British Muslims
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Perhaps the earliest link between Britain and Muslims was in the 8th Century when King Offa, the Anglo Saxon King of Mercia, minted some gold coins with Arabic inscriptions on them.  The inscriptions read “There is no God but Allah”.  No body is sure why he did this. Some say he may have become a Muslim. Others say he needed these coins to trade with Muslim countries. The coins can be seen at the British Museum.

However it wasn’t until much later that Muslims came to settle in Britain.  Historical settlements of Muslims in Great Britain go back at least 300 years, although before that, travellers during the Ottoman Empire and Moorish Spain are likely to have also visited the British Isles. There is ample evidence of Muslim sailors and Muslim servants from the Indian sub-continent of the British Empire arriving in Britain from the seventeenth century. A recent discovery on a sunken ship of a large consignment of Islamic coins and artifacts has established the thriving trade between Elizabethan England and Morocco, and it is quite likely that Muslim sailors from North Africa settled in Britain just as their Indian counterparts did.

The opening of the Suez Canal in the late 1860s also brought significant Muslim sailors from the Middle Eastern countries such as Yemen.  These very old Muslim communities can still be found in the towns they settled in, such as Cardiff, Liverpool and the North East as well as towns such as Sheffield where many Yemeni workers came to work in the then booming Steel Industry.  It is interesting to note that the Boxer “Prince Naseem Hamid” is from just such a Yemeni community in Sheffield.

As the British Empire spread into Muslim countries, more and more Britons were exposed to the teachings of Islam, which in turn brought about many converts as well as earning Islam great respect from intellectuals and travellers, such as George Bernard Shaw and T. E. Lawrence. One of the earliets mosques in Britain was built in Woking in Surrey in 1889.

Some Early British Converts to Islam

Sir Archibald Hamilton: A distinguished convert buried in Brookwood is Sir Abdullah Archibald Hamilton, baronet, a relation of the English royal family. He is pictured here with his wife. He died in March 1939. "Sir Archibald, fifth baronet of the first (1776) creation and third baronet of the second creation (1819), succeeded to these baronetcies on the death of his father, the late Sir Charles Edward Hamilton, in 1915. He married (first) in 1897, Olga, only daughter of Rear-Admiral Sir Adolphus Fitzgeorge, K.C.V.O., and granddaughter of Field-Marshal H.R.H. the late Duke of Cambridge, first cousin to Queen Victoria; and (second) in 1906, Algosta Marjorie Blanch. ... He had one son from his first wife, who was born in 1898, at whose baptism his late Majesty King George and Queen Mary attended in person as sponsors, and who died in action as a Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards in Flanders in 1918. On the death of his second wife in 1927, Sir Archibald married for the third time, and this is the present Lady Hamilton who survives him. Sir Archibald was a descendant of William Hamilton, one of the six Kentish petitioners, brother of Sir James Hamilton of Donalton, direct ancestor of the Duke of Abercorn, and also Baron Hamilton of Paisley, who married Mary, daughter of King James II of Scotland. Sir Archibald embraced Islam in 1924 and had since been an ardent preacher of the faith. His grave lies by the side of another and older stalwart of English Islam, the late lamented Al-Haj Lord Headley al-Farooq. They were great friends in life and close comrades-in-arms in the cause of Islam. It was in the fitness of things that in death also they should lie together. May Allah shower His mercy on their valiant souls and make them an inspiration for those who survive them.

Deputy Inspector General Charles William Buchanan-Hamilton (Royal Navy): From the Islamic Review, February 1935.

Lady Buchanan-Hamilton: A woman convert, also buried at Brookwood, is Lady Khalida Buchanan-Hamilton, President of the British Muslim Society of the time. She was the wife of Deputy Inspector General Charles William Buchanan-Hamilton, referred to above.

For more photos of Early Bristish Muslims - Click Here!

Mass settlements of Muslims in Britain started in the late 1950s mainly due to two factors. The partition of British India into Pakistan (East and West) and the construction of the Mangla Dam in Pakistan in the early 1960s which submerged some 250 villages in the Mirpur District.   The 1970s saw the further settlement of African Asians fleeing regimes such as that of Idi Amin and Bengali Muslims and Turkish Cypriots following the 1974 partition of Cyprus.

During the 1980s and 1990s further groups of Muslims arrived in Britain mainly as refugees. These included Afghans, Somalis, Kurds, Bosnians and Algerians.   There is no definite information on the Muslim population in Britain.  Conservative estimates vary from 1.2 million to 1.6 million. While some sources quote a higher estimate of up to 2 to 3 million. The ethnic origins of Muslims are very many.  For example Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, Malay, Middle East, Africa, Somalia, Albania, Kurdistan, Morocco, Algeria, Bosnia and others too, including a large and growing number of Muslims of British and European ethnic origin.

British Muslims; a family outside Regents Park Mosque, a mother buying Halal meat, a prayer before breaking fast, Prince Charles visits Islamia School.

There are few areas of the British economy where Muslims have not made their mark. Shopkeepers, teachers, doctors, dentists, barristers, broadcasters, factory workers, engineers, scientists - everywhere Muslims are making a substantial contribution in business, the public service and the professions. Increasingly, they are becoming involved in the political life of the country, especially in local government and on official advisory bodies.   The Muslim community in Britain, also plays an important role in promoting understanding between the Islamic world and the West.