moslem Guide (1891), 93 197–8, 204, 213, 216, 234, 237, Somaliland: 171 239; belligerents of, 234; impact South Africa: 53 on British rate of conversion to South African War (1899–1902): 42 Islam, 166 Southern Railway Company: 189 Serbia: 152 Spain: 52; Cordoba, 53 Shah, Amina: family of, 240 Spiritualism: 126, 161, 164, 202 Shah, Idries: family of, 240 Sri Lanka (Ceylon): 29–30, 157, Shah, Ikbal Ali/Syed Abdullah: 140; 199; civil service, 109 family of, 171, 240 Stanhope, Lady Hester: travels of, Shah, Mohammed (Aga Khan): 20 188, 201, 226–7 Stanley, Algernon Charles: Bishop Shah, Zyed Muhammad Zauqi: 163 of Emmaus, 22; family of, 22 Sheldrake, Ghazia Sybil: family of, Stanley, Blanche (Countess of 222 Airlie): family of, 22 Sheldrake, Khalid: 128, 154–5, Stanley, Edward John (2nd Lord 164–5, 180–1, 188, 200–1, 205, Stanley of Alderley): death of, 33; 208, 221, 244, 246; co-founder family of, 21–2 of WIA, 201; conversion to Islam, Stanley, Edward Lyulph (4th Lord 124–5; death of (1947), 237–8; Stanley of Alderley): family of, ejection from WMM, 201; family 22, 49 of, 222; hon. secretary of MSGB, Stanley, Henrietta Maria (Lady 137; lectures of, 222; role in Stanley of Alderley): 26 family of, founding of Young England 22 Islamic Society, 125 Stanley, Henry/Hafiz (3rd Lord Shi’ah Islamic Society: members of, Stanley of Alderley): 23–6, 28, 206 36–40, 44–7, 51, 56, 102, 108, Shipping Federation: 184 149, 209, 245; background of, Sikhism: 39 21–3; conversion to Islam (1859),

330 INDEX

1, 16, 19, 21, 29–30, 46, 243; Taoism: 162, 169 death of, 46–9; diplomatic career Taylor, Canon Isaac: 38, 65 of, 25–7, 31–2; family of, 21–3, Taylor, Henry Yute Jones: 115 26, 29–33, 44, 47, 49; political Temperance movement: 52, 59, activity of, 39–43, 46; succession 106; revival of, 164; support for, to peerage (1869), 33; travels of, 80 28–9, 218 Thailand (Siam): 32 Stanley, Johnny: family of, 29–31 Theosophy: 126–7, 139; growth in Stanley, Kate (Viscountess Amber- support of, 55 ley): family of, 47 Thompson, Martha: divorce case of, Stanley, Maude: family of, 29–30 73–4 Stanley, Reschid/Robert: 119; Tidrick, Kathryn: 156 background of, 101; conversion Tipu: defeat of (1799), 11; military to Islam, 103; Mayor of Staly- victories of, 9 bridge, 102–3 Tisdall, William St Clair: 34 Stanley, Rianette: family of, 26 Transjordan: 233; suspension of free Stanton, H. U. Weitbrecht: 93, 129, elections in, 231 135 Travel Club: 190 Stephen, Prof Nathan/Nur-ud-Din: Tufail, Muhammad: 199 119, 164, 200; death of (1928), Tufton, Thomas Sackville/Hasan 165; founder of Onierological Ahmad (Baron Hothfield): 199; Society, 163 conversion to Islam, 174–5 Stephenson, George: 59 Turkestan: proposed division of, Stonehewer-Bird, Hugh: British 222 Consul in Jidda, 232 Turkey: 2, 7, 25–7, 34, 42, 44, Subud: concept of, 170 70–2, 74–7, 81–4, 109, 118, Subuh, Muhammad: founder of 125, 151–2, 171, 189–90, Subud, 170 214–15, 217–18, 223; Ankara, Sudan: 69; Khartoum, 42 237; diplomatic relations with Sufi Publishing Society: members Britain, 67–8, 115–16, 156; of, 162 Muslim population of, 219 Sufism: 21, 25, 28, 162, 169, 240; Turkish (language): 90, 112 tariqas, 162, 169, 184 Turkish Wounded Soldiers’ Relief Suffragist movement: 146 Fund: establishment of, 41 Suhrawardy, Abdullah: 124–5 Switzerland: 223; Geneva, 33 umma: 34, 40, 66–7, 181, 185, Sykes, Sir Mark: 223–4 226; concept of, 56–7; divisions Syria: 151; Damascus, 20, 151, 237; within, 200 French Mandate of (1922–43), United Kingdom (UK): 2, 23, 27, 232; Palmyra, 20; Umayyad 29, 34, 56, 81, 83, 91, 137, 155, Mosque, 151 214, 218; 7/7 bombings, 2;

331 INDEX

Aldershot, 167; Cambridge University, 36, 101–2, 162; University, 23, 36, 126, 157, 231; Parliament, 65, 67; Preston, 76; Cardiff, 171–2, 182–3, 211, 241; Royal Navy, 174, 189; Security Catholic population of, 44; Civil Service (MI5), 235; South War (1642–51), 7; Colonial Shields, 172, 183–4, 211, 240–1; Office, 160, 235; Defence of the War Office, 221, 234; Whitehall, Realm Act, 224, 235; Dundee, 111, 234–5, 245; Woking, 171, 179; Edinburgh, 171; 79–80, 84, 155–6, 164, 166–7, Education Act (1870), 45; 174, 188–9, 208, 214, 239, 244; Foreign Office, 16, 72–3, 81, 83, Wolverhampton, 166 111, 149, 216, 219, 223–4, United Methodist Free Church: 52 227–8, 231–2, 234–6; Glasgow, United States of America (USA): 171, 211; government of, 42, 84, 108, 118, 235; 9/11 attacks, 2; 188, 216, 220–1, 223, 229, New York, 148, 164 234–5; Home Office, 236; House Urquhart, David: 24, 53; Spirit of of Lords, 19, 33, 39, 135; Hull, the East, The, 21; travels of, 20–1 171, 183, 211; India Office, 16, Valyi, Felix: editor of La Revue 188, 216, 219, 221, 227; Politique Internationale, 223 Liverpool, 38, 51–3, 55, 60, Victoria, Queen: death of (1901), 64–6, 68–9, 72–3, 75–6, 88–9, 66; Diamond Jubilee, 66 91, 96–8, 101, 104, 107–8, 112, Vivian, Valentine: 236 117–21, 171, 183, 211, 235, 244; London, 9, 11, 25–6, 28, Wahba, Sheikh Hafiz: 191 32, 36–7, 39, 48, 75, 78–80, 84, Wahhabism: 158; growth of, 201 100, 104, 107, 124, 127, 130, Ward, Sir Henry: Governor of 132–3, 140, 148–9, 153, 158, Ceylon, 29 164, 171, 175, 179, 188, 200–1, Warren, Muhammad Abdullah 203, 208, 210, 216, 218, 237, G.E.: conversion to Islam, 166 244; Manchester, 171; military Warren, Prof H. Nasrullah: 111; of, 106, 154–6, 167, 231; conversion to Islam, 103–4 Ministry of Information, 216; Watkins, Osman: co-founder of MO4, 223; Muslim population WIA, 201 of, 1–3, 15–16, 36–7, 58, 66, 71, Webb, Alexander Russell/Moham- 81, 83, 87, 95–8, 101–2, 107–17, mad: 108, 117; conversion to 120–1, 123, 139, 141–2, 144, Islam, 65 147, 159, 163, 168, 172–4, Wellesley, Lord: Governor General 176–9, 182, 184–5, 187–90, of Bengal, 11; Supreme Head of 192, 196–7, 199–200, 205–9, India, 11 211, 213–17, 219, 222, 225–6, Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, Irene/ 228, 230–1, 234–40, 245–6; Aisha: family of, 174; hajj Nottingham 77–8; Oxford experience of, 189–90

332 INDEX

Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, William: Review, 79–80, 85, 119–20, 127, family of, 174 132, 136–7, 139, 141–2, 155, Western Islamic Association (WIA): 162–4, 166–7, 170–1, 173, 179, 205, 221, 231, 244; founding of 182, 185, 189, 192, 195, 198, (1926), 201; members of, 216 200, 204, 208–9, 226, 230, 238; Whig Party: 22–3 London Muslim Prayer House, Whymant, Dr Ameen Neville J.: 226; members of, 118, 146–7, 162; interest in Spiritualism, 164 163, 181, 199, 215; Memorial Wilde, Prof H. Haschem: 111–12 House, 128, 179–180; Muslim Williams, Walter H.: background Literary Society, 153 of, 156; conversion to Islam, 146 Wolverhampton Church Congress: Williamson, William Richard/ 38 Abdullah Fazil: 113, 116–17, Wright, Dudley: 146, 164, 180; 180; conversion to Islam, 109 background of, 124; death of Wingate, Ronald: Assistant Political (1949), 238 Officer of Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, 224 Yahi, A. Ethel: conversion to Islam, Woking Mosque: founding of 171 (1889), 37; marriages conducted at, 170 Yemen: 171 Woking Muslim Mission (WMM): Young England Islamic Society: 16, 79–81, 84, 124, 137, 140, founding of (1906), 125 142, 156, 162–3, 165–7, 173, de Yorke, Ismail: President of 184–5, 188, 198, 207, 210, 213, MSGB, 184 217, 225–6, 228–9, 244; Ahmadi connections of, 202–3, 205; Zaouia Islamia Allawouia Religious founding of (1912), 123; Islamic Society of the UK: 178 Review and Muslim India/Islamic Zionism: 224

333