MWL CONFERENCE PAPER (November 2009)

MWL CONFERENCE PAPER (November 2009)

“Migration to the West : A Case Study of Islam in Great Britain”

by

Dr M. Manazir Ahsan

Director General, Islamic Foundation, Leicester, UK

Today there are more than 15 million Muslims in the European Union. Going by the current population trend, the number of Muslims will doubled to 30 million by 2020. The Muslim presence in Western Europe is a fairly recent phenomenon, dating back largely to the 1960s when Muslim workers and labour emigrated in large numbers to the West since in 1900, there were only 50,000 resident Muslims in Western Europe. The earlier phases of Muslims’ interaction with the West – the Crusade in the medieval period, the Muslim conquest and rule of Spain and Sicily and the Ottoman empire – had not witnessed such a demographic change which marks Western Europe presently.

To begin with, let us have a glance over the Muslim population in each Western European country:

Islam in Austria: Population 400,000 (5% of the total population). Islam is the third largest and most important religion in Austria, next to the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. As far back as in 1874, the Austrian state granted legal status to Islam and on the same basis, the Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IRCA) was officially recognised as a legal, corporate body in 1979. The Muslim presence in Austria was shaped, in the main, by the encounter between the Austrian-Hungarian empire with the neighbouring Ottoman Sultanate over the centuries. The immigration of Muslims from the Balkans and Turkey has also contributed to it. Most of the Muslims in Austria are from Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovia, Kosovo and Albania. A few thousand of them are from Egypt and Iran as well.

Islam in Belgium: Population 400,000 (4% of the total population). As to their ethnic profile, they are mostly from Morocco and Turkey. Others are from Algeria and Tunisia. Most of them are immigrant workers living in industrial areas in and around large cities.

Islam in Denmark: Population 270,000 (5% of the total population). Most of these Muslims are from Turkey, Bosnia and Somalia. Muslims of Arab descent (Iraqis, Palestinians and Lebanese) also comprise the Muslim population, apart from a large number of Pakistani migrants. Most of them are in large urban towns in view of the availability of jobs there. These towns have a history of immigrant communities.

Islam in France: Population 6 million (10% of the total population). The first wave of Algerians and Moroccans, consisting of around 30,000 Muslims, was recruited by French enterprises during the First World War (1914 – 1918). This demand for Muslim immigrant workers continued up to the l960s. Turkish workers followed the Algerians in the 1970s. This in-flow has stopped since 1990. The following demographic points about the Muslim population are worth noting:

From Algeria2,000,000

From Morocco1,500,000

From Tunisia400,000

From Arab countries100,000

From Turkey400,000

From Pakistan / Indonesia150,000

Asylum seekers / illegal500,000

Most of these Muslims are Sunni, with some Shia, mostly of Iranian and Lebanese origin. The Ismaili community is quite strong here, as the headquarters of the Agha Khan, leader of Ismailis, is in Paris. Some Sufi orders, for example, Muridist and Alawiyya are highly popular among Algerians, Turks and Muslims from Senegal and Mali.

Islam in Germany: Population 4.1 million (5% of the total population). Turkish Muslims constitute around 70%, Iranians 4% and indigenous German Muslims 4% of the Muslim population while the rest are from a host of other countries such as Morocco, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Pakistan. As in France, the migratory wave started in the wake of the first World War and continued until the 1990s. The majority of Muslims are Sunnis. Around 30,000 Ahmadis are also settled here and try to represent Islam / Muslims in Interfaith forums.

Islam in Italy: Population 1 million (2% of the total population). Moroccans (34%), Albanians (27%) Tunisians (11%), Sengalese (9%), Egyptians (7%) and local Italian Muslims (2%) make up the Muslim population. 98% of them are Sunnis. The Shia community is made up of some thousands of Iranians and Lebanese.

Islam in the Netherlands: Population 1 million (6% of the total population). Most of these Muslims are from Turkey, Morocco and Suriname. Indonesian Muslims were the first to arrive. As Holland made its colony Suriname independent in 1975, thousands of Muslims migrated to Holland. Around 5,000 native Dutch Muslims form part of the Muslim population.

Islam in Norway: Population 80,000 (2% of the total population). Muslim immigrants from Turkey, Bosnia, Somalia, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan constitute the Muslim population. These Muslims are in a lower socio-eonomic position compared with the natives and European immigrants.

Islam in Spain: Population 600,000 (2.4% of the total population). Notwithstanding the long history of the interaction between Spain and Islam, the number of Spanish converts to Islam is around only 5,000. Most of the Muslims in Spain are immigrants from Morocco, Syria, Palestine, with North African Muslims being economic migrants making up the majority.

Islam in Sweden: Population 400,000 (4% of the total population). Muslim immigrants from Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, the Lebanon, Somalia, and Turkey comprise the Muslim population. The labour migration involving Muslims started in the late 1960s and is now replaced by stringent immigration laws. The Shia presence of around 70,000 in Sweden is quite marked.

Islam in the UK: Population 2 million (3% of the total population). It was in the 1960s, the peak period of labour migration from the south Asian subcontinent, that Muslim immigrants arrived in large numbers. It is not therefore surprising that 80% of Muslims in Britain are from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Among others are Arabs, Malaysians, Iranians and Turks. In contrast with many Western European countries with immigrant-descent Muslims, Muslims in Britain enjoy citizenship rights.

While keeping in mind the above salient features of Muslims’ migration to the West, let us turn our attention to a case study of Islam in Great Britain, which will give us a fair idea of the problems, issues and challenges faced by the Muslim community.

Unlike Spain and Eastern Europe, Islam did not reach Britain in the classical period of Islam. While we have definite information about a prominent group of Christians in Liverpool converting to Islam in the 19th century, we do not have any clear picture of any other group or individual coming to the fold of Islam in earlier generations. However, it is not unlikely that some British people through their contact with Muslims in Spain, southern Italy and Eastern Europe may have embraced Islam and lived a quiet life without any publicity.

Early Evidence of Islam in Britain

From the coin preserved in the BritishMuseum, it is known that one of the British Kings, Arthur, also known as King Offa (757-796) minted gold coins on the reverse side of which the Kalima Shahadah was embossed. The British chronicles of the period do not explain the phenomenon and pass over this important development in silence. Muslim historians such as Dr M. Hamidullah, on the evidence of the coin, have speculated that the King may have embraced Islam and may not have made his Islam public. Although it cannot be said with certainty, it can be deduced that some influence of Islam did reach Britain as early as the eighth century C.E. and that too in the royal court. 1

Another historical flashpoint in British history which could have possibly changed the events of world politics was the marriage of Robert of St Albans in the year 1185 C.E. with the sister of Salahuddin Ayyubi. It is interesting to note that Robert of St Albans was the cousin of the celebrated crusader, Richard the Lionheart. It is a well known verdict of fiqh (jurisprudence) that although a Muslim man can marry a Jewish or Christian woman as they belong to the category of Ahl al-Kitab, a Muslim lady is not allowed to marry a Christian or Jewish man. It is impossible to assume that Salahuddin Ayyubi, the liberator of Jerusalem and such a prominent figure of Islamic history was not aware of this regulation and should agree to his sister’s marriage to a Christian. Perhaps the other option is more probable that Robert changed his faith and did come to the fold of Islam, at least for the sake of marriage. It may have been an isolated incident, its implication for the royalty and the British public may have been great. Perhaps a thorough and objective research in the life of Robert and history of the time may reveal some intriguing aspects of the saga hitherto unknown to modern historians. 2

A third landmark in the British history of contact with Islam is King John’s (1199-1216) secret delegation to the then Amir of Morocco. According to the story, this famous king of the Magna Carta sent in 1213 a secret delegation consisting of three persons to the Moroccan Amir, Abdur Rahman al-Nasir with the message that if England would be taken under the umbrella of Muslim power, the King in recognition would not only pay tribute to him but would become Muslim with all his subjects. The strangest part of the story is that the Amir reportedly declined the offer saying: “Islam forbids taking undue advantage of helpless people” and had the King wanted to come to the fold of Islam, he would have needed to send no emissary. Although the story has been mentioned in more than one source, it is difficult to ascertain how far it is true. Still it is mysterious to know how a Muslim ruler could possibly refuse a call of this nature and let the chance of England becoming Islamic slip away in such an unceremonious way.

However, it is true that one of the members of the secret delegation, the Catholic priest who was excommunicated and banished from London for his rebellious role in the Magna Carta, left England for Mongolia and became the chief diplomat of the Mongols. He finally returned to Europe and is said to have converted a great number of Europeans to Islam. 3

There are isolated references to some interaction taking place between Britain and Spain for business, education and da’wah. Dunlop mentions about a certain ‘Abd al-Rahman b. Harun al-Maghribi sailing to Britain in 901 C.E. 4 Similarly Adler of Bath is credited to have translated a number of astronomical and mathematical works from Arabic into Latin while studying Islam in Spain. His British colleague, Robert of Ketton, who worked under the patronage of Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of Cluny (1094-1156) with the help of an Italian Christian, translated the Qur’an into Latin in 1141 or 1143. This was printed in Switzerland in 1543. 5 T. W. Arnold mentions about a certain Ahmad b. Abdullah, an Englishman born in Cambridge in the seventeenth century who wrote a book in defence of Islam. 6 It is also well known that the first chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies was initiated in Cambridge in 1632 and Oxford in 1634 which indicates a great deal of interest in Islam, albeit from a negative perspective. 7 We alsoknow that in 1720 an anonymous author in England produced a book in refutation of Christian attacks on Islam and the life of the Prophet entitled Mahomet No Imposter. It is likely that for fear of his life the author did not mention his name in the book, neither he disclosed his identity. 8

Early History of Islam in Britain

However, the actual presence of the Muslim community in Britain can be traced around the middle of the 19th century when seamen, euphemistically called ‘lascars’. Coming from Bengal, Gujarat, Punjab, Sindh, Aden, Yemen and Somalia, were left at seaports such as Cardiff, Liverpool, Tyneside and London, and were forced to live in England in appalling conditions. A new phase of Islam in Britain started towards the end of the 19th century when a solicitor, William Henry Quilliam, embraced Islam in 1887 after a visit to Morocco and independent study of Islam, the life of the Prophet and the Qur’an. With the enthusiasm of a new convert he used his prolific pen to write a number of books and pamphlets, in defence of Islam and was able to gain conversion of the members of his family and friends in Liverpool. In 1891, he instituted a large Muslim Institute in Liverpool,, consisting of a mosque, a boys day school and evening classes, a literary society, an oriental library, a museum for visiting Muslims and a printing house from where he published one weekly (The Crescent) and one monthly magazine (Islamic World). After five years’ labour he gained over thirty converts and ten years later he could count some 150 newcomers to Islam. The success of Islam in Liverpool under the leadership of Quilliam, now known as Shaykh Abdullah Quilliam, evoked scathing criticism from the Christian missionaries and brought abuse and physical harassment from the urchins of Liverpool. On the other hand, it also brought laurels from Muslim rulers as Sultan of Morocco honoured him with the title of ‘Alim’. The Ottoman Caliph, Sultan Abdul Hamid II and Amir of Afghanistan conferred upon him the title of ‘Shaikhul Islam of the British Isles’. In October, 1899, the Shah of Persia nominated him ‘Persian Consul for Liverpool’. In 1891, he was invited by Sultan Abdul Hamid to visit him in Constantinople, and three years later he was commissioned to hand over a decoration from the Sultan to a Muslim merchant in Nigeria, who erected a mosque in Lagos. Following numerous threats of physical attack, Quilliam left Liverpool in 1908 to live in the East. Although later on he returned to London, his absence from Liverpool created a great vacuum of leadership and the work of Islam so well organised gradually withered away. 9

London and other educational cities such as Oxford and Cambridge saw a steadily growing population of Muslim students and Indian aristocrats coming for higher education as well as a visit. The Nawab Nazir of Bengal, with his two sons, was already in England when Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, came to London in 1892. The other leading figure in Britain during this period was Syed Ameer Ali (1849-1928) who came back to England in 1904 and became the first Indian Privy Councillor and a member of the Judicial Council in 1908. 10 The personal physician of Queen Victoria for a long time was an Indian Muslim. 11 It was mainly for these cosmopolitan Muslim communities that the first mosque in Britain was built in 1889 at Woking, some twenty-five miles to the West of London, by Shahjehan Begum, the ruler of Bhopal in India. Although the mosque was planned to have a large campus containing an Islamic Centre, with its library, hostel, school culminating into an Islamic University, only the hostel project materialised.

The work of Islam in Britain received fresh impetus by the arrival of Khawja Kamaluddin, an ardent follower of the Lahori Ahmadiyya group from Lahore towards the end of 1912. Moreover, the conversion of Lord Headly (1855-1933), who publicly announced his Islam in Caxton Hall, London in December 1913 changed the situation more dramatically.

However, he should not be confused with another important personality, Headley Churchward, who embraced Islam in the beginning of the 20th century and went for Hajj in 1910.12 Khawja Kamaluddin started his missionary work from a small country house adjacent to the Shah Jehan Mosque in Woking and in 1913 launched a monthly journal, Muslim India and Islamic Review, better known by the second half of the title. Lord Headley’s conversion to Islam was a momentous occasion for the small community and it isno wonder that their monthly journal, Islamic Review, showered honorific titles of Rahmatullah (the Mercy of God), Saifullah (the Sword of God) and al-Faruq (the one who separates right from wrong) on the distinguished convert.13 Lord Headley not only gave tremendous moral and practical support to the cause of Islam in Britain, but silenced his numerous Christian critics and detractors with customary wisdom and humour. He soon became the president of the British Muslim Society, established to introduce Islam to British people, and gave its gatherings much prestige by his presence. The number of Muslims naturally soared and according to the Islamic Review, their number rose to an estimated ten thousand by 1915.14 In 1924, there was an estimated one thousand British Muslims who came to the fold of Islam mainly through the efforts of the ‘British Muslim Society’, headed by Lord Headley, ‘Pan-Islamic Society’, headed by Dr Abdullah Suharwardy and ‘Muslim Literary Society’ established in 1916 and headed by the famous translator of the Qur’an, Abdullah Yusuf Ali with active support of another Qur’an translator, Marmaduke Pickthall (1875-1936) and the celebrated Syed Ameer Ali (1849-1928).15

With the increase of the Muslim population in London, an urgent need was felt to establish a central mosque in the capital of Britain. The idea of the central mosque in London received further impetus when the Central Mosque of Paris was opened by the French government in 1926. In the winter of 1928-29, Lord Headley went to India as the guest of the Nizam of Hyderabad and was able to convince him to contribute £60,000 for the mosque project. Soon a trust appropriately called ‘The London Nizamiah Mosque Trust Fund’ was established and a property of one acre in Mornington Avenue, West Kensington, W 14 was purchased for £28,000. Since the project of the mosque and Islamic Centre was too ambitious and costly, necessary finance could not be gathered and the project remained in abeyance. Khawja Kamaluddin and Lord Headley, the two activists among others, died in 1932 and 1933 respectively and consequently the mosque project received a serious setback. Nothing practically happened until the Second World War when the Saudi Ambassador, Shaykh Hafiz Wahba, and his Egyptian and other colleagues, including Abdullah Yusuf Ali, succeeded in getting from the British government a plot of 2.3 acres of land in RegentsPark by Hanover Gate as an exchange for the site in Cairo donated for a new Anglican Cathedral. The central mosque and the Islamic Cultural Centre was opened in November 1944 by King George VI and three years later an ambassadorial committee representing some thirteen Muslim countries took over its administration under the Central London Mosque Trust. After an architectural competition in 1969, the mosque in the proper mosque architecture was built only in 1977.16