8. Woking Muslim Mission

Royal Oriental Order of the Sat B’hai 

In early 1913, the same time that Abdul Baha visited England, Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din (1870 – 1932), a prominent figure in the Ahmadiyya movement, coordinated the reopening of the Shah Jahan mosque and the debut of the Woking Muslim Mission (WMM).² On October 17, 1919, “a large congregation” assembled at the WMM London Muslim Prayer House for Khilafat Day, the day appointed by the All-India Muslim Conference in Lucknow the previous month, the famous British convert to Islam, Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall (1875 – 1936), known for his English translation of the Quran, led a prayer for the preservation the “undiminished power and authority” of the Ottoman Caliphate.[1] The release of the membership registers of the United Grand Lodge of England show that three known personalities were members who were closely involved in the development of the Muslim community in London in connection with Syed Ameer Ali, founder of the All-India Muslim League (AIML) led by the Aga Khan III: Marmaduke Pickthall, Jewish orientalist Dr. Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840 – 1899), and another British convert, Abdullah Quilliam (1856 – 1932).[2]

Quilliam was a member of Rose-Croix chapter No.7 in Liverpool of the Ancient and Primitive Rite, founded by John Yarker in 1881. He was also a member of the Anglo-Indian order known as Royal Oriental Order of the Sat B’hai, which was influenced by Hindu mysticism. According to Yarker: “This is a Hindu Society organized by the Pundit of an Anglo-Indian regiment, and brought to this country, about the year 1872, by Captain J.H. Lawrence Archer.”[3] The name of the group, which was divided into seven degrees of seven disciples, was inspired by “Seven Feathers,” and it alludes to the bird Malacocersis Grisis, which flies in groups of seven.[4] Quilliam knew Kenneth Mackenzie,[5] one of the founding members of the SRIA, who wrote about the order in an article which was published in his well-known The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia in 1876:

 

ROYAL ORIENTAL ORDER OF THE SAT B'HAI - An order incorporated with that of Sikha. It originated in India, and is so named after a bird held sacred by the Hindus, and known to naturalists as the Malacocerus grisius, whose flight, invariably in sevens, has obtained for the rite the appellation of the seven (Sat) brethren (B’hai). The last meeting in India was held at Allahabad (Pryaya or Prag), in the year 1845. It is divided into seven degrees (but, with Sikha, composed of the Sponsors, nine), the first being the highest, i.e., 1. Arch Censor. 2. Arch Courier. 3. Arch Minister, 4. Arch Herald. 5. Arch Scribe. 6. Arch Auditor. 7. Arch Mute. The last three degrees are, under certain limitations, open to both sexes, but none but Master Masons are admitted into the first four degrees.

 

Major Francis George Irwin, member of the Orphic Circle and founder of the Fratres Lucis, was also a member.[6] When the August Order of Light was founded in 1882 by Maurice Vidal Portman (1860 – 1935), a superintendent of the Andaman Island Penal Colony, it reflected the same Hinduism mysticism as the Sat B’hai, with additional elements borrowed from the Kabbalah.[7] A later memorandum of the order described Portman as “…a learned student of Eastern lore, and Occultist and Politician, who went to India in the train of the late Lord Lytton, when Viceroy of India, in 1876,” where he was able to “make himself familiar with the literature and ritual observances of the Eastern Indian Races, Brahmans, Buddhists, Jains etc. and gained much curious lore from the Fakirs and religious devotees of all creeds…”[8] After 1885, a minority of Freemasons tended to join the Theosophical Society, including Irwin, Westcott and Ayton, and so, too, were others who were in the SRIA and the Golden Dawn.[9] Golden Dawn members Rev. W.A. Ayton and Robert Palmer Thomas were among the first to be imparted its secrets. In or about 1890, Portman handed the rite to Yarker who amalgamated some of its ritual with the Sat B’hai’s highest Perfection grade.[10] Referring to the Sat B’hai, Yarker wrote: “somehow its raison d’être ceased to be necessary when the Theosophical Society was established by the late H.P. Blavatsky.”[11] In around 1880, Quilliam founded the Ancient Order of Zuzimites, appointing himself Grand Master, and the majority of its membership were converts to Islam.[12]

Quilliam converted to Islam in 1887 after visiting Morocco. Quilliam purchased numbers 8, 11 and 12 Brougham Terrace, Liverpool, following his conversion, thanks to a donation from Nasrullah Khan, Crown Prince of the Emirate of Afghanistan, and brother of Habibullah Khan, of the Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition.[13] Quilliam was appointed Sheikh ul Islam of the British Isles by the Sultan Abdul Hamid ll.[14] Quilliam returned to Istanbul regularly, sometimes residing in the Sultan’s Yildiz palace complex and joining Abdul Hamid II’s entourage for prayers and meals.[15] Quilliam’s book Faith of Islam, published in 1889, ran into three editions and thirteen languages, and was key to introducing many English people to Islam. Queen Victoria ordered a copy for herself and then re-ordered six more for her children.[16] 8 Brougham Terrace became the Liverpool Muslim Institute, the first functioning mosque in Britain, which opened on Christmas Day, 1889.[17] Maulavi Barkatullah (1854 – 1927), who worked at the institute from 1895 to 1899, would become Prime Minister of first Provisional Government of India established in Afghanistan in 1915. By 1893, the Institute started publishing The Crescent, which regularly featured articles from British convert, John Yehya-En-Nasr Parkinson (1874 – 1918), while its wider community included Abdul Rahman Stanley, another British convert, who had met with Arminius Vambery in 1864.[18] In June 1913, Quilliam and his son Robert Ahmad attended a special convocation of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), hosted by Crowley in London.[19]

 

East London Mosque 

The Association of British Muslims began in Liverpool, as the English Islamic Association, founded in 1889 by Quilliam, at about the same time that the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking was built by Dr. Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner. Queen Victoria’s British Indian employees and her British Indian secretary, Abdul Karim, prayed there. During his 1895 visit of England, Prince Nasrullah Khan prayed Eid al-Adha prayers at the mosque and made a donation of on behalf of his father.[20] In 1910, as London’s growing Muslim population had no place to worship, Syed Ameer Ali was part of a meeting of high-profile Muslim and non-Muslims held at the Ritz Hotel to discuss the establishment of a permanent place of worship for Muslims, and as a result the London Mosque Fund was created to finance the building of the first mosque in the city, the East London Mosque, today one of the largest mosques in Europe. The Aga Khan III served as life president of the board of trustees. Nathan Rothschild, original founder of Cecil Rhodes’ Round Table, served as a trustee until his death in 1915.[21] Lord Lamington (29 – 1940) became a Vice-Chairman. The famous historian, Professor T.W. Arnold, who was a friend of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Iqbal’s teacher and at Government College Lahore, also became its Secretary.[22]

Leitner had created a Woking Mosque Endowment Fund, and the Executive Committee of the London Mosque Fund, at its meeting on April 17, 1912, decided to appoint trustees for Woking Mosque Trust and to take over the Shah Jahan Mosque and its property. Three trustees were appointed: Syed Ameer Ali, Mirza Sir Abbas Ali Baig and T.W. Arnold.[23] In 1910, Baig had been appointed a member of the Council of the Secretary of State for India, and left in 1917 as its Vice-President. He was made a CSI in 1912 and the title of KCIE was conferred upon him in 1917.[24] Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1872 – 1953), Indian-British Ismaili Muslim, and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, both known for their translators of the Quran, were trustees of the London Mosque Fund.[25] Ali belonged to a community of Dawudi Bohra, a subset of the Taiyebi sect of the Mustali branch of Ismailism.[26] Ali was not an Islamic scholar in any formal sense.[27] In 1891, Ali was awarded a scholarship to study at Cambridge, where he studied law. In 1895, he returned to India with a post in the Indian Civil Service (ICS), later being called to the Bar in Lincoln's Inn in 1896. He married Teresa Mary Shalders (1873–1956) at St Peter's Church in Bournemouth in 1900. Yusuf Ali first came to public attention after a lecture at the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1906, organized by his mentor, George Birdwood. When another mentor, Lord Meston, formerly Lieutenant Governor of the UP, was made Finance Member of the Government of India, he employed Ali as acting Under Secretary and then Deputy Secretary in the Department of Finance.[28] According to Ali’s biographer, Khizar Humayun Ansari:

 

 Abdullah Yusuf Ali belonged to the group of Indian Muslims from professional families who were concerned with rank and status. In pursuit of his aspiration for influence, deference, if not outright obsequiousness, became a central feature of his relationship with the British. During the formative phase of his life he mingled mainly in upper-class circles, assiduously cultivating relations with members of the English élite. He was particularly impressed by the apparently genteel behaviour and cordiality of those with whom he associated, and, as a result, became an incorrigible Anglophile. His marriage to Teresa Shalders according to the rites of the Church of England, his hosting of receptions for the good and the great, his taste for Hellenic artefacts and culture and fascination for its heroes, his admiration for freemasonry in India as a way of bridging the racial and social divide, and his advocacy of the dissemination of rationalist and modernist thought through secular education were all genuine attempts to assimilate into British society.[29]

 

Ali’s English translation and commentary of the Quran remains one of the two most widely used English versions other than Pickthall’s.[30] Several researchers have identified doctrinal errors in Ali’s translation and commentary. However, as noted by Al-Hitari, “Ali’s work is based on the esoteric Ismaili/Bohra doctrine and departs from mainstream Quranic exegesis he claimed to have relied on.”[31] Although he received western-style education, Ali held firm to this his faith and religious doctrine. His education, and the then newly released modernist interpretations of the Quran by Syed Ahmad Khan, Maulvi Abdul Haqq and the Salafiyya like Mohammed Abduh and Rashid Rida, had tremendous influence on Ali.[32] The inaccuracies found by scholars in Ali’s translation and commentary, explains Al-Hitari were accidental mistakes, but conscious choices derived from a consistent, although unorthodox, doctrine. In fact, adds Al-Hitari, Ali often dismisses more conventional scholarly sources, opting instead for his own views, “in a strikingly unscholarly manner.”[33]

Al-Hitari’s study concludes that Ali’s work belongs to the Ta’wil, or esoteric interpretation, of Ismailism. Bohra education is stratified into an exoteric layer, and a Batiniyya one reserved for the elite, and transmitted from “from mouth to ear.”[34] Ali betrays Bohra influence through his reference to doctrines such as Wahy (revelation), and al-Qaim, a term historically applied to the awaited Imam who went into concealment, but in modern esoteric literature, especially among Babis and Bahais, as well as Egyptian Revivalists, to leaders of esoteric movements. Ali consistently employs an esoteric view of Wahy, to suggest that the Quran was not revealed but inspired in Mohammed. Ali’s typically esoteric understanding of Kufr is also evidenced by his view that the message of the Prophet calls for “universal brotherhood” regardless of faith. Clearly influenced by Abduh and Ridha, Ali refers to the Prophet’s message as a unifying the human race after “Man fell from Unity when his Will was warped” and the “Brotherhood of Man was… doubly forgotten.” The Prophet, according to Ali, proclaimed “with unfaltering voice/The Unity of God, the Brotherhood of Man.”[35]

As a novelist, Pickthall was esteemed by E.G. Browne, D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Wells and E.M. Forster. Pickthall travelled across many Eastern countries, gaining a reputation as a Middle-Eastern scholar.[36] On his return from Turkey in 1913, Pickthall joined the Freemasons’ Misercadia Lodge.[37] In Istanbul in 1913, Pickthall had arrived with excellent letters of introduction that provided him access to high-ranking officials, including Said Halim Pasha, who together with Enver Pasha and Talaat Pasha, the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Turkey, formed the ruling triumvirate of the CUP that had just returned to power.[38] Pickthall was inspired by Halim Pasha, who “set forth what the modern State should be according to the Shari‘ah.”[39] According to Geoffrey P. Nash, Mahmud Shevket Pasha, the military general who had organized and led the Action Army, before he was assassinated in June 1913, was someone Pickthall “hero-worshipped.”[40] Pickthall describe Talaat Pasha as a “great friend.”[41] When Talaat was assassinated in Berlin in 1921, like Said Halim Pasha, by Armenian assassins, for his role in the Armenian Genocide, Pickthall spoke at a memorial meeting in the cemetery in the Muslim quarter, touting him as a “brave man” and stating that “such a death, while working for the cause of Islam [...] was really a most glorious martyrdom.”[42]

In November 1917, Pickthall publicly converted to Islam at the Muslim Literary Society of the Woking Muslim Mission (WMM), at the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, with the support of Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din at the London Muslim Prayer House’s new venue, Campden Hill Road, Notting Hill Gate, for which Yusuf Ali was president.[43] In 1913, Sir Abbas Ali Baig invited Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, a prominent figure in the Ahmadiyya movement, to take charge of the Shah Jahan Mosque, and later helped him in starting the Muslim Mission and Literary Trust and himself became one of its trustees.[44] The Shah Jahan Mosque fell into disuse between Leitner’s death and 1912. Leitner’s son Henry Leitner wanted to sell the land to property developers so Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din took him to court on the grounds that the Mosque was consecrated ground just like a church and therefore deserved the same rights and property limitations. He won and after purchasing the grounds from Henry Leitner for a small price he was able to re-open the Mosque in 1913. It was on the occasion of the mosque’s re-opening that Abdul Baha visited, and  greeted by a large assembly of Christians, Muslims and Jews, hosted by Henry Leitner. The “Avalonian Bahai” Alice Buckton was instrumental in arranging the meeting.[45] Guests included Syed Ameer Ali, Prince and Princess Urusov, Lord Lamington, Lady Blomfield, Lady Barclay, Sir Arundel and Lady Arundel, the Prime Minister of Persia, and G.R.S. Mead, an influential member of the Theosophical Society.[46] Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din summarized Abdul Baha’s speech:

 

The gist of Abdul Baha’s speech was that the basis of religion is harmony and love, and it was the mission of every prophet to spread harmony and love in mankind. This was also the real mission of Moses, Jesus and the Holy Prophet Muhammad. In past times there was much discord and ignorance. Now Bahaullah [sic] had brought light and his mission was to teach love, harmony and brotherhood. The reason for man’s existence is to show humanity and love, so we must adhere to love and brotherhood.[47]

 

The Ahmadiyya movement provided an impetus for native Britons’ to convert to faith in Islam, for the most part of “a few, rich mostly well-educated Europeans” who “adopted Islam as a new faith as a result of their search for spiritual pathways beyond their original culture and beliefs.”[48] Kamal-ud-Din converted several Britons to Islam, most notably, Lord Headley (1855 – 1935), whose conversion was reported in newspapers throughout Britain and the Empire. On the occasion of Headly’s conversion, a meeting was held on November 23, 1913, in Ahmadiyya Buildings in Lahore, attended by large numbers of Muslims and followers of other religions. Muhammad Iqbal was among those who delivered celebratory speeches:

 

The biggest cause of the decline of the Muslims is the neglect of the task of the propagation of Islam. Thank God that the man who first recognised this shortcoming is Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, who has sacrificed all worldly interests to take this great work upon himself. It is, therefore, our duty not to neglect to help him in any way, and we must not let the question of Ahmadiyyat stand in the way of this noble work, for our God, our Prophet and our Scripture is the same.[49]

 

The meeting also proposed that a campaign for funds be launched among the Indian Muslim population for the Woking Muslim Mission, which was named the Ishaat Islam Trust. At the annual meeting held in Agra of the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference, originally founded by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a large meeting was convened for the support of the Woking Muslim Mission. A motion was raised by Iqbal to send a telegram of congratulations to Headley through Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din which was unanimously accepted. Many speeches were made, including by Shaukat Ali of the Khilafat Committee.[50] The number of converts grew sufficiently during 1914 for Kamal-ud-Din to establish a British Muslim Society under the Presidency of Headley, with John Yehya-En-Nasr Parkinson as his Vice-President and Khalid Sheldrake (1888 – 1947) as the Honorable Secretary.[51]

Soon after the death of Hakeem Noor-ud-Din, the first Caliph or successor of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the movement, died on March 13, 1914, Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad (1889 – 1965) was elected as the second caliph. However, a faction led by Maulana Muhammad Ali (1874 – 1951) and Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din strongly opposed his succession and refused to accept him as the next caliph. The schism soon led to the formation of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, while Mahmood Ahmad’s followers, based in Qadian, came to be known as Qadianis. The split arose over Mahmood Ahmad’s contention that all the Muslims of the world who had not taken the Bay’ah to join the Ahmadiyya were to be condemned as Kafirs (unbelievers). Iqbal sided with the Lahoris. On May 14, 1914, a meeting of the Ishaat Islam Trust was held with Iqbal as President, with Maulana Muhammad Ali in attendance.[52] It was Khwaja Nazir Ahmad, the son of Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, who testified at the Munir Court of Enquiry held in Pakistan in 1953, that Iqbal had taken the Bay’ah of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in 1892.[53]

 

Anglo-Ottoman Society

Pickthall was a great admirer of Lord Cromer’s twenty-year “autocratic but benevolent and upright reign” in Egypt.[54] During the war, however, Pickthall developed a reputation as “a rabid Turkophile,” and was consequently denied a position with the Arab Bureau, a role going instead T.E. Lawrence, known famously as Lawrence of Arabia.[55] Pickthall was drawn into closer contact and collaboration with Indian Muslims through a shared concern for the preservation of the Ottoman Empire.[56] Nevertheless, Pickthall viewed the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 as having brought progressive Muslims to power.[57] Another influence on Pickthall was Said Halim Pasha, CUP leader who served as the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1917.[58] As Pickthall indicated, the reason for his to support of the Young Turks was because he considered a strong Turkey to be in the best interests of Britain:

 

As an Englishmen who has the interests of the Muhammedan at heart, I am a pro-Turk until the balance is adjusted. Any sentimentality […] I may have felt or betrayed when writing of the Turks, is for the British Empire, which some men deride. I confess that I cannot see England in a mean and, at the same time, ruinous course of policy without emotion of a most decided kind.[59]

 

In the months before his conversion, Pickthall became avowedly Pan-Islamic. Pickthall became involved in the Anglo-Ottoman Society (AOS), an organization comprising of both Muslim and Christian members, for a European defense of the Ottoman Empire. It was here that he came into close contact with South Asian Pan-Islamists who had established a number of lobbying groups of their own, including the Woking Muslim Mission (WMM), the London Moslem League (LML), that had been founded and led by Syed Ameer Ali in 1908, and the Islamic Society/Central Islamic Society (IS/CIS) of Mushir Hussain Kidwai (1878 – 1937).[60] Kidwai was the disciple of Haji Waris Ali Shah (1817 – 1905), the founder Sufi Saint of Warsi Order of the Indian subcontinent.[61] Waris Ali Shah belonged to the Qadiriyya order of Sufism. Warsi went to Mecca for Hajj several times. During his travels in Europe, he visited and Otto von Bismarck in Berlin.[62] He also traveled to England and had an audience with Queen Victoria.[63] Sultan Abdul Hamid II was among his disciples.[64] Pickthall wrote in the New York Times in 1916, for example, that Pan-Islam, “the conscious effort for united progress made by educated Moslems,” was the “cornerstone” of “Disraeli’s great constructive Eastern policy.” For Pickthall, 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.”[65]

Pickthall was suspected of being an enemy agent stemming from the time of his return from Turkey just before World War I. When the war broke out, in November 1914, a month later the offices of the CIS and AOS were raided by the police after a tip-off from MI5.[66] Pickthall’s pro-Ottoman activities soon brought him to the attention of both a Foreign Office official, Sir Maurice de Bunsen, and the architect of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and eventual author of the Balfour Declaration, Sir Mark Sykes. Bunsen believed that Pickthall ought to be interned as an enemy alien and Sykes responded to Pickthall’s initiatives for a peace between Britain and the Ottomans as something that “speak[s] in a distinctly hostile tone of your own government.”[67] In May 1916, Sykes rejected Pickthall’s request for a passport to travel to Switzerland to meet Turkish representatives there, presumably to initiate a peace process between Britain and Ottoman Empire.[68]

M.A. Sherif states that Pickthall used his Masonic connections to support his proposed peace deal between Britain and the Ottomans, but, as the pro-Zionist lobby feared that such a peace with Turkey would undermine their plans for a Jewish state in Palestine, Pickthall came to be considered to be an Ottoman spy and an enemy agent.[69] CIS even appointed Pickthall as its spokesperson for “Muslim Interests on Palestine.”[70] At a meeting of the CIS, in June 1917, the year in which Pickthall later publicly declared his Islamic faith, he remarked about the plans of the Zionists:

 

Among the recent Jewish immigrants to Palestine—the Jews of the Zionist movement as distinct from the native Jews—there is an extreme and narrow fanaticism which their enlightened co-religionists in Europe hardly, I think, realise… their avowed intention is to get possession of the Rock  and the Mosque El Aksa, which is the second Holy Place of Islam—because it was the site of their Temple.[71]

 

As the conflict against the Ottoman Empire during World War I intensified, so did anti-Muslim sentiment in the British press and the society as a whole, and as a result these British converts attempted to defend their patriotism. Despite wartime censorship and an increasingly anti-Turk and anti-Muslim sentiment in Britain during the premiership David Lloyd George, from 1916 until 1922, Pickthall lobbied actively through the AOS and alongside fellow Muslim converts, especially Sheldrake, Quilliam and Parkinson. Sheldrake went so far as to write to assure the Foreign Secretary of Muslim “support, co-operation and loyalty.”[72] Along with other converts, Sheldrake joined the army in 1917, and, like Quilliam, offered his assistance in helping to mobilize Muslim loyalty to the Crown.[73] John Yehya-En-Nasr Parkinson affirmed: “I would support my country in the contest by every honourable means in my power, to bring matters to a victorious ending […] 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. Those of us who have long stood by [Turkey] in weal and woe, in good and evil days, will still stand by to help by every means in our power, so long as that help does not interfere with our greater duty to our own Empire, to our native land.”[74]

 

Khilafat Day

The Central Khilafat Committee in India, for which Mushir Hussain Kidwai of Central Islamic Society (CIS) was a founding member, were impressed by the efforts of Marmaduke Pickthall on behalf of Turkey.[75] After World War I, British Muslims connected with the WMM also became involved in the campaign to secure a just peace settlement for 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 AIML founder Syed Ameer Ali and the Aga Khan III, who pleaded for a fair consideration for Turkey at the Paris Peace Conference, stressing that its destruction would be neither compatible with British imperial interests nor constructive for the peaceful development of Asia, especially India.[76] The WMM and the CIS, along with Pickthall’s Anglo-Ottoman Society (AOS), met regularly to discuss the situation, and press the British government for a sympathetic response to Turkey.[77] Encouraged by Kidwai and Mirza Hashim Ispahani, Pickthall formed the Islamic Defence League, soon renamed Islamic Information Bureau (IIB), circulate “true information about Turkey and other Muslim matters,” through its pro-Turkish bulletin, Muslim Outlook. Supporters included Khalid Sheldrake, Lady Evelyn Cobbold, journalist Dusé Mohamed Ali and the Aga Khan III.[78] Lady Evelyn Cobbold (1867 – 1963), who was inspired by her great-aunt was Lady Jane Digby, was a Scottish diarist, traveler and noblewoman who was known for her conversion to Islam in 1915, taking on the name Zainab Cobbold.[79]

Dusé Mohamed Ali (1866 – 1945) was a Sudanese-Egyptian actor and political activist, who became known for his African nationalism. In 1915, Ali founded and was Secretary of the Indian Muslim Soldiers’ Widows’ and Orphans’ War Fund. Among its patrons were Consuelo, the Duchess of Marlborough, the David Lloyd George, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, Lord and Lady Lamington, Lord and Lady Newton, the Marquis and Marchioness of Crew, Mrs. H. H. Asquith, Sir Austen and Lady Chamberlain, Lord Curzon, and almost all the members of the British Cabinet. After the First Universal Races Congress held at the University of London in 1911, Ali, with the help of John Eldred Jones, a journalist from Sierra Leone, in 1912 founded the African Times and Orient Review (ATOR) in London. The journal, which advocated Pan-African nationalism, became a forum for African and other intellectuals and activists from around the world, attracting numerous contributors, including George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Annie Besant, Sir Harry H. Johnston, Henry Francis Downing, and William H. Ferris.[80]

Quilliam, Pickthall, along with Dusé Mohamed Ali and AOS honorable secretary 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. Pickthall briefly sat on the Ottoman Association’s Executive Committee, but became more closely involved with the second organization, the AOS, which also counted John Yehya-En-Nasr and Quilliam.[81] In December 1919, along with the Aga Khan III, Syed Ameer Ali, Cobbold, Ispahani, Kidwai and Maulvi Sadr-ud-Din, the Imam of the Woking Mosque, Pickthall, in an attempt to emphasize his loyalty to England, was one of the more than fifty British and British Indian signatories of the memorial reminding Prime Minister David Lloyd George of his pledge on the sovereignty of Turkey and urging for “a policy towards Turkey that would lead to appeasement” and thereby placate Indian Muslims.[82] When the Khilafat Day was organized in London in October 17, 1919, to coincide with mass protests in India, Pickthall had led a prayer for the preservation of the Ottoman Empire and the “undiminished power and authority” of the Sultan. Resolutions were passed on the occasion affirming the Sultan as the Caliph of the Muslim world. As chairman of the meeting, Pickthall signed the telegram sent to the Sultan expressing the London congregation’s “devotion to [his] Majesty as Caliph.”[83]

Shortly after the Allies drafted their terms of peace with Turkey in February 1920, Quilliam presided over a meeting of a delegation of the Khilafat Movement at the Woking Mosque.[84] When Mohamed Ali Jauhar and a Khilafat delegation arrived at the mosque, to canvass support on the “Turkish Question,” Pickthall strongly encouraged British Muslim cooperation and hosted a dinner party for the group.[85] Jauhar was so impressed by Pickthall that he offered to put him in charge of the dissemination of the delegation’s views as well as the management and organization of its meetings and other activities.[86] To the surprise of many British Muslims, in September, Pickthall ddisillusioned with the Peace Conference, accepted an invitation from leaders of the Khilafat Movement to become editor of the English-language newspaper, the Bombay Chronicle.[87]

The Bombay Chronicle was started in 1910 by Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Parsi Zoroastrian, Freemason and founding member of the Bombay Presidency Association, who later became the president of the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1890, and a member of the Bombay Legislative Council in 1893. In 1894, Mehta was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) and a Knight Commander (KCIE) in 1904. Jehangir Bomanji Petit (1879 ― 1946), one of Mahatma Gandhi’s earliest supporters, had assisted Mehta in launching the newspaper. From 1913 to 1919, the newspaper was edited by B. G. Horniman (1873 – 1948), served as vice president of the Home Rule League under Annie Besant. When Gandhi reached India and Bombay for the first time on January 9, 1915, Petit and Horniman, along with other Indian nationalists, took a launch to reach the steamer to welcome him. Later, on January 12, Petit organized a reception at his bungalow, Mount Petit on Pedder Road, where over 600 distinguished citizens, with both Europeans and Indians present, including Horniman, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta.[88] Within a year, Pickthall was forced to take his ailing wife back home to Britain. However, Pickthall also feared arrest and imprisonment, because, during 1921, he had become associated with Gandhi, who was attempting to build cooperation between Hindus and Muslims by supporting the Khilafat Movement.[89]

During Yusuf Ali’s absence in India, his wife Teresa was unfaithful to him and gave birth to an illegitimate child in 1910, causing him to divorce her in 1912 and gaining custody of their four children, whom he left with a governess in England. However, he was rejected by his children, and during the 1920s and 1930s he stayed at the National Liberal Club. In 1914, Ali resigned from the ICS and settled in Britain where he became a Trustee of the Shah Jahan Mosque and in 1921 a Trustee of the London Mosque Fund. With the outbreak of World War I, unlike many Muslims in Britain, Ali was an enthusiastic supporter of the Indian contribution to the war effort and was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1917. In the same year, he joined the staff of the School of Oriental Studies as a lecturer in Hindustani. He married again in 1920, to Gertrude Anne Mawbey, who returned with him to India to escape the harassment the couple suffered from Ali’s children from his first marriage. In his will Ali specifically mentioned his second son Asghar Bloy Yusuf Ali who “has gone so far as to abuse, insult, vilify and persecute me from time to time.”[90]

 


[1] In Geoffrey Nash (ed). Marmaduke Pickthall Islam and the Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 40; Jamie Gilham. Loyal Enemies: British Converts to Islam, 1850–1950 (Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 226.

[2] “William Henry Quilliam – Freemason and Esoteric.” Everyday Muslim (January 8, 2021). Retrieved from https://www.everydaymuslim.org/blog/william-henry-quilliam-freemason-and-esoteric/

[3] The Arcane Schools (1909), p. 242; cited in Howe. “Fringe Masonry in England 1870-85.”

[4] “William Henry Quilliam – Freemason and Esoteric.”

[5] Patrick D. Bowen. A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Volume 1: White American Muslims before 1975 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 136.

[6] Howe. “Fringe Masonry in England 1870-85.”

[7] Ibid.

[8] “Reflection on the History of the Order.” August Order of Light. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/augustorderoflight/exegesis/historystephenson

[9] Howe. “Fringe Masonry in England 1870-85.”

[10] Ibid.

[11] The Arcane Schools (1909), p. 492; cited in Howe. “Fringe Masonry in England 1870-85.”

[12] “William Henry Quilliam – Freemason and Esoteric.”

[13] “About Abdullah Quilliam.” Abdullah Quilliam Society. Retrieved from https://www.abdullahquilliam.org/about-abdullah-quilliam/

[14] “Cairo Speech – 1928.” Abdullah Quilliam Society. Retrieved from http://www.abdullahquilliam.org/cairo-speech-1928/

[15] Gilham. Loyal Enemies, p. 67.

[16] “Cairo Speech – 1928.” Abdullah Quilliam Society. Retrieved from http://www.abdullahquilliam.org/cairo-speech-1928/

[17] Ibid.

[18] Vambery. The story of my struggles, p. 258.

[19] Gilham. Loyal Enemies, p. 76.

[20] “The Shahzada’s Visit to Woking Institute and Mosque.” The Asiatic Quarterly Review (Swan Sonnenshein & Company, 1895), p. 181

[21] “Health & social enterprise.” The Rothschild Archive. Retrieved from https://www.rothschildarchive.org/family/philanthropy/health_social_enterprise

[22] “History.” East London Mosque & London Muslim Centre. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20150206114903/http://www.eastlondonmosque.org.uk/content/history

[23] “‘London Mosque Fund’ sets up the Woking Mosque Trust and appoints Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din as Imam.” Woking Muslim Mission. Retrieved from https://www.wokingmuslim.org/history/london-mosque-fund.htm

[24] “Sir Abbas Ali Baig.” Woking Muslim Mission. Retrieved from https://www.wokingmuslim.org/pers/aabaig.htm

[25] Khizar Humayun Ansari. “Ali, Abdullah Yusuf (1872–1953).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, October, 2012).

[26] A. Al-Hitari. “The underlying esoteric Ismaili doctrine in Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation of the Quran.” International Journal of Linguistics and Translation Studies, 3: 3 (2022), p. 126. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.36892/ijlts.v3i3.255

[27] Khaleel Mohammed. “Assessing English Translations of the Qur’an.” Middle East Quarterly, 12: 2 (Spring 2005). Retrieved from https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/assessing-english-translations-of-the-quran

[28] “Abdullah Yusuf Ali.” Biographical Dictionary. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20030317161627/http://www.salaam.co.uk/knowledge/biography/viewentry.php?id=1777

[29] Khizar Humayun Ansari. “Ali, Abdullah Yusuf (1872–1953), Indian civil servant and Islamic scholar.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (October 4, 2012; Retrieved from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/

[30] “Famous London Muslims.” Masud. Retrieved from http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/bmh/BMH-IRO-famous_muslims.htm

[31] A. Al-Hitari. “The underlying esoteric Ismaili doctrine in Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation of the Quran.” International Journal of Linguistics and Translation Studies, 3: 3 (2022), p. 125. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.36892/ijlts.v3i3.255

[32] Ibid., p. 126.

[33] Ibid., p. 128.

[34] Ibid., p. p. 129.

[35] Cited in Al-Hitari. “The underlying esoteric Ismaili doctrine in Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation of the Quran.” p. 139.

[36] “Marmaduke Pickthall.” British Muslim Heritage (Masud). Retrieved from https://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/bmh/BMM-AHM-pickthall_bio.htm

[37] cited in Seddon. “Pickthall’s Anti-Ottoman Dissent,” p. 98.

[38] M.A. Sherif. “Pickthall’s Islamic Politics.” In: Geoffrey Nash (ed). Marmaduke Pickthall Islam and the Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 121.

[39] Pickthall. The Cultural Side of Islam; cited in Sherif. “Pickthall’s Islamic Politics,” p. 120.

[40] Geoffrey Nash. “Pickthall, Ottomanism, and Modern Turkey.” In: Geoffrey Nash (ed). Marmaduke Pickthall Islam and the Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 141.

[41] Anne Fremantle. Loyal Enemy (London: Hutchinson, 1938); cited in Nash. “Pickthall, Ottomanism, and Modern Turkey,” p. 144.

[42] Fremantle. Loyal Enemy, p. 346; cited in ibid.

[43] “Marmaduke Pickthall - a brief biography.” British Muslim Heritage. Retrieved 4 February 2020.

[44] “‘London Mosque Fund’ sets up the Woking Mosque Trust and appoints Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din as Imam.”

[45] Diana Merrick Art (ed.). “Abdu'l-Bahá in Britain, 1913” Sohrab Diary. Retrieved from https://bahai-library.org/sohrab_merrick_abdul-baha_britain

[46] Ibid.

[47] “Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din’s report of his second visit to the Woking Mosque.” Woking Muslim Mission. http://www.wokingmuslim.org/history/kh-mosque-second.htm

[48] Umar Ryad. “Salafiyya, Ahmadiyya, and European converts to Islam in the Interwar Period.” In: Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad & Mehdi Sajid (eds.). Muslims in Interwar Europe: A Transhistorical Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 47; cited in Geoffrey Nash. “Introduction: Pickthall, Islam and the Modern World.” In Geoffrey Nash (ed). Marmaduke Pickthall Islam and the Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 5.

[49] Paigham Sulh (November 25, 1913); cited in Maulana Hafiz Sher Muhammad. “Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal and the Ahmadiyya Movement” (USA: Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore Inc, 1995), p. 15.

[50] Paigham Sulh (November 25, 1913); cited in Muhammad. “Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal and the Ahmadiyya Movement,” p. 17.

[51] Jamie Gilham. “Marmaduke Pickthall and the British Muslim Convert Community.” In Geoffrey Nash (ed). Marmaduke Pickthall Islam and the Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 55.

[52] Paigham Sulh (July 5, 1914); cited in Muhammad. “Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal and the Ahmadiyya Movement,” p. 18.

[53] Muhammad. “Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal and the Ahmadiyya Movement,” p. 9 n. 5.

[54] Athenaeum, 4503 (February 14, 1914), p. 222; cited in K. Humayun Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” In Geoffrey Nash (ed). Marmaduke Pickthall Islam and the Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 25.

[55] Peter Clark. Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim (Quartet Books, 1986), p. 31.

[56] Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 26.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Nash. “Introduction: Pickthall, Islam and the Modern World,” p. 10.

[59] The Near East, 6: 137 (1913), p. 233; cited in Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 29.

[60] Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 28.

[61] “Mushir Husain Kidwai.” Qadri Shattari Silsila’s Online Platform. Retrieved from https://www.qadrishattari.xyz/p/mushir-husain-qidwai.html

[62] Masoodul Hasan. Sufism and English literature : Chaucer to the present age : echoes and images (New Delhi, India: Adam Publishers & Distributors, 2007), pp. 5, 183.

[63] S. Akhtar Ehtisham. A medical doctor examines life on three continents: a Pakistani view (New York: Algora Pub., 2008), p. 11.

[64] Zahurul Hassan Sharib. The Sufi Saints of the Indian Subcontinent (Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2006).

[65] New York Times, April 30, 1916; cited in Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 33.

[66] Seddon. “Pickthall’s Anti-Ottoman Dissent,” p. 97–98.

[67] Gilham. Loyal Enemies, pp. 251–52; cited in Seddon. “Pickthall’s Anti-Ottoman Dissent,” p. 97.

[68] Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 33.

[69] M.A. Sherif. Brave Hearts: Pickthall and Philby, Two English Muslims in a Changing World (Selangor, Malaysia, Islamic Book Trust, 2011), p. 19; cited in Seddon. “Pickthall’s Anti-Ottoman Dissent,” p. 98.

[70] Sherif. Brave Hearts, p. 19; cited in Seddon. “Pickthall’s Anti-Ottoman Dissent,” p. 98.

[71] M.A. Sherif. Brave Hearts: Pickthall and Philby, Two English Muslims in a Changing World (Selangor, Malaysia, Islamic Book Trust, 2011), p. 19; cited in Seddon. “Pickthall’s Anti-Ottoman Dissent,” pp. 98–99.

[72] FO371/1973, 85051, TNA; cited in Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 32.

[73] L/PS/1/125, 3273, bl; cited in Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 32.

[74] Islamic Review (December 1914), pp. 588–89; cited in Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 32.

[75] Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 42.

[76] Gilham. Loyal Enemies, p. 67.

[77] Ibid., p. 68.

[78] Ibid., p. 227.

[79] Ibid., p. 148.

[80] David Dabydeen, John Gilmore & Cecily Jones (eds). The Oxford Companion to Black British History (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 25.

[81] Gilham. Loyal Enemies, p. 218.

[82] Gilham. Loyal Enemies, p. 228; Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 41.

[83] Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 40.

[84] Ibid., p. 62.

[85] Gilham. Loyal Enemies, p. 228.

[86] Ansari. “Pickthall, Muslims of South Asia, and the British Muslim Community of the Early 1900s.” p. 41.

[87] Gilham. Loyal Enemies, p. 63.

[88] Pyarelal Nayyar. Mahatma Gandhi: India Awakened (Navajivan Pub. House, 1994).

[89] Gilham. Loyal Enemies, p. 229.

[90] M.A. Sherif. The Abdullah Yusuf Ali Memorial Lecture (Islamic Book Trust, Kuala Lumpur, 2008), p. 11.

Divide & Conquer