Your Projects
Rosemary Collins talks to the writer and journalist whose new project reveals the history of the ‘Mecca of Europe’
The trails highlighting Woking’s hidden Muslim heritage
There are an estimated 3.3 million Muslims living in the UK today. Although many British Muslims can trace their heritage to postwar immigration, Britain’s Muslim population, and historical ties to Islamic culture, has existed for much longer. Now, heritage project Everyday Muslim has launched the first Muslim heritage trails in the country, revealing just how deep those historic roots are in Woking.
The first trail brings together three of the most significant Muslim sites in Britain, all located in and around the Surrey town. They are the Muslim Burial Ground at Brookwood Cemetery, established in 1884; Shah Jahan Mosque, which is the country’s first purposebuilt mosque and opened in 1889; and the Peace Garden, commissioned in 1915 as the first war cemetery for Muslim soldiers killed during the First World War.
The trails were created by writer and journalist Tharik Hussain. He explains to Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine that these sites were central to Islamic culture in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries: “Woking became so important to Muslims, not just in Britain but all over Europe, that it was dubbed the Mecca of Europe.”
The second trail is a walking tour of Brookwood Cemetery, and reveals the stories of some of the influential British Muslims buried there. Among them are Sir Archibald Hamilton (1876–1939) and Lord Headley (1855–1935) – two British peers who, says Tharik, “changed the face of the religious landscape both in Britain and the Western Hemisphere” by choosing to convert to Islam. Another British-born convert in the cemetery, Muhammad Marmaduke William Pickthall (1875–1936), was the first native English speaker to translate the Qur’an into English. The trails were opened in July by Sir Laurie Magnus, the chair of Historic England – and Pickthall’s great nephew.
“When he revealed that to the press, it really was a ‘wow’ moment,” Tharik says. “For me, what’s important is that it brought that history right up to date. That’s a real Who Do You Think You Are? moment, isn’t it? Somebody who is in charge of Historic England, and is in no way, shape or form a Muslim, revealing to people that his great maternal uncle was the most famous translator of the Qur’an into English in history.”
Tharik says that one of the greatest finds in the cemetery is the grave of Princess Musbah Haidar (1918–1977). The daughter of an Irish mother and the Grand Sherif of Mecca, she is thought to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.
He adds that the aim of the trails is to demonstrate to people that Islam and Muslims have long had a presence in the country.
The trail maps are now freely available in the Woking community and online. They have proved popular locally, and the project was also a finalist in the ‘UK and Ireland’ category of the 2019 British Guild of Travel Writers’ International Tourism Awards.
However, Tharik believes that the trails are just the tip of the iceberg, and that there’s potential for Muslim heritage trails up and down the country.
“For a lot of British Muslims, there’re all these issues concerning identity and belonging,” he says. “Just imagine how differently both Muslims and non-Muslims would look at Islam in Britain, if there were more heritage trails and the religion’s presence here was normalised.”
‘Woking was important to Muslims, not just in Britain but all over Europe’