The Islamic Review was the organ of the Shah Jahan Mosque at Woking. It was inaugurated in 1913 by the then Imam of the mosque, Khwaja Kamaluddin, and ran until 1967. During its lifespan, the periodical had a series of editors who often also preached at the mosque or served as Imam there for a period of time. It had numerous regular contributors. It was widely distributed, free of charge.

There is much emphasis in the periodical on the misrepresentation of Islam in the British press and misconceptions about Islam on the part of the British people. Indeed, a key aim of the journal seems to be to challenge these by articulating the similarities between Islam and Christianity and the compatibility of Islam with British life. The journal suggests a progressive approach to Islam on the part of the mosque, with an emphasis on inter-faith dialogue and rational argument. Numerous pieces explain and defend Islam’s view on women, often in response to articles in the British press representing Muslim culture as polygamous and Muslim women as oppressed, as well as the religion’s attitude towards alcohol, fasting and prayer, for example. The similarity of their concerns to the concerns of British Muslims now is striking. The journal also includes several testimonials by English converts to Islam including Lord Headley whose conversion triggered numerous articles in the press. Further content includes articles on the celebration of Eid at the Woking mosque, as well as sermons and photographs, and reviews of books about Islam.

The Shah Jahan Mosque at Woking was Britain’s first purpose-built mosque. It was established in 1889 by the Jewish ex-Registrar of the University of Punjab, Gottlieb Leitner, with financial backing from the Begum Shah Jahan of Bhopal. It fell into disuse after Leitner’s death in 1899, but was later resurrected by the Indian lawyer Khwaja Kamuluddin, who established the Woking Muslim Mission in 1912.

The mosque flourished under Kamuluddin’s management and became a hub for Muslims who lived in and visited England. In 1913, Kamuluddin established the mosque’s organ, the Islamic Review, which provides a sense of the mosque and its mission’s activities and approach to Islam. Regular Eid celebrations were held at the Shah Jahan, and Muslim dignitaries from all over the world visited the mosque when in Britain. Photographs printed in the Islamic Review as well as accounts demonstrate the eclecticism of the congregation, which included women and men of a range of nationalities, while articles on numerous subjects suggest the mosque advocated a tolerant and non-sectarian brand of Islam, and sought to accommodate itself to its British context and represent Islam to the British public as compatible with and relevant to their lives. Its success in this respect is suggested by the string of conversions depicted in the Islamic Review. These include some elite British figures such as Lord Headley. Indeed, worshippers were largely from a professional middle-class background, and the mosque retained friendly links with the British establishment, despite its highly controversial allegiance to Turkey and the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

The Shah Jahan had numerous Imams over the years, as well as frequently hosting visiting preachers. A cemetery nearby on Horsell Common provided burials for Muslims, especially for Muslim soldiers who were killed in the World Wars. After the Second World War, the Shah Jahan lost some of its influence, and other mosques were established, such as the East London Mosque and later the Central London Mosque in Regent’s Park. The mosque remains an active place of worship today.

The Liverpool Mosque and Muslim Institute of Brougham Terrace was officially established in 1891. Prior to this, however, from as early as 1887, its founder William Quilliam, an English convert to Islam, led a small congregation of Muslims in premises on Mount Vernon Street. The Institute expanded rapidly, encompassing, by the mid-1890s, a madrassa, a library, a printing press, a museum, schools for boys and girls, a hostel and a literary society, as well as the mosque itself, enabling Muslims not just to worship but to conduct their daily lives according to the requirements of their faith.

Quilliam was keen for the mosque to be integrated into Britain and to engage with the British public – no doubt in part in an attempt to fulfil his aim of converting the British nation to Islam. Its orphanage, the Medina Home for Children, was open to children of any faith (who would then be brought up as Muslims) and was established in response to the increase of illegitimate births in the city. Further, the Institute undertook social work beyond its congregation, within the local community. Quilliam encouraged open debate and dialogue about the mosque by writing articles in the local press, also founding and editing two journals, The Crescent and The Islamic World, both of which had an international circulation. According to Ansari, Quilliam ‘was attempting to found an indigenous tradition that would be able to connect with the religious practices of potential converts and so create a sense of receptive familiarity’ (p. 125). Perhaps as a result of this, his congregation, dominated by middle-class converts, grew, with an estimated 600 conversions taking place over twenty years. While the majority of worshippers were English converts, there is evidence that some South Asians resident in Liverpool also attended the mosque. 

In November 1910, a fund for a mosque in London was established. By 1926, a deed of trust was executed and the fund became known as the London Mosque Fund. Trustees included distinguished Muslims such as Syed Ameer Ali, Firoz Khan Noon and the Aga Khan, as well as sympathetic British peers. Until 1928, the trustees arranged for prayers to be held at various addresses in west London. Poor attendance and the eventual realization that the majority of Muslims in London lived in its East End led to the relocation of prayer meetings to the King’s Hall on Commercial Road in 1935. At this point, the trustees handed over the organization of prayer meetings and religious functions to the Jamiat-ul-Muslimin, an east London based organization.

The desirability of a mosque to meet the needs of the many seamen and other working-class Indians who inhabited the East End and attended these meetings was keenly felt, and in 1940 three adjoining houses on Commercial Road were purchased and converted into the East London Mosque. The mosque was inaugurated by the Egyptian Ambassador, Hassan Nachat Pasha, at a ceremony that took place on 1 August 1941. The ceremony was attended by approximately 300, including representatives from the Indian Company of the Pioneer Corps, and speeches were made by Sir Hassan Suhrawardy (Muslim Advisor to the Secretary of State for India), Sir Ernest Hotson (on behalf of the London Mosque Fund Trust), and Said Amir Shah and Ahmed Din Qureshi as officials of the Jamiat-ul-Muslimin.

Also located at the East London Mosque was the Indigent Moslems Burial Fund which raised money to provide for the burial of Muslims in Britain and the upkeep of their graves. The Islamic Cultural Centre, which was still in need of funds and at the planning stage in the mid-1940s, aimed to provide ‘secular education combined with facilities for vocational and technical training in an Islamiah Madrassah’.

The Jamiat-ul-Muslimin, based at the East London Mosque, was a charitable society for the promotion of Islam, founded in 1934. It membership consisted predominantly of working-class lascars, peddlers and other workers who inhabited the East End of London. The Jamiat’s stated objectives were: ‘To serve the cause of Islam truly and practically by creating facilities for the observance of its Principles: to produce a weekly paper…to collect funds for a Mosque in the East End of London: to provide for the training and education of Muslims generally; to succour poor and needy Muslims: to promote social intercourse between resident Muslims and visitors to this country and generally to adopt all practical and legitimate means to work for the moral, intellectual and economic advancement of Muslims throughout the world’ (L/PJ/12/468). Thus, its objectives combined faith with the social and political. The organization first came to notice by government authorities in 1938 when it staged a protest against H. G. Wells’ A Short History of the World. The Jamiat organized a march to India House, Aldwych, where a deputation presented a petition to the High Commissioner for India, Firoz Khan Noon.

Before the establishment of the East London Mosque in 1941, the organization’s members would gather and worship at King’s Hall in Commercial Road. The Jamiat played a key role in the establishment, inauguration and management of the mosque. In 1943 they were involved in a dispute with the trustees of the mosque, claiming that they should have ultimate control over its management and affairs. There were also active branches of the Jamiat in Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. 

The Strangers Home was built on the initiative of a number of missionary societies working in the East End of London, foremost among them Henry Venn, Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, who launched an appeal for funds. The first donation of £500.00 was made by Maharaja Duleep Singh. The foundation stone was laid by Prince Albert on 31 May 1856. The home would open one year later. Throughout its existence, it served a double purpose as a centre for government-subsidized shelter for lascars and a centre for religious instruction.

The Home provided temporary accommodation and food for foreign sailors. Furthermore, it served as a repatriation centre where sailors were recruited for ships returning East. It was also used as a missionary centre with Joseph Salter of the London City Mission as its resident missionary. Among the facilities provided by the home, were a library of Christian books in Asian and African languages, a depository for valuables, and remittance of their earnings to India. The dormitories could accommodate 220 people; the home provided store rooms, laundry rooms, bathrooms and sanitation as well as a dining hall. Attached to it was the Lascar Shipping Office, which registered unemployed sailors. From 1857 to 1877 according to the Home’s own figures, it cared for 5,709 people, of which 1,605 were destitute and gratuitously provided for. The Strangers’ Home was subsidised with £200.00 annually by the India Office for the temporary maintenance of lascars before their return to India.

In 1923 the Strangers Home was recommended by the India Office to ship owners as the only place for suitable accommodation in London. In the 1920s the union activist Nathalal Jagivan Upadhyaya attempted to recruit lascars at the Strangers’ Home for the Indian Seamen Union. He was banned from the Strangers Home in December 1926.

The Home closed down in 1937 due to a lack of funds and a dwindling number of occupants. Having run at a yearly loss of £2,000.00, the Indian High Commission made arrangements for destitute Indian sailors to be taken in by other organizations. The proposed closure caused concern among Poplar’s South Asian community. Syed Fazal Shah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Muslimin, expressed his concern about the disappearance of ‘a place of refuge for the people of Asia in London’ (L/E/9/967). 

The Indian Workers’ Association had a dual aim: to raise consciousness of the struggle for Indian independence among working-class Indians in Britain, and to protect and enhance their welfare. While there was some overlap between the IWA and the India League, the former was a working-class organization whose membership was composed almost uniquely of Indians. The founders and protagonists of the organization were mainly Sikh and Muslim Punjabis who had turned to peddling on their arrival in Britain, later finding factory work or construction work at the aerodromes and militia camps that had sprung up in the Midlands during the Second World War. Meetings were conducted predominantly in Hindustani, which often excluded Bengali seamen and ex-seamen from participation, although there were also bi-monthly ‘open meetings’ conducted in English and with invited British speakers.

In the Indian Political Intelligence files, many of the Sikh pioneers of the IWA are described as having ‘Ghadr sympathies’, their main concern being to raise money for Ghadr Party initiatives such as the Desh Bhagat Parwar Sahaik Committee, which helped the dependents in India of ‘Sikh martyrs’, or the Udham Singh Defence Fund. Generally, the political activity and mobilization of working-class Indians was a source of grave concern to the India Office. IPI records reveal discussion of ways in which the organization’s leaders could be dispersed to different parts of the country where there were few Indians and less opportunity to stir up anti-British feeling among their fellow countrymen. Indeed, the IPI kept lists of IWA men who they considered particularly seditious and who should be interned in the event of an invasion during the war.

In terms of welfare work, the IWA leadership helped working-class Indians to avoid army conscription if they wished. It also provided a forum for discussion of employment grievances. Records of speeches at IWA meetings reveal the link between the oppression of Indians in Britain and their subjugation to the British in India; for example, Indian machinists in British factories are described as being reallocated to unskilled labouring jobs because of the fear that if they acquire the same skills as Englishmen they will return to India and teach their fellow countrymen the trade, thereby undermining the rationale for British rule.

Although it began as early as 1937, the IWA gained real momentum when Vellala Srikantaya Sastrya, an educated Madrassi, became secretary of the Birmingham branch in 1942. He gave the organization leadership and coherence. By 1944, however, signs of discord among the main players were evident, with Akbar Ali Khan relocating from Coventry to East London to open a rival IWA in the capital.