British Islam

Watched a short programme on BBC World entitled Great British Islam this morning with much interest, but a touch of disappointment. The latter feeling derived from the fact that I'd falsely got the impression there was going to be a series of three such programmes, each dealing with the life of an early British convert to Islam, and it turned out to be a single programme dealing with all the three together. I'd also falsely assumed that Martin Lings might be featured, having rightly ascertained that Marmaduke Pickthall would be profiled after catching only the back end of the trailer the channel ran for the documentary.

The other two chaps turned out to be William Abdullah Quilliam, who was quite fascinating, and Rowland Allanson-Winn, 5th Baron Headley, who didn't seem so interesting, though the coverage of him was so sparse that I might well be being unfair. I was particularly struck by the fact that both Quilliam and Pickthall had travelled to Islamic countries in their respective youths and been struck by the power of Islam in binding the general populace in a sense of community, something they weren't able to find, at least to the same degree, in the Britain to which they returned.

There were some nice sequences of Sarah Pickthall, an artist and grand-niece, or something like that, of the esteemed translator of The Holy Qur'an, journeying to Woking Mosque to talk to some of the congregation there about her remarkable ancestor. And remarkable is just the right word for these gentlemen for whom to have embraced Islam must have been an extraordinarily courageous intellectual decision given the times in which they lived.