‘Burying the dead’: making Muslim space

Original
making
Blackwell
Oxford, Muslim
Articles
Historical
HISR
©
0950-3471
XXX
Institute
UK spaceLtd
Research
Publishing inResearch
of Historical Britain 2007

in Britain*
Humayun Ansari
Royal Holloway, University of London

Astract
This article explores how far, and to what extent, burial has contributed to the
establishment of a Muslim presence in Britain over the past 200 years. By
discussing various ways in which Muslims have buried their dead over this
period, and some of the problems that they have encountered, it addresses the
significance of ritual and place-making in relation to notions of belonging and
the construction of identity. In many ways, burial grounds for Muslims in Britain
have operated as symbolic devices for community narratives and shared values,
which in turn have nurtured forms of identification with place and community.
As this article argues, they have helped to create space that demonstrates the
changing nature of Muslim ‘rootedness’ within the British environment.

This article explores how Muslims in Britain have sought to establish

themselves as an integral part of the British community over the last 200
years – from being thought of as an alien presence to being seen as more
firmly rooted in these islands – through a discussion of the ways in which
they have buried their dead. In order to do this, it first addresses the
significance, more generally, of rituals and place-making in constructing
the past, traditions and, in the process, personal and social identities.
Second, and more specifically, it considers the role played by burial
practices and burial grounds – the sites of funerary rituals – as tools in the
construction of Muslim identities in Britain during this period, piecing
together information from the relatively limited historical material
available in the form of contemporary journals and newspapers, archival
and cemetery records, and secondary sources.
It is possible to discern a number of ways in which Muslims in
contemporary Britain express and sustain their religio-ethnic identity
within cemeteries: these would include location; position; form and shape

* This article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the ‘Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus:
South Asian diasporas in Britain and religious nationalism in South Asia’ session of the 75th
Anglo-American Conference of Historians, ‘Religions and politics’, at the Beveridge Hall,
University of London, 6 July 2006.

© Institute of Historical Research 2007. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 210 (November 2007)
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
546 Making Muslim space in Britain

of marker; symbols; place of birth; epitaph; inscription language; and

distinctive grave decorations.1 Graves and gravestones, in this fashion, have
become sources of collective memory, and cemeteries are accordingly today
playing a part in enabling Muslims in Britain to construct their identities
through this collectivizing process. By encapsulating and perpetuating
communal memories, they represent sites and icons of reverence and ritual
remembrance, indeed increasingly places of personal pilgrimage. As such,
in this way also, they evoke a sense of community and of communal
continuity. Burial grounds undoubtedly embody the sense of how far
Muslims have become embedded in British society.
‘To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need
of the human soul’, wrote Simone Weil.2 ‘Rootedness’, it could be
argued, establishes the emotional ties between people and place. The idea
of having roots is deployed to set geographic, social, ethnic and cultural
boundaries that categorize, alienate and exclude the ‘other’ – those whose
claims on, and ties to, the place in question are regarded as tenuous, spurious
or non-existent. As Brian Osbourne has argued, this notion of place
becomes loaded with landmarks, or markers, that operate as symbolic
devices for community narratives and shared values, which, in turn, are
directed towards nurturing forms of identification with place and community.
Through a variety of mediums – architecture, monuments, ceremon-
ies, rituals and myths – ‘awareness of belonging’ is created. 3 Hence,
‘symbolically-loaded sites and events provide social continuity . . .
contribute to the collective memory, and establish spatial and temporal
reference points for society’ and communities within it: they ‘reinforce
peoples’ identification with specific values’, distinctive traditions and beliefs.
Through them, collective memory is strengthened and national and/or
community identity constructed – both formally and informally.

1
‘Cemeteries and cemetery reform’, in Encyclopedia of Death and Dying <http://
www.deathreference.com/Bl-Ce/Cemeteries-and-Cemetery-Reform.html> [accessed 23 Feb.
2007]. One can find many instances of this. E.g., a gravestone in the Muslim section of
Brookwood has the following inscription that includes several of these ‘identity markers’:
Ina lillaha wa Ina ilaihe rajeoon [Arabic script, followed by the English translation]
For God We Are And To God We Go
Holy Qur’an
In Memory of Sepoy Larib Khan. No 304
129th Baluchis [regiment]
Died 22nd July 1915
2
Roots are acquired ‘by virtue of . . . real, active and natural participation in the life of a
community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain
particular expectations of the future’ (S. Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of
Duties towards Mankind (1952), p. 41).
3
B. S. Osborne, ‘Landscapes, memory, monuments and commemoration: putting identity in its
place’ (seminar paper, Nov. 2001) <http://www.canada.metropolis.net/events/ethnocultural/
publications/putinden.pdf > [accessed 23 Feb. 2007].

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 547

Graves, cemeteries and memorials are all examples of such ‘markers’.

They ‘provide a symbolic place for remembrance . . . there is an ongoing
visual memory of what has happened’. Cemeteries, through their
symbolic construction of a collective memory of the cultural, religious
and social character of past generations, can instil a sense of belonging.
Indeed, a common definition of ‘home’ often equates it with the place
where ancestors are buried – one reason why many Muslims belonging
to immigrant families have until recently wished to have their bodies
sent back to their ‘homelands’. In death, it is said, soil acquires acute
significance.4
Thus, rituals surrounding death, whether historically, socially or
culturally constituted, as well as burial sites, can be viewed as exercises in
‘place-making’ and identity construction. They offer insights both into
the ways in which communities view themselves and the surrounding
world, and into the changes that they may be experiencing. As Eva
Reimers explains, ‘rituals [including funerary ones] in a non-verbal
language convey to people where they belong. By making choices on
how to announce the death and the funeral, the place for the funeral, the
ritual service, gravestone, and so forth, the bereaved communicate not only
who the deceased was but also who they are and where they belong’. 5
Identity construction is accomplished not only through deliberate choices,
but is part of the self-presentation of the group involved. When this
construction of identity takes place in an environment where the group,
to some extent, regards itself (and is regarded by others) as ‘deviating’ or
‘other’, then this presentation of self can be viewed as a resource that can
be made relevant in the social organization of a cultural group. Hence,
‘processes of identity construction are accomplished not just through the
reiteration of old ritual practices’: new customs are frequently incorporated
into the old.6
In contemporary Britain, processes of secularization and profession-
alization, together with advances in medical technology, have resulted
in death being steadily withdrawn from the public arena and placed in
the private sphere, but this was not always so. As Harriet Jordan has
shown, Victorian cemeteries, for instance, provided the focus for a whole
culture of commemoration expressed through elaborate funerals, family
monuments and mausoleums, mourning fashions and regular visits to the
grave. The cemeteries of the mid nineteenth century offered permanent
and public commemorative sites to a culture that placed great importance
on processes of remembrance. The look of the cemetery, comprising its

4
Osborne.
5
E. Reimers, ‘Death and identity: graves and funerals as cultural communication’, Mortality,
iv (1999), 147–166, at p. 163.
6
‘History of the English cemetery’ <http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/
nav.00100200800e00d> [accessed 23 Feb. 2007].

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548 Making Muslim space in Britain

overall design, landscaping and architecture, contrasted sharply with early

nineteenth century utilitarian and rather ‘spartan’, or barren, burial
grounds. This was particularly so for cemeteries founded by joint-stock
companies that were keen, for financial reasons, to attract the middle and
upper-middle classes.7
These Victorian cemeteries drew inspiration for their design from private
parks, with chapels taking the place of country houses as the centres
of attention: their ‘landscape . . . was usually laid out informally in the
picturesque style, with sweeping drives and serpentine lines . . . likewise,
the English rural churchyard, with its native trees and meandering
paths, was, understandably, also influential’. Memorials, mostly gravestones,
tombs and mausoleums, marked the location of graves within cemeteries.
Cemeteries were, thus, designed to serve a balance of practical and aesthetic
purposes. While the primary reason for their existence was to receive
burials, in most of them thought and care was given to ensuring that they
also provided an appropriate environment for the burial ceremony, a
dignified setting for commemorative structures, and a pleasant place for
the bereaved to visit. To Victorian England, a cemetery of quality was ‘a
statement of civic pride’.8

It is against this backdrop of cemetery development that we need to

locate Muslim burial and place-making.9 For the vast majority of
Muslims, death and the afterlife are central tenets of faith. Because of their
belief in corporeal resurrection, burial is normally the prescribed mode of
disposal, and mainstream Islamic traditions prohibit cremation.10 While
Muslims share with Christians and Jews the tradition of being buried in
a cemetery, the specific lay-out, as well as architectural character, of their
‘final resting places’ identifies them as followers of Islam. The funerary
practices that accompany the act of burial itself further underline this
affiliation, as processions to the graveside together with prayer services
conducted by an imam set a seal on a Muslim’s spiritual departure from
this world and, in the process, reaffirm the identity of those left behind.
The interplay of individual practice and collective identity thus emerges
as a central fact of Muslim experience. Continuities between those who

7
H. Jordan, ‘The register of parks and gardens: cemeteries’ ( Jan. 2003), p. 5 <http://
www.english-heritage.org.uk/upload/doc/cemetrybooklet-web.doc> [accessed 23 Feb. 2007].
8
Jordan, p. 10.
9
There is a growing literature that investigates the processes by which Muslims create space
for themselves in western societies (see, for examples of very different kinds of articles, Making
Muslim Space in North America and Europe, ed. B. Metcalf (Berkeley, Calif., 1996); and P. Werbner,
‘Stamping the earth with the name of Allah: Zikr and the sacralising of space among British
Muslims’, Cultural Anthropology, xi (1996), 309 – 38).
10
For instance, at Muslim funerals in Germany photographs are taken of the burial that are
then sent to the family ‘back home’ as ‘proof that the body has not been burned’ (G. Jonker,
‘The knife’s edge: Muslim burial in the diaspora’, Mortality, i (1996), 27 –43, at p. 39).

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 549

have died and those who remain are reinforced by the burials that take
place, and collective memories of being part of a wider community are
sustained by the existence of these cemeteries.11
Since cemeteries, in a very physical sense, can also be said to uncover
the ‘politics’ of religious space, it could be argued that they acquire a
particular significance for minority communities – for many such com-
munities, their marginality provides the context for explicitly religious
expression, something that might not be nearly so relevant were they part
of society’s mainstream. As Muslims in Britain have grown in number
and have increasingly laid claim to public space, they have inevitably
encountered degrees of resentment, resistance and opposition, which, in
turn, have played a part in shaping their self-perception vis-à-vis wider
British society and their negotiating strategies.12 These processes have
reinforced the extent to which Muslim cemeteries now represent physical
and cultural spaces within which Muslims ‘displaced’ to new environments
interact with one another as well as with the broader community. In
many ways, a ‘Muslim’ presence is proclaimed by their existence – their
sacred architecture performs a symbolic role as a marker of this minority
presence. Muslim burial grounds thus offer visual pointers to the presence
of Muslims and can be viewed as spatial expressions of community
identity, solidarity and ‘collective effervescence’.13
However, given that interactions between Muslims and the British
Isles have been taking place for many centuries, recent attempts at ‘place-
making’, abortive or otherwise, are perhaps nothing ‘new’. Muslim
migration to Britain leading to the evolution of ‘settler’ communities of
significant size dates from the mid nineteenth century, when transient as
well as relatively permanent Muslim populations were established in
Manchester, Cardiff, Liverpool, South Shields, Glasgow and the East End

11
Comparisons may be drawn between the experiences of embryonic Muslim communities
in Britain and their Jewish counterparts, who over centuries had deployed Jewish cemeteries
as part of wider strategies to maintain community identity (see, e.g., T. M. Endelman, The Jews
of Britain, 1656 –2000 (Berkeley, Calif., 2002)). For a more general discussion on the community
significance of Jewish rites of passage, including death, mourning and remembering, see H. E.
Goldberg, Jewish Passages: Cycles of Jewish Life (Berkeley, Calif., 2003). In another geographical
context, but in an arguably similar fashion, for the small European, largely British, communities
that were established in the Indian subcontinent during the colonial period, ‘burying the dead’
properly became an intrinsic aspect of maintaining community identity. For discussion on the
lingering significance of these Christian cemeteries that dated from the Raj, see E. Buettner,
‘Cemeteries, public memory and Raj nostalgia in post-colonial Britain and India’, History and
Memory, xviii (Spring–Summer 2006), 5 – 42.
12
Recently a protest was reportedly mounted in Nottingham when the city council,
allegedly, decided to have the graves at its High Wood cemetery face north-east in accordance
with the burial requirement of Muslims. The leader of the council, however, contradicted this
claim printed in the local media, clarifying that, ‘people can be buried in any way they wish’
(see ‘Cemetery direction controversy’, The Muslim News, ccxi, 24 Nov. 2006).
13
Metcalf, p. 160.

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550 Making Muslim space in Britain

of London. From diverse backgrounds and distinct cultures these Muslims

were a motley crew – maritime workers and servants of returning East
India Company employees, adventurers and itinerant entertainers, nawabs
and maharanis, students, merchants from the Near East and India, and a
sprinkling of men from the professional classes. Many Muslims from the
Near East, Africa and Asia settled in Britain before the beginning of the
twentieth century, raised families and died here – how and where to bury
them when they died posed a challenge from this time onwards.
A particularly significant group of these ‘early’ Muslims was that made
up by seamen visiting British ports, their annual numbers increasing
from 3,000 in 1842 to between 10,000 and 12,000 in 1855.14 Most lived
in areas close to the docks, in mixed communities. Joseph Salter, a mid
nineteenth-century missionary assigned to work among non-Christians,
also identified a significant presence of Muslim vagrants, beggars and
destitutes in the East End of London, as well as a more transient population
of lascars, while travelling across the country. Most, it would seem, when
they died, died ignominiously leaving few traces of their burial.15 Many
of them just ‘perished with cold and hunger in our streets during the
[British] winter’,16 while others died in prisons, poor law unions and
hospitals. Between 1854 and 1856, Salter reported that more than 1,000
were admitted into the Dreadnought alone (the ship that housed the
Seamen’s Hospital), of whom upwards of 100 died.17 Several more were
found dead in ‘their miserable dwellings’: like paupers more generally,
their funerals were likely to have been ‘on the parish’, with their corpses
sent ‘all to the Union or the dead-house’.18 Poor law unions ordered
pauper coffins, and bearers were recruited from the workhouse. By and
large they were buried in unconsecrated spaces or those allocated to
nonconformist denominations.19
Salter, while travelling in ‘the provinces’ between 1857 and 1873, also
mentioned visiting the graves of thirty Turkish seamen in the Liverpool
Necropolis, a public cemetery built in 1825.20 Other examples of Muslims
being buried in these kinds of public cemeteries include one Sheik
Abdoul [sic], a sailor who died in Barry in 1893 and whose grave is in
the Cathay cemetery in Cardiff.21 Eight Muslims were similarly buried in

14
H. Ansari, ‘The Infidel Within’: Muslims in Britain since 1800 (2004), p. 35.
15
J. Salter, The Asiatic in England: Sketches of 16 Years’ Work among Orientals (1873).
16
Salter, pp. 20, 71.
17
Salter, p. 25.
18
Salter, p. 132.
19
At the beginning of the 19th century burying the dead was still the responsibility of the
Church of England. The Metropolitan Burial Act of 1852 allowed for the provision of publicly-
funded cemeteries in London and other urban centres. By 1857 a national system of public
cemeteries was in place ( Jordan; and see also Death in England: an Illustrated History, ed. P. C.
Jupp and C. Gittings (Manchester, 1999), pp. 224, 243).
20
Salter, p. 160.
21
Information supplied by the burial board in Cardiff.

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 551

the public graves section of the Agecroft cemetery in Salford, the earliest
in 1916: all of the names inscribed on the headstones of this multiple
grave suggest that the deceased were of Indian Muslim origin.22 Interment
in a public grave would suggest the absence of burial provision for
Muslims as well as their own inability to finance the proper Islamic rites.
Nevertheless, the existence of such graves does confirm, and makes
visible, a distinct Muslim presence in these locations that dates back over
100 years. In effect, these graves form part of a historical bridge to the
post-Second World War Muslim communities that subsequently came to
live in these areas, and remind us of the poor – the lascars, servants and
ayahs – living largely in the port areas of British cities, who died in
degraded circumstances, leaving little if any trace.
But further evidence from the nineteenth century suggests that, while
the religious identity of the deceased might not have been sustained in
the concrete form of a grave, many of the Muslim poor of this period
seem to have been determined to stick ‘fast to their belief in the Islamic
process of salvation after death’.23 Salter, for instance, gave the example
of one such Muslim who wished to die reciting the Kalma: ‘the next day
he died calling Allah! Allah! Allah!’, surrounded by friends, family and
neighbours.24 When Shaikh Mohammed, another such Muslim, died, ‘a
coffin was procured somehow, and was carried to the grave and deposited
in his last home by his countrymen – a tribute which all Asiatics, even
with difficulties attending it in England, are always anxious to perform
with scrupulosity’.25 The performance of these funerary rituals surely
served a socially regenerative function. Denoting solidarity, they kept
alive a sense of mutual association among members of the ‘community’
and reinvigorated the beliefs and values that it shared. To a large extent,
they re-established the bonds within the group that would otherwise have
been fractured by the loss of one of its members.
Throughout the nineteenth century in Britain, therefore, Muslims were
normally buried as nonconformists (a term which included Roman
Catholics, Jews, Parsees and other non-Christians) in unconsecrated ground.
A Church of England service would not have been mandatory, although
there is little to indicate that any last rites would have automatically, or
necessarily, taken a specifically Islamic form. Indeed, the first recorded
burial of a Muslim – that of a Turk, Arif Bey, aged twenty in 1836 –
seems to have followed this pattern. A young Turkish officer who was
sent to England by the Ottoman sultan, Mahmoud II, to receive military

22
For more information of this kind about Muslims in the Manchester area, see M. S.
Seddon, ‘“Invisible Arabs” or “English Muslims”? An inquiry into the construction of religious,
cultural and national identities of the Yemeni community of Eccles’ (unpublished University
of Lancaster Ph.D. thesis, 2005).
23
Salter, pp. 136–7.
24
Salter, pp. 140–2.
25
Salter, p. 185.

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552 Making Muslim space in Britain

training at Woolwich, he died suddenly, probably after having been

thrown from his horse. It is possible that he was the sultan’s son. His
original burial took place in ground adjoining the depot close to the
barracks. Following British military traditions, his body was placed in a
brick grave, but interestingly the screws of the coffin were withdrawn
after it had been lowered into the space, perhaps as a compromise with
the practice of Muslims being buried only in a shroud.26
Other Muslims, it seems, were even buried as Christians by Christian
ministers. This was the case as far as the notable Indian Muslim Sake
Deen Mahomed (King George VI’s shampooing surgeon and founder of
the first curry house in London in 1810) was concerned, for when he
died in 1851 he was buried in the cemetery of the church of St. Nicholas,
Brighton.27 Details of Deen Mahomed’s life and death are instructive
when set in the context of the Muslim presence in nineteenth-century
Britain. That he married his wife in a church in Ireland might suggest
that he had converted to Christianity, since church weddings between
Catholics and Protestants, let alone with Muslims, were not conducted in
Ireland at this time. But research has shown that the wedding had been
a ‘private and hastily conducted . . . ceremony’, and the fact that, instead
of banns being read from the pulpit for several weeks previously, a bond
had been posted with the church, suggests that the priest who performed
the ceremony may have had doubts about Deen Mahomed’s true
religious status. Later, when Abu Talib Khan, a high-ranking traveller
from India, met Deen Mahomed in Ireland in 1799, he had no hesitation
in describing him as a Muslim in his travelogue.28
Deen Mahomed in his own writings presented a much more positive
picture of the religion into which he had been born than was the case in
other more negative and unsympathetic accounts of Muslims and Islam
extant at the time.29 Indeed, he seems consciously to have maintained and
even highlighted many cultural aspects of his Indian/Muslim identity,
and, aware of their intrinsic value, deployed them deliberately in pursuit
of his varied careers.30 On the other hand, while his memoirs, Travels of

26
There his remains stayed until 1962 when the redevelopment at Woolwich necessitated
their exhumation and removal to the Turkish Air Force allotment in the Brookwood cemetery
(Necropolis News, ii (Apr. 1999), 5–6; and see also J. M. Clarke, London’s Necropolis: a Guide to
Brookwood Cemetery (Stroud, 2004), p. 238).
27
The inscription on the headstone is as follows: ‘Sacred to the memory of Sake Dean
Mahomed of Patna, Hindoostan who died on the 24th of February 1851 aged 101 years and
of his wife who died on the 26th of December 1850, aged 70 years’ (see Sir E. Cotton, ‘Sake
Deen Mahomed of Brighton’, Sussex County Magazine, xiii (1934), 746).
28
Abu Talib Khan describes his meeting with Deen Mahomed in his travelogue, Masir Talibi
fi Bilad Afranji, translated by Charles Stewart in 1810, an except from which is reproduced in
M. H. Fisher, The First Indian Author in English: Dean Mahomed (1759 –1851) in India, Ireland and
England (Delhi, 1996), p. 240.
29
Fisher, pp. 227 – 32.
30
Fisher, chs. 5–8.

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 553

Dean Mahomet, reveal his in-depth knowledge of Muslim burial rites,

there is no indication of his wish to be buried accordingly.31 Deen
Mahomed’s eventual burial in a Christian cemetery perhaps suggests that
individual Muslims in his position, in order to survive or to progress in
British society, believed that they needed to assimilate, while keeping
their ‘true’ beliefs private. Someone like Deen Mahomed, most probably
living in virtual isolation in Brighton, far from any significant Muslim
community, would have discounted a burial according to Islamic rites for
purely practical reasons, even if privately he had wished it.
By the early years of the twentieth century, the situation was beginning
to change. Reasonably sizeable Muslim communities were now emerging
in a number of cities and towns in Britain, and over the years this
demographic shift had an impact on burial practices. To begin with, most
Muslims (by birth as well as converts), in the absence of suitable religiously
dedicated cemetery space, were still interred in public and private non-
conformist burial grounds. While they may have been more insistent on
the correct funeral rites being carried out, they were not in a strong enough
position to demand separate Muslim sections in public cemeteries, nor did
they possess the necessary community resources to enable them to express
their religious identities through the creation of distinct Muslim burial
places. In contrast to other minority religious groups, they were still not
sufficiently organized as a self-conscious ‘community’ either to have secured
the allocation of separate sections in public cemeteries (for example,
Jewish sections had been established in cemeteries in West Ham in 1857
and Willesden in 1873) or to establish their own separate burial grounds
(something that the Jewish community in London’s East End had done
as early as 1657).32 In any case, given the dominance of Christianity and
the prevalence of negative perceptions of their religion, it would be
reasonable to suppose that most Muslims in Britain during this period
would have felt discouraged from drawing too much attention to their
religious identity, and lacked sufficient confidence to make claims for
sacral ground.
The case of Earl Stanley of Alderley (1827–1903), Britain’s first Muslim
(albeit hereditary) peer, illuminates the ambivalence and timidity that
could be exhibited in such matters. His conversion to Islam in 1859, in
the context of increasing antipathy towards Muslims and Islam, proved to
be highly controversial and upsetting for his family, and he became
isolated in British establishment circles. The combination of these factors
contributed greatly to his reticence in speaking publicly on Islam or in
expressing overt sympathy for Muslim concerns. While Stanley continued
to show considerable interest in and respect for Christianity, which led

31
Fisher, pp. 47 – 8. Travels of Dean Mahomet was republished as ch. 2 in Fisher (pp. 9 –110).
32
‘History of the English cemetery’; and see also J. S. Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death
(Stroud, 2000), p. 172.

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554 Making Muslim space in Britain

many to hope that he would eventually revert to the faith of his

forefathers, when the end came in 1903 his burial, described as ‘a weird
spectacle’ in the press,33 did not take place in the family vault underneath
the chancel of the Alderley parish church but, ‘In obedience to his
wishes, it was conducted according to the rites of the Mussulman religion’
and an imam from the Turkish embassy was asked to perform the last
rites.34 Indeed, most of the ‘leading’ or prominent converts of this period
do seem to have received Muslim burials in the way that the interment
was conducted – having either specified this in their wills (such as
Abdullah Quilliam) or (presumably) left instructions with their relatives
(such as Lord Headley and Marmaduke Pickthall).
Most Muslim burials of this period drew little public attention. One
burial, however, that did attract considerable popular interest, probably
more for reasons of exotica than anything else, with crowds reportedly
watching the funeral procession, was that of a young Somali woman who
died having contracted tuberculosis. Halimo Adbi Batel had come to
Britain with her husband and child as members of an entire village that
was re-erected at Cartwright Hall in Bradford as part of an exhibition
celebrating the cultures of the world. Her burial in 1904 was the first to
take place in Bradford with Somali women performing full Islamic rites
at the town’s public cemetery in Necropolis Road.35
All the same, despite the general indifference to these sporadic events,
it is possible to trace how, during the late nineteenth century and the
early years of the twentieth, the issue of Muslim burial came to form part
of the wider process of establishing a more distinct community presence
in various British urban spaces. By this time, the Liverpool Muslim
congregation, under the leadership of the prosperous Manx convert
Abdullah Quilliam, had become sufficiently organized to undertake a
number of Muslim burials itself.36 In addition to a handful of converts, a
larger number of born Muslims living or temporarily residing in or near
Liverpool were buried by Quilliam or men linked with him. For example,
in 1891, Bahr Eddris of Cairo, who had been working in the city as a

33
Daily Express, 16 Dec. 1903, p. 5.
34
Macclesfield Courier and Herald, 19 Dec. 1903, p. 6. Much later, Dame Evelyn Cobbold,
another aristocratic convert, on her death in 1963, was buried in a similar fashion on her estate
in Scotland – the imam of the Woking mosque was called up to perform the burial ceremony.
The author is grateful to Jamie Gilham for providing him with material relating to these two
cases, unearthed during his research on British Muslim converts (University of London Ph.D.
thesis, forthcoming).
35
Indeed, the rediscovery of the long-forgotten grave in a Bradford cemetery in 2004
testifies to a distinct Muslim presence in Bradford over 100 years ago, and the subsequent
installation of the specially-carved headstone commemorating the moving religious ceremony
a century earlier symbolizes the enduring place that Bradford’s large Muslim community has
made for itself in the city (see ‘Muslim burial honoured’, The Guardian, 23 June 2004 <http://
www.guardian.co.uk/religion/story/0,,1245345,00.html> [accessed 6 June 2007]).
36
For the history of the Liverpool Muslim community, see Ansari, pp. 82 – 4, 121– 6.

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 555

butler for two years, died and his body was removed to the ‘mosque’ at
Brougham Terrace in West Derby Road, where it was prepared
‘according to Islamic rites and customs’ for burial at the Liverpool Muslim
Institute, the centre of this community. Prayers were said and the body
was taken in a hearse to the Liverpool Necropolis, a public cemetery
established in 1825 in West Derby Road near the institute.37 Eddris was
buried there, ‘with the feet [sic] towards Mecca’, by Ahmad Mohammed
and Syed Mohammed Younas, assisted by Quilliam and another
convert.38 Interestingly, these Liverpool Muslims managed to acquire a
burial plot for Eddris as near as possible to that of those thirty Turks who
had died and been buried in Liverpool in the mid eighteen-fifties, and
the funeral service was read in both Arabic and English.
Still perceived as ‘exotic’ and a threat to the dominant culture,
however, Muslims and their religious beliefs and practices continued to
be publicly opposed and stigmatized at the turn of the twentieth century.
They were at the receiving end of disparaging comments in the press,
often based on misleading and inaccurate information. A case in point was
the funeral in 1893 of a convert, Michael Hall, aged forty-four. He was
taken to the grounds of Garston, a branch of the (freemason) Buffalo
Lodge. Fateha was said in Arabic and English: according to Quilliam, ‘the
people of Garston gazed in silent wonder; we all wore Tarboosh [the
Turkish fez] . . . [while] no attempt was made to molest us or prevent our
performing this important and necessary duty, our proceedings, however,
were not to pass unnoticed or unchallenged’.39 A contemporary report in
the Daily Post declared ominously, ‘This little community in our midst
means business . . . Quilliam, Mahomedan apostle of Liverpool, marched
boldly and to the amazement of a quickly-collected crowd, performed
their peculiar service over the grave’. Asserting that Hall had not
converted to Islam, a claim robustly contradicted with supportive evidence
by Quilliam, the newspaper considered the Muslims’ performing of the
last rites at Hall’s grave as ‘a piece of cool impudence’.40 The response of
this Liverpool Muslim community to these attacks, however, was to
remain resolutely defiant and use these symbolic occasions further to
enhance their specific religio-cultural identity.
At this time, the Liverpool Muslim community was perhaps the most
cohesively and institutionally structured in Britain, and its members were
best placed to lay a claim to belonging to British society and assert their
religious identities. In contrast, the emerging Muslim communities in
South Shields and Cardiff, at least initially, were less prepared, relying

37
Curl, p. 42.
38
Daily Liverpool Post, 3 Apr. 1891 (more accurately, the ritual is to have the body pointing
in the direction of Mecca with the head slightly raised).
39
The Crescent, 28 Jan. 1893, p. 14.
40
The Crescent, 28 Jan. 1893, p. 14.

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556 Making Muslim space in Britain

until later into the twentieth century on ad hoc arrangements for religious
observances to be carried out. In South Shields, for instance, as Richard
Lawless’s research has indicated, there were no full-time imams to lead
congregational prayers, and facilities were available only in lodging houses
to perform the stipulated rituals. For many years, therefore, the periodic
burial ceremonies for Arab seamen who died in the town represented
some of the few public manifestations of the Islamic faith there. Taking
part in the procession to the cemetery and participating in the service held at
the grave were duties in which all Muslims in the local community felt
obliged to participate. The local press, reporting in 1916 on the funeral
of Farah Abdoo, an Arab fireman, described in precise detail the physical
and spiritual rituals conducted by his friends to ensure that his corpse
was prepared for interment ‘in accordance with the observances of the
Mahommedan religion’. The funeral procession to the cemetery was
reportedly ‘a very large one’, and this, together with the rituals in the
cemetery, which included the service (consisting of recitations from
the Quran) conducted by the ‘High Priest’ and the filling of the grave by the
mourners, was undoubtedly a determined demonstration by South Shields
Muslims to assert a collective identity, albeit an embryonic one. According
to the Shields Daily Gazette, ‘the cost of the funeral was equally borne by
members of the Arab colony in South Shields’.41
Funeral ceremonies such as these seem to have been occasions when
tribal and ethnic differences were put aside and bonds were strengthened
between all sections of the Muslim community in the locality. Reporting
on the later funeral in 1935 at the Harton cemetery of Ahmed Saleh, a
South Shields donkeyman, the local press pointed out how ‘Shameri,
Malaiki and Shari – the three great sects among whom the Shields Arabs
are principally divided – sank their tribal jealousies and attended the
funeral in full force’. Indeed, even ‘Darker skinned Somalis and one
or two Indians were included among the crowd at the graveside’. 42 In
this particular case, as Lawless’s work has underlined, ‘practically every
detail connected with the funeral was carried out by the Arabs themselves
with painstaking care and attention’.43
Saleh’s funeral also highlights the extent to which change and
innovation in burial rituals, partly brought about by pragmatic concerns
and practical need, were increasingly incorporated as communities
became more integrated with the customs and traditions of wider society.
For instance, in contrast to Arab traditions, a wooden coffin was used,
and, rather than Saleh’s corpse being carried on a stretcher by mourners,

41
Shields Daily Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, 29 Jan. 1916, p. 3, excerpted in R. Lawless,
From Ta’izz to Tyneside: an Arab Community in the North-East of England during the Early 20th
Century (Exeter, 1995), pp. 209 –10.
42
Shields Daily Gazette, 14 Feb. 1935, p. 5, excerpted in Lawless, pp. 210 –11.
43
Lawless, pp. 211.

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 557

‘five motor cars containing the principal mourners headed the cortege to
the cemetery . . . more than 150 other Arabs walked behind’. Another
unusual feature of the ceremony was the presence of a large number of
white women and of a Christian undertaker, Mr. A. W. Wilson, in his
‘silk-hatted, black frock-coated habit’.44
With the arrival in South Shields in the mid nineteen-thirties of Sheikh
Abdullah al-Hakimi, the Yemeni religious scholar who had a profound
effect on the local Muslim community, Muslim practices there started to
acquire a more precise institutional shape. His religious authority and
expertise helped to rationalize and legitimize ritual change. In effect, his
arrival began a new phase in the ‘Islamization’ of this community. With
the collective organization of religious practices, Muslims in South Shields
not only became more aware of the identity boundaries and values that
separated them from wider society, but also became more obliged to
explore the means by which these values could be sustained. As the
community became better rooted, there was growing awareness that
there were areas central to the maintenance of its Muslim identity over
which it had little control. Given Muslim beliefs regarding death and the
afterlife, one of the issues that demanded urgent attention was that of
organizing the burial of the community’s dead. Thus, as religious practice
acquired greater significance, Muslims in South Shields became increasingly
anxious that burials were conducted meticulously in line with their
traditions. In order to ensure this, it became clear that they needed to be
in charge of their own burial spaces.45
It was in this context that al-Hakimi began negotiating with the city
council, requesting it in 1936 to set aside a part of Harton cemetery for
the exclusive use of the local Muslim community. The request was
approved by the parks and cemeteries committee, but, when the sheikh
asked if the amount of land allocated to them could be doubled in size,
the committee refused and withdrew its original offer. The following
year, the town council again considered the sheikh’s application. Within
the debate that followed, opposition was expressed by some councillors,
but there was also strong support from others who had taken an interest
in Muslim affairs and who had found the town’s Muslim community
‘self-respecting’, ‘law abiding’ and possessing ‘ideals of a very high
religious order’.46 It would seem that they understood well these Muslims’
powerful sense of religious identity, which had partly evolved out of
living together as one, indeed a segregated, community. The councillors
concerned argued that, on the basis of the principle of equity, this small
Muslim population should be entitled to the same rights ‘as we would

44
Lawless, pp. 211.
45
Ansari, pp. 137 –43.
46
Shields Daily Gazette, 9 March 1937, p. 1, excerpted in Lawless, p. 228.

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558 Making Muslim space in Britain

grant to our own’.47 By 1937, therefore, allotment of a Muslim section

had been approved – another step towards making ‘Muslim’ space.
A much better documented example of Muslim place- (and
space-) making in England is the Brookwood cemetery, near Woking
in Surrey.48 The London Necropolis, as the Brookwood cemetery was
originally called, was inaugurated on 13 November 1854, with the aim
of solving London’s burial problem, caused by a persistent lack of land
combined with a rapidly growing population. Indeed, the aim was to
have all London burials take place at Brookwood in perpetuity,49 and, as
The Times declared at the time of its opening, ‘It is fitting enough that
the largest city in the world should have the largest cemetery in the
world’. While catering generously for pauper burials, it provided a secure,
well-maintained place for families to establish their own permanent
monuments – an immortality of sorts. In time, it became a fine example
of landscaping and funerary architecture, a natural habitat and haven for
flora and fauna as well as a pleasing picture of repose: the graves,
according to the London Necropolis and Mausoleum Company (L.N.C.)
brochure, were ‘a mass of glowing bloom’, a veritable ‘Garden of Sleep’. 50
From the turn of the twentieth century, as more and more people from
the empire arrived and settled in Britain, Brookwood slowly assumed an
ethnically and religiously pluralistic character. For Muslims, it became a
particularly special place for the embedding of the Muslim presence in
Britain since it contained the oldest Muslim burial ground in the country,
dating back to the late nineteenth century. This was originally set aside
as a plot reserved for use by the nearby Oriental Institute in Woking. An
ex-colonial official, G. W. Leitner, who had retired from education
service in India and settled in the town, decided to build not only the
Oriental Institute but also, with generous funding from the Begum of
Bhopal, a purpose-built mosque in 1889. He applied to the owners of
Brookwood, the L.N.C., for two allotments, ‘one for Hindoos, the other for

47
Shields Daily Gazette, 9 March 1937, p. 1, excerpted in Lawless, p. 228. Attempts to secure
dedicated burial space for Muslims were also initiated in other British cities as embryonic
Muslim communities emerged. For instance, Mrs. Mary Amirullah, acting on behalf of the
Muslim community in Birmingham, applied for a Muslim burial ground. In 1942, part of the
Lodge cemetery in Selly Oak was allocated for that purpose (see Birmingham City Archives,
minutes of the park committee, Birmingham city council, 6 July 1942).
48
Brookwood cemetery has been recently declared by the home office ‘as a site of extreme
importance . . . as a cultural, historical, and architectural record . . . The site has the potential
to become a World Heritage Site’ (see B. Wilson, ‘Home office: research into cemeteries and
their management, case study 3. Brookwood Cemetery Ltd., private company, English suburbs’
(2002) <http://www.tbcs.org.uk/home_office.htm> [accessed 2 March 2007]).
49
The private act of parliament, which incorporated the London Necropolis and
Mausoleum Company (L.N.C.) and set out the requirements for laying out this cemetery,
received the royal assent in 1852: however, the land owned by Lord Onslow was not acquired
until 1854 (see Clarke, pp. 4, 7).
50
London Necropolis and Mausoleum Company, The London Necropolis (1902), pp. 18 –20.

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 559

Muhammadans’,51 and he agreed to maintain these on certain conditions

at his personal expense.52 The original marker stone survives in the
middle of the allotment, on which is carved a message: ‘Reserved by the
Oriental Institute Woking’. This stone records, in some detail, how
‘Muhammadans’ should be buried in the plot:
The graves of Muhammadans are dug so as to allow the body to lie with its face
towards Mecca (see direction of the Kibla stone). The graves should be 4ft deep
with a side recess at the bottom for the body. Nothing should press on the body
when placed in the recess which is then closed with unburnt bricks. The grave
is then filled with earth and a mound raised over it.
The Qibla stone is about one foot square, with the cardinal compass
points, and an arrow pointing east, carved on it. But there is, as yet, no
evidence to suggest that this plot was used until 1914, when ‘the seal was
affixed to [a] contract reserving the Mahomedan ground in the cemetery
for the exclusive right of interment therein of Mahommadans only, and
also to keep the ground in good order in perpetuity to include trimming
and pruning the shrubs as required’.53 In fact, the only occasion on which
its use was requested before 1914 was when the presidents of two Indian
societies – Anjuman-i-Islam and Akhwan us-Sofa – wrote to Leitner
asking to be allowed to inter ‘in the Mosque ground’ the body of an
Indian Muslim student who had died in London in November 1893. In
the event, due to a series of misunderstandings, this request was not met,
something that caused great distress to the ‘community’ and the ‘relations’
of the deceased, who were consequently ‘put to the trouble and expense’
of having the body conveyed to Liverpool for an Islamic burial, most
probably under Quilliam’s guidance.54
The First World War, however, offered Muslims an opportune
moment for place-making in Britain. If they were prepared to sacrifice their
lives as soldiers for the national cause and the nation’s most cherished
values, then, it might be suggested, they deserved to be honoured and
their ultimate contribution recognized and rewarded. Indeed, it could be
argued, they were showing this commitment and unity of purpose in
fighting against Britain’s enemies who included their co-religionists, the
Ottoman Turks. In many ways, these Muslim soldiers symbolized the
rights and liberties of the British people en masse. Their identification with,
and commitment to, the British war effort was captured in a resolution
proposed by a leading Muslim convert, Lord Headley, seconded by the

51
Minutes of the L.N.C., 8 Oct. 1884, quoted in Clarke, p. 282.
52
Leitner’s letter to the Pall Mall Gazette of 28 Nov. 1893, reproduced in Quilliam’s weekly
periodical, The Crescent, ii (9 Dec. 1893), p. 374 (hereafter ‘Leitner letter’).
53
Woking, Surrey History Centre, minutes of the L.N.C., 23 June 1914.
54
See the presidents’ letter to the Pall Mall Gazette of 24 Nov. 1893, reproduced in The
Crescent, ii (2 Dec. 1893), p. 365, setting out their complaint. See also ‘Leitner letter’, in
response to it.

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560 Making Muslim space in Britain

imam of the Woking mosque, Maulvi Sadr-ud-Din, and unanimously

passed by the British Muslim Society in September 1914. It expressed
‘delight to find that their co-religionists in Islam were . . . carrying into
effect the principles of Islam as inculcated by the holy Prophet
Mohammed . . . freely pouring out their life blood in defence of honour
and for the love of truth and justice’.55 Muslim soldiers, so the argument
went, were entitled to an honourable place in the land for which they
had fought and died. Their inclusion – in culturally appropriate ways –
after death in cemeteries and burial grounds, it was felt, would help to
create a sense of community as well as mark their acceptance as equal
stakeholders in the British national polity.
From the early years of the First World War, with Indian soldiers
fighting on the Western Front, those wounded in France during 1914–16
were treated in special hospitals along the south coast in Brighton and
Brockenhurst. Those who died received burial rites according to their
religion. The first burial in this country of an Indian Muslim soldier who
succumbed to wounds received while serving in France took place in the
Brookwood cemetery in December 1914. Floral tributes were placed on
the coffin by local Muslim converts.56 In 1915 the burial of an Indian
Muslim officer took place. At the request of the imam of the Woking
mosque, the local commanding officer detailed fifty soldiers, headed by
an officer, to attend the funeral in order to pay military honours to this
gallant soldier. Three rounds were discharged and, in a fusion of Muslim
practices with British military traditions, the ‘Last Post’ was sounded by
the bugle boys.57
Rumours, however, arose that Muslim soldiers were not being buried
according to their religious customs. As the Woking Herald stated,
very grievous lies and false reports were being spread by the Germans amongst
the Indian troops as to the manner in which we were dealing with the
Mohammedan wounded and dead; it was of the utmost importance that the
conscientious scruples of Indian troops should be carefully observed and every
consideration given to them.58
To dispel the rumours mentioned by the Woking Herald, the war office
commissioned a special burial ground. Initially Maulvi Sadr-ud-Din was
invited to the Victoria Royal Hospital at Netley, to approve a site for a
Muslim cemetery in the grounds of the institution where Indian
wounded were being nursed. The Maulvi did not like the idea and
suggested Woking instead. His suggestion was accepted and a site along
the bank of a canal on Horsell Common, some 500 yards from his
mosque, was opened. The chairman of the local urban council welcomed
55
Islamic Review, Oct. 1914, p. 421.
56
Islamic Review, Dec. 1914, p. 534.
57
Islamic Review, June 1915, p. 322.
58
Reproduced in the Islamic Review, Dec. 1914, p. 533.

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 561

the Muslim cemetery, describing it as ‘an honour to have men who fell
as a result of the war buried in the district’.59 Designed by an India Office
surveyor and architect, T. H. Winney, and built by a local firm, its arches,
minarets and domed gateway reflected the traditional Indo-Arab
architectural style of the Woking mosque. The burial ground was
completed in 1917 and subsequently received nineteen burials of Indian
army soldiers;60 a further five were received during the Second World
War. The graves were set at an angle to the normal position in a British
cemetery so as to allow the body to lie in the correct direction towards
Mecca. In 1921 the war graves commission took over its upkeep, and,
while the graves were removed in 1968 to the military cemetery at
Brookwood because of occasional vandalism, the burial ground at Horsell
Common, enclosed by walls, still stands as a memorial to the sacrifices
that Muslim soldiers made during the First World War.61
During the inter-war period, the Woking mosque, with its proximity
to London, became arguably the major centre of institutional Islam in
Britain, attracting the attention of the great and the good nationally, and
indeed internationally. Periodic visits by high personages from the Muslim
world reinforced its importance. Leaders of the Muslim community in
Britain based in London were intimately connected with it and contributed
to its wide range of activities. Brookwood cemetery, as their final resting
place, held many attractions. It was the only public cemetery serving
London that possessed a section designated for Muslims and, with the
Woking mosque nearby, a proper Muslim burial could be ensured.
Moreover, it is likely that most of these Muslims hailing from middle to
upper-class backgrounds (especially those who had converted) would
have wanted to be buried in a place that was not only commensurate
with their social status, but which pleasantly harmonized their death with
nature and wider British culture, while also underlining their religious
identities.62
The Brookwood environment, with its dedicated Muslim section,
allowed for the collectivizing and anchoring of their common Muslim
identities in a variety of ways: through the performance of rituals after
their death; through the choice of signs, symbols and markers; and
through the choice of language for the inscription and symbols on the
59
Islamic Review, Dec. 1914, p. 533.
60
‘When a Muslim died while in one of the many Indian hospitals in Brighton and Hove,
his body, in charge of one of his own people, was taken in a motor hearse and with a Muslim
doctor, was sent to Woking, where it was received by a Muslim priest and buried with the
rites of his religion in a special section of the cemetery[.] The funeral would be a military one,
the firing party being supplied by the nearest troops’ (Brighton and Hove Black History <http://
www.black-history.org.uk/woking.asp> [accessed 2 March 2007]).
61
For details regarding the planning, costs and construction of this cemetery, see British
Library India Office and Oriental Collection, India Office Surveyor’s records, IOL/L/Sur/5/
8/8, file on ‘Muslim cemetery, Woking’.
62
Ansari, pp. 127–34.

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562 Making Muslim space in Britain

gravestone which separated them from non-Muslims buried beside them.

Marmaduke Pickthall (1875–1936), who died in Cornwall, and Sir Charles
Hamilton (1876–1939), who died in Sussex, chose to be buried in
Brookwood cemetery for two reasons: first, because they wanted to
ensure that they received the proper Muslim burial necessary, according
to their beliefs, for the transition to life after death to take place; and,
second, because they wanted to affirm publicly their religious affiliation
and commitment to Islam for future generations of British Muslims. 63
Likewise, other prominent individual Muslims in Britain at this time –
both men and women – including Syed Ameer Ali (1846–1928),
Abdullah Quilliam (1856–1932), Lord Headley (1855–1935), Saiyid M. H.
Tirmizey (1896–1939), Madam Khalida Buchanan-Hamilton (d. 1942)
and Clara Sophie Namier (1890–1945), through their desire and decision
to be buried in Brookwood, made a significant contribution to the
history of Muslim place-making and the shaping of Muslim identity in
early twentieth-century Britain.
Since the Second World War, Brookwood cemetery has continued to
contribute, through the expression of the funerary rituals carried out
there, to the construction of Muslim collective memory in a culturally
pluralizing Britain. Its multi-faith character is reflected in the range of
religions represented at the cemetery – Anglican, Catholic, Russian
Orthodox, Swedish Congregational, Zoroastrian, Muslim, Jewish – many
with their own separate sections, as well as in the historically noteworthy
figures from diverse ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds who are
buried there. However, Brookwood also chronicles the diversity that
came to be found within British Islam itself, with its separately dedicated
burial plots for Sunnis, Ithna Ashari, Ismaili and Bohra Shias and, since
1975, Ahmadiyyas.64
The mass migration of Muslims to Britain from the nineteen-sixties
meant that the burial of their dead assumed particular importance.
Brookwood cemetery – because of the non-availability of burial space for
Muslims elsewhere, because of the historical associations of Muslims with
the place, because family or friends might be buried there, because it is a
beautiful site, and because some Muslims do not like being buried on top
of Christians – became a popular final place of rest for Muslims from all
over the country. It is interesting to note that, as burial gave way to
cremation in the Anglican community, Brookwood cemetery, on the
whole, suffered neglect and disrepair. However, its Muslim and Catholic
sections remained well maintained as it was in these parts of the cemetery
that most burials were taking place, and it was these plots that tended to
be visited by relatives and consequently better looked after. Muslim

63
Both were leading British converts of the inter-war decades.
64
Clarke, p. 199.

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 563

concern for the cemetery was further reinforced when its ownership
passed into the hands of Ramadan Guney, a Cypriot Muslim. Guney
became interested initially through his desire to purchase a family plot and
subsequently through his links with the Central London mosque and its
need to identify new burial areas for its worshippers. However, in 1985,
instead of acquiring a portion of the cemetery, he purchased the entire
site. Followings its acquisition, Guney showed considerable enthusiasm
for and commitment towards improving the cemetery’s condition,
clearing overgrown parts and investing heavily in the computerization of
its surviving records, but in the absence of external funding the process
proved to be slow and frustrating.65

In the late nineteen-nineties, the ‘norm’ as far as the majority of Britain’s

Muslim dead was concerned remained the repatriation of bodies to the
places from which the deceased, or their families, had originally migrated.
For many of these Muslims, who arrived in Britain after the Second
World War, Britain did not feel like their ‘homeland’ and so they wanted
to be buried in a place that they perceived to be sacred and where they
believed their roots to lie. Britain, for many of them, was still ‘non-holy’
land and their Muslim places of origin were preferable: ‘It’s best to be
buried in Bangladesh [Pakistan, Turkey and so on and so forth]. It’s our
country, our earth’.66 Enduring ‘myths of return’, combined with the
reluctance of local British people to accept them as equal citizens, made
it difficult for this generation of Muslims to stake a territorial claim.
After all, ‘for a Muslim to feel at home or for a non-Muslim to recognize
a Muslim space’, the presence of ‘normatively enjoined practices’ is
necessary.67 Staking such a claim was made all the harder by the way in
which their dead could be treated with disrespect, with occasional bouts
of desecration of, among other sacral spaces, graves. In many ways,
damaging or destroying ‘memorials’ of this kind – sacral space – can be
seen as attempts to efface a people’s memory. Burial grounds, after all, are
65
Clarke, pp. 35, 37.
66
Quoted in K. Gardner, ‘Death, burial and bereavement amongst Bengali Muslims in
Tower Hamlets, East London’, Jour. Ethnic and Migration Studies, xxiv (1998), 507–22, at
p. 517. According to Gardener (p. 516), Hajji Tasleem, the Muslim undertaker in Tower
Hamlets, London, estimated that between 60 and 70 per cent of Bengali corpses were being
sent back to Bangladesh by their British relatives. Many Muslim corpses, perhaps still the
majority, continue to be sent back from all around the U.K., even from the town of Woking:
in an interview with the author in 2000, the then imam of the Woking mosque, Nisar
Sulaimani, thought that, of the 10–15 Muslim funerals conducted at Brookwood every year,
very few were from the local community. Raja Mohammad Ilyas, until recently one of
Woking’s local councillors, corroborated Sulaimani’s observation in 2006. According to him,
of those Muslims who died annually in Woking and its surrounding areas, only three or four
were likely to be buried at Brookwood, while the majority were still being returned to
Pakistan. However, he also confirmed that the preference for local burial was undoubtedly
increasing.
67
Metcalf, pp. 4 –5.

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564 Making Muslim space in Britain

highly symbolic sites and attacks on them might be viewed as efforts at

‘identicide’.68
However, as the British landscape has become increasingly ‘Islamized’,
with the establishment of mosques and other permanent, bricks and
mortar, Muslim institutions, as the majority of primary kin have become
rooted in Britain, and as Muslim communities have become more
established and more sizeable, there seems to be a shift taking place in
British Muslim perceptions of where ‘home’ is. For an increasing number
of young Muslims, since their relatives and friends live in Britain, the
British element of their identity is, in contrast to their migrant elders,
forming a much more important part of who and what they are, of their
identities. They have developed more complex emotional and cultural
bonds with the country of their birth, and this is reflected in an increase
in the number of families, compared with the past, who are now
choosing to bury their kin in Britain.69 As they do so, they seek suitable
provision for performing the last rites according to Islamic requirements.
They also want to bury their dead in Muslim burial areas that allow for
the correct alignment of graves, for interment at short notice, for burial
in un-coffined shrouds, and for the filling in and mounding of graves by
mourners. While they still encounter bureaucratic, legal, social and
cultural barriers, as well as problems around dying, death and burial (such
as obstacles in securing permission for burial grounds, and delays with
coroners, funeral directors and cemetery managers which hamper the
Muslim preference for speedy burial), it would seem that many relevant
authorities are responding more inclusively and more positively to their
needs and demands.70 This has been particularly the case in localities
where Muslim populations are large enough and sufficiently articulate to

68
Osborne. Indeed, the desecration of Muslim graves in Britain remains an ongoing
problem, with several incidents since the mid 1990s. The most recent well-known instance
took place in Handsworth, Birmingham, after riots there in Nov. 2005, when as many as 45
Muslim graves were smashed and pushed over in a local cemetery and leaflets scattered with
insults against Muslims were placed on graves. Similar ‘outrages’ had taken place after both 9/11
and the Madrid bombings of 2004.
69
Gardner, pp. 507–21. In 2006, Abdul Choudhuri, chairman of the Peterborough
Organization of Muslims, when requesting extra cemetery space, said: ‘Muslims used to take
the deceased back to their homeland, but this is changing. More and more Muslims are living
in Peterborough, and they want to bury their loved ones in their home city.’ Likewise, as Atif
Iqbal, a local resident, recently explained: ‘I was talking to my parents the other day and
they expressed a wish to be buried in their home city [author’s emphasis] of Peterborough.
Being able to be buried in Peterborough will make it more accessible for friends and family
to visit the grave when they wish, instead of having to fly to Pakistan every 10 years or so’
(‘CEMETERY: Search for Muslim burial site in city’ <http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/
ViewArticle.aspx?SectionID=845&ArticleID=1350637> [accessed 6 June 2007] ).
70
M. M. Wolfe, ‘Muslim death in England and constraints encountered’ (paper given at the
third postgraduate conference of the Association of University Departments of Theology and
Religious Studies, June 2000 <http://www.multifaithnet.org/images/content/seminarpapers/
MuslimDeathinEnglandandtheConstraintsEncountered.htm> [accessed 2 March 2007]).

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 Making Muslim space in Britain 565

make their burial needs felt. Thus, the increasing accessibility and
proximity of burial grounds, many situated in neighbourhoods that
families can visit easily and regularly and in which they can look after the
graves of their deceased properly, is playing its part in encouraging the
burial of Muslim dead in Britain.71 Moreover, with the increasing
‘Islamization’ of sections of Britain’s Muslim communities, pressure has
grown to bury people immediately, as stipulated by religious tradition,
rather than to delay the funeral by sending corpses overseas. A further
factor that today discourages repatriation is the belief that embalming,
which is necessary when bodies are sent ‘back home’, may not be
permissible within orthodox Islamic tradition.
In various ways in present-day Britain, therefore, it is clear that
Muslims are increasingly laying claim to, and carving out, more funereal
space for themselves. But, as this article has sought to demonstrate, the
question of their burial is not a completely new, twenty-first century
story. We should not forget those thousands of lascars and other members
of the Muslim poor in nineteenth-century Britain who ended up being
buried in unmarked graves, devoid of individual recognition, and whose
passing contrasted greatly with that of the numerically much smaller
number of elite Muslims (both converts and by birth) who were laid to
rest with dignity, their religious identities acknowledged by wider society.
At the same time, however, the gains of more recent years are linked to
the greater numerical presence of Muslims as well as to the more
structured organizational or institutional framework that Muslims have
established for themselves, together with changing patterns of social status
and standing. After all, as Barbara Metcalf has argued, what happens in
relation to ritual life and expressions of religious belief ‘depends a great
deal on the size and composition of the (individual) Muslim community
(concerned)’.72
An excellent instance of how a Muslim funeral in today’s multicultural
Britain has shed light on the construction of a more nuanced ‘Muslim’
identity is that of Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi, a British Muslim soldier
killed in Afghanistan in 2006. His funeral was attended by 400 people
including his commanding officer and the Muslim chaplain for the armed
forces. His coffin was draped in a gold and green cloth bearing a
quotation from the Koran; his uncle described his nephew as ‘a hero of
Islam, Pakistan, Britain and the international community, who sacrificed
his life for a noble cause’ (echoing similar comments to those made by

71
This said, home office research has revealed that while there are between 21,336 and
23,733 religious burial grounds in England and Wales, just two are specifically Muslim – one
is a leased area within a local authority cemetery, the other is owned by a Muslim charitable
trust (see B. Wilson and J. Robson, Cemeteries and their Management (Home Office Online
Report, 1/04), p. 19 <http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/rdsolr0104.pdf#search> [accessed
2 March 2007]).
72
Metcalf, p. 12.

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566 Making Muslim space in Britain

leading British Muslims during the First World War); his older brother
Zeeshan, a former member of the intelligence corps, said that ‘Jabron was
a committed soldier and a committed Muslim. He was fiercely proud of
his Islamic background and he was equally proud of being British’. 73 But,
while communal markers of death and burial become occasions for
expressing and reaffirming ethnicity and religious identity, they can also
be regarded as steps in the gradual enculturation of ethnic groups. At the
same time, markers of religio-ethnicity are by no means unambiguous. In
cemeteries where different ethnic groups are buried next to each other,
the majority culture and minority cultures tend to incorporate practices
from each other, thereby blurring the boundaries.
Thus, the evolution of Muslim burial practices in Britain demonstrates
how, over a much longer period of time than simply the years of mass
migration after the Second World War, British Muslims have, both
individually and collectively, established – through the construction of
new kinds of relationship to British space – a sense of belonging in a
minority Muslim context. The choice of where to be buried has always
been relatively less problematic for converts since Britain is their and their
forebears’ land, the soil where their ancestors were buried. But, until the
early twentieth century, the most that the vast majority of Muslims in
Britain could hope for was some kind of Muslim funeral ritual delivered
by a co-religionist. The usual place of burial was not then a Muslim
cemetery. Only around the time of the First World War did the option
of a separate dedicated place in which to bury Muslims become available,
but even then this space remained limited. Lack of historical awareness of
this aspect of the British Muslim past means that discussions about Muslim
funereal practices in contemporary Britain tend to focus on the
developments of recent decades. They overlook the extent to which, in
earlier times, generations of Muslims grappled with similar dilemmas of
how to combine being in Britain with being a ‘good’ Muslim. In the
current reworking out of burial practices, it is important not to forget
how Muslims in the past staked their place in Britain.

73
‘Jabron Hashmi, the British Muslim soldier killed fighting the Taliban’, The Guardian, 4
July 2006 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,,1812246,00.html> [accessed 2 March
2007].

© Institute of Historical Research 2007. Historical Research, vol. 80, no. 210 (November 2007)