Great British Islam

This is the final resting place of some of the most influential

men and women of the 19th century.

Tucked away amongst these memorials to the great and the good,

are the graves of three largely forgotten pioneers -

Baron Headley, Marmaduke Pickthall,

and in an unmarked grave,

William Henry Quilliam.

Although few recognise their names today,

in the 19th century these men were responsible

for a religious revolution

that shook the British public to its core.

They were aristocratic Christians

who made a choice which inflamed Victorian society -

they converted to Islam.

An Englishman, a pucker Englishman doesn't go native.

He doesn't leave the English white upper-middle class.

And they changed the face of the Muslim faith in Britain.

Pickthall's great achievement was to translate the Qur'an.

It has been perhaps the most important

translation of the Qur'an into English that there ever has been.

This is the story of three extraordinary men

who embraced Islam at a time when to be a Muslim

was to be seen as a traitor to your country and the focus of hostility.

In the press, he was charged with treason

and he certainly was put under surveillance.

I think to rebel against his parents and change his religion,

it did break his mother's heart.

Through the personal journeys of still-surviving relatives

we'll discover just what these men achieved

and how their legacy lives on today.

My impression of Islam sat within post-9/11 thinking,

and the emphasis around fanaticism.

Finding out about Marmaduke changed all that.

Suddenly Islam became so much more.

So just what did these Victorian pioneers do to make Islam

more acceptable to a society that condemned it?

And are there any lessons for British Muslims today?

Liverpool. Today it's home to nearly 25,000 Muslims.

This is the city's largest mosque.

Built in 1965,

it would appear that this Muslim community

is relatively new to the city...

..but far from it.

A century ago, Liverpool was a flourishing port,

and Muslim sailors from India and the Far East

would have been regular visitors.

In fact, just three miles from today's thriving mosque,

there are traces of an entire hidden history of Islam in Britain...

..echoes of a community that faced many of the same

problems as Muslims today,

and which may hold some of the solutions.

This rather faded terraced house in a Liverpool suburb,

is where this forgotten story of Islam begins.

Although it doesn't look much now, in the 19th century,

this was the first mosque in England.

In 1889, the house was bought by a man named Abdullah Henry Quilliam.

Quilliam was a Victorian gentleman,

but he was also a Muslim convert -

a religious innovator who fought to change preconceptions of Islam,

at a time when society found it frightening and alien

and it was here that he set about doing it.

Abdullah Quilliam had an architect

appointed who designed

the extension to the building.

Galib Khan is the Chairman of the Abdullah Quilliam Society.

We can look at the arch designs that was made.

A few steps down is the mosque.

The preaching was done from that corner there,

where Abdullah would be standing.

Against the odds, Quilliam established this,

not only as a mosque,

but as a flourishing Muslim Institute,

with its own printing press,

and an orphanage.

It was the centre of Islam, not just for Liverpool,

but for the whole of Britain.

SINGS CALL TO PRAYER

It's an achievement that some Muslims believe holds the key

to the future of British Islam.

For me, Abdullah Quilliam really is a role model.

He was so ahead of his times, as it were,

that he is the blueprint,

in many respects,

for how we hope to continue

in our communities.

So, just who was Abdullah Quilliam?

And what did he do to try and shift the prejudices of a nation?

William Henry Quilliam was born in 1856.

He trained as a lawyer, and his religious upbringing

was typical of many middle class Victorians.

He was born into

a conservative Methodist family.

His grandfather was a tub-thumping preacher,

so we find a young man born into a family,

well-known for its devout non-conformist Christianity.

But Quilliam's work as a lawyer amongst Liverpool's poor

had a profound effect on him.

Disease was rife.

The mortality rate high,

and the city was crawling with brothels.

Quilliam was struck by what he saw as Christianity's failure

to deal with the problems,

and it led him to question his childhood beliefs.

In order to understand Quilliam's view of Christianity,

you have to understand that Victorian Britain

was still an essentially Christian society,.

so when Quilliam saw any kind of moral depravity,

for him that was a Christian society that had lost its way.

It was a trip to Morocco in 1887

that seems to have marked

a decisive moment in Quilliam's religious journey.

Whilst he was there,

he was struck by the contrast of the Muslim way of life

to that of Christian Britain.

When he went to Morocco, he felt

that people live simple lives.

They live, in his view,

quite moral lives

and there is an environment

of solidarity, depending very little on whether they are wealthy or poor,

and that was something that was of immense significance for him.

Quilliam returned to Liverpool, and a year later

he left his Christian beliefs behind and converted to Islam...

..but it was a highly controversial decision.

Islam in the 19th century was seen as a Christian heresy

and then were these ideas about Islam

being a violent faith.

So it would have been very unusual

for a person from his class background

to convert at that particular time.

Two years later, Quilliam opened his mosque.

But this public display of devotion to Islam

immediately put him on a collision course

with both the Christian hierarchy and the people of Liverpool.

Quilliam faced hostility right from the very beginning.

They were attacked on a number of occasions.

You get pigs' heads being thrown into the mosque.

They would congregate mobs outside the mosque, who would start jeering.

It raised hackles, there's no doubt about that.

In the face of such opposition,

the mosque seemed to have an uneasy future.

Yet within 20 years,

Quilliam had nearly 500 followers.

He'd been made the official representative of Islam

in Britain by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire,

and he was starting to play a central role

in the civic life of Liverpool.

So how exactly did he achieve this extraordinary transformation?

Quilliam's genius was to analyse why Victorians despised Islam,

and begin to address their prejudice.

And the best sources for studying

exactly how he did this are his regular publications.

They include a newspaper for Muslims, called The Crescent,

which gives an insight into how Quilliam

increased Islam's credibility -

through lectures at the mosque.

I think it's interesting to look at the topics of these lectures

because you might expect them to be promoting Islam,

and from the Qur'an, or whatever,

but what we find is a lecture which says,

"with experiments" by Professor Nur-Uddin Stephens,

a science lecture, "Sugar and Sacharines"

by Professor Samuel Kleeman PhD.

Quilliam knew that one of the key criticisms against Islam

was that it was narrow-minded,

it didn't embrace the new scientific discoveries

of the 19th century.

These lectures met such criticisms head on.

So, he's presenting Islam in a very rational way

that's going to appeal to the new scientific consciousness

of Victorian Britain.

These events drew converts.

And as numbers grew, so did Quilliam's profile.

It wasn't long before the mosque

was attracting important guests from abroad.

In 1897, Queen Victoria held celebrations

for her Diamond Jubilee.

One of the visitors was a General

from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

But he didn't just visit the Queen,

he also made his way to Quilliam's mosque.

It was recorded in The Crescent.

Here is the main feature article of this particular edition.

and I just love this - here we are in the centre of Liverpool

at Lime Street Station

and there's all these Muslim converts with their fez and flags

receiving this very powerful figure.

Such visits impressed the locals,

and gave Muslims the sense of being an important part of city life.

And in the mosque, as converts straddled the social divides

and clerks rubbed shoulders with explorers,

it seemed that Islam was no longer an alien faith

practised only by foreign sailors.

Quilliam's high profile guests, his lectures,

and the type of converts they drew,

seemed to have achieved the impossible -

Islam was starting to be integrated into British society.

But just as Quilliam was at the height of his success,

everything changed.

In June 1908, Quilliam and his eldest son left

on what was supposed to be a six-week trip to Istanbul.

No-one knows exactly why,

but without any warning they mysteriously disappeared.

After some months, his youngest son, who stays behind,

begins to dismantle everything that Abdullah Quilliam had created.

The properties are sold

and effectively the Liverpool Muslim community comes to an end.

With the disintegration of Quilliam's mosque,

the outlook for Islam in Britain appeared uncertain.

But with Quilliam's departure,

Muslim life found a new focus in Surrey.

In 1889, a mosque had been founded here at Woking,

as a place for Indian students to study and worship,

and it soon became the headquarters for two new converts,

whose mission was to continue to challenge

British intolerance of Islam.

The first was a feather in Islam's cap.

One of the highest-ranking members of the British aristocracy.

Baron Headley was an Irish peer.

He was born in 1855

and he pursued a career in civil engineering.

He spent a great deal of time in India

and that's where he came into contact with Islam.

In 1913, Lord Headley converted

and began to attend Woking Mosque.

Extraordinary film from the time,

shows Edwardian ladies alongside Muslims from all walks of life,

and it was this unusual combination of genteel English culture

mixed with Islamic values

that Headley capitalised on

to try and dismantle hostile British stereotypes of Islam.

So, for example, Lord Headley was involved in activities,

such as at homes all sorts of people would gather

and then have tea and cakes.

They mingled knowledge of Islam with cultural activities.

There would be renditions on the sitar,

English ladies playing the piano.

By introducing Islam in a context familiar to Edwardian high society,

Headley made the religion seem less alien, more English.

They needed to be creative and innovative in their approach

so that Islam became very much part of this environment,

so one could actually be quite comfortable with Islam,

if that's what it meant.

Headley's work was another step towards breaking down

British prejudice against the Muslim faith.

But tea parties went only so far.

It was the work of yet another Woking convert,

which has perhaps had the most enduring impact on Islam in Britain.

His name was Marmaduke Pickthall

and his greatest achievement was to become the first English-born Muslim

to translate the Qur'an into English -

a ground-breaking work that made Islam accessible to non-Muslims.

Living on the South Coast today

is one of Pickthall's surviving relatives.

Artist Sarah Pickthall

is Marmaduke's great-great-niece.

Brought up by devoutly Catholic parents,

it wasn't until the death of her father,

that she first began to learn more about her Muslim ancestor.

I knew that Marmaduke Pickthall

was a relation.

I didn't really know that he was a Muslim convert,

but when I started to look more closely,

I then suddenly unpacked

the most incredible life story

and a man who was both a novelist and a pioneer.

It's kind of what our complicated lives...

Sarah was so inspired by Marmaduke's story

that she and a group of artists have begun to explore his life and legacy

in a project called Loyal Enemy.

Through painting, through film, through poetry,

we are going to build

a kind of kaleidoscope

around Pickthall's life.

and we hope that through that there will be shafts of light,

which will connect Pickthall's life with the audience

looking at it today.

Learning about Pickthall has overturned all that Sarah

thought she knew about Islam.

My impression of Islam was one that sat within post-9/11 thinking...

..but finding out about Marmaduke changed all that.

Suddenly Islam became so much more than what the media was telling us.

So just what was it about Pickthall's life

that not only challenges views about Islam today,

but did so a hundred years ago?

He was born in 1875,

and brought up in the Church of England,

but as a teenager, he visited the Middle East.

It was an experience that changed his life.

He quickly seemed to gel

with the local people.

Very quickly he was speaking Arabic and he speaks about

the friendliness of the people.

There was a social cohesion there

and it was, he believed, united by this overarching belief in Islam.

I mean, he says, very significantly said,

he said, "For the first time, I was happy." He was happy.

But although attracted to the religion and mindset of the Orient,

it wasn't until the First World War, 20 years later,

that Pickthall finally rejected his childhood beliefs.

Britain declared war not only against Germany,

but Turkey, as well - the centre of the Ottoman Empire

and the Muslim faith.

It was a country Pickthall had visited and been impressed by.

So he was shocked when he found

Islamaphobia being used to justify the war

by British politicians and clergy.

Pickthall went to church and the congregation

were singing one of Charles Wesley's hymns

that was quite anti-Islam.

It referred to the prophet Mohammed as "the Imposter",

or the Arab thief, who is disrupting the whole of Asia...

..and I think he was utterly distressed by it all.

Pickthall left the church

before the end of the service,

and never again considered himself a Christian.

In 1914, he converted to Islam.

It was a decision that ultimately transformed him

from innocent traveller and novelist to an enemy of the state.

After his conversion, Pickthall attempted to persuade

the British Government to change its policy towards Turkey,

but his actions had devastating personal consequences.

He became a total outsider in Britain, a security risk.

Here was a man who was supporting the enemy

and who'd embraced Islam.

He destroyed his reputation as a conservative Englishman.

Such an atmosphere of suspicion

drove Marmaduke to leave Britain altogether.

He moved to India, which became his home for the next two decades.

But although he was nearly 5,000 miles away,

his actions would still have a huge impact on Muslims back in Britain.

It was here that he undertook the most important work of his life -

a pioneering translation

of the Qur'an from Arabic to English.

Published in 1930,

it was seen as a milestone in the history of translation.

This is an early edition of Pickthall's translation

of the Qur'an, and the remarkable thing

is that it's the first time a believing Muslim

has translated the Qur'an

who's also a native speaker of English.

He was also an accomplished writer,

and he transfers all these skills

to his translation of the Qur'an.

Although there had been previous translations,

they were renowned for their anti-Muslim bias.

These translations came with notes at the bottom

and these notes reflected prejudices,

that Mohammed couldn't possibly have had a revelation,

that much of the Qur'an was copied from Jewish

and Eastern Christian sources.

So when Pickthall's version finally appeared,

because the notes that exist in that translation

are the notes of a believer

and they take into account,

the standard authoritative commentaries on the Qur'an,

then you would be drinking from a purer source.

By producing a more objective translation,

in a language understandable to a wider audience,

Pickthall was breaking down prejudice.

There has always been a suspicion of a holy book in a strange language,

so he was making the Qur'an accessible,

and if there has been a kinder and more tolerant appreciation of Islam

it has been through Pickthall's translation.

And there was somewhere back in Britain

that particularly welcomed it.

Woking Mosque - Pickthall's base before he left for India.

At a time when it seemed all of Britain was against him,

it was the one place he had felt at home.

The mosque is somewhere that Sarah Pickthall has always wanted to see,

and this is her first opportunity.

I think Marmaduke would have been pleased for me

to visit a place that was so important to him,

just to see the impact he had there.

I think he'd be really pleased that I was coming.

Just in here.

Sarah, wonderful to meet you.

Hello, Khalil, hello. Good to meet you, too.

Your great-great-uncle would have been here many times.

Khalil Martin, like Pickthall, is a convert,

and has agreed to show Sarah around.

So, here we are.

This is the Shah Jahan Mosque, Woking.

It's a flourishing mosque

at the heart of

a vibrant Muslim community.

There must be at least 10,000

-Muslims living locally...

-In the vicinity, yeah.

..and when this was built,

there wasn't one Muslim living anywhere near to the mosque.

Very different from Marmaduke's time. It's changed a lot.

Although Pickthall only spent three years here,

a century later his influence can still be felt -

in a way he could never have imagined!

It's interesting.

I have just downloaded a Qur'an application for my iPhone

and the English translation that's offered for the Qur'an app

is Marmaduke Pickthall's.

That's great. That feels contemporary.

-His legacy is living on.

-That feels contemporary.

-That's great to hear.

-Yeah.

Do you feel that being here...?

And for Sarah, there's one more stop -

the library where Pickthall would have worked

and where some of today's members of Woking Mosque

are keen to meet Marmaduke Pickthall's great-great-niece,

and to talk to her about their experience of his Qur'an.

This translation is by your great uncle. So, beginning with verse 18.

"Mary said - Lo!

"I seek refuge in the Beneficent One from thee, if thou art God-fearing.

"Angel Gabriel then replied -

"I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee

"a faultless son."

That is from the translation according to your great uncle.

Do people find it easy

as a translation?

A little bit, some words are...

Yes, thou and thee.

There were a lot of thees and thous, yes.

-Otherwise, it's very interesting.

-Very much so.

This was the first translation that I read.

-Was it?

-Absolutely, yes.

So, personally, it's important to me as well, definitely.

Pickthall, like Quilliam

and Headley before him,

helped to demystify Islam,

and his work continues to inform and encourage new generations.

Pickthall remained in India

but he returned to Britain at the end of his life.

In 1936, he was buried just five miles from his beloved mosque

and it's rumoured he chose this spot for a reason,

because he wanted his final resting place

to be near the unmarked grave of someone

he'd been close to at Woking -

a man known as Henri de Leon.

Henri de Leon was a quiet man,

had clearly travelled,

had a very strong allegiance to the Ottoman Empire,

but a very respected member of the Woking community.

But Henri was not all that he seemed.

He was none other than Abdullah Quilliam.

Like Pickthall, he too found his faith

put him at odds with British foreign policy.

And after his mysterious departure from Liverpool,

many believe he wanted to maintain a lower profile,

so when he returned to England,

he took a different name

and lived out the rest of his life quietly at Woking.

Quilliam died in 1932,

Baron Headley three years later.

Although these men lived a century ago,

they faced many of the same challenges as contemporary Muslims.

And some believe the way they tried

to tackle the prejudice towards Islam then

offers ways forward for Muslims in Britain today.

Generally, there is a disquiet today about Muslims demanding

special treatment.

What we learn from these converts

is that it doesn't have to be so at all.

They were trying to develop as much integration

with society as possible.

Quilliam had a realisation

that if you were going to promote Islam in Britain

it had to be British.

It's an approach that even now is transforming views.

I think from that first time I learnt more about him, I changed very much

in how I feel about Islam from the two-dimensional view.

It's become multi-faceted,

and I feel that the impact of his life

has so much to teach us, to expand our thinking.

I feel we are just at the start of that in this country,

and it feels incredibly exciting to be a part of that journey.

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