A 1907 letter discovered by a University of Cambridge researcher suggests that Winston Churchill – who served in the army in India in the late 1890s – may have considered converting to Islam after being exposed to the religion during his military service. The letter was written by Lady Gwendoline Bertie, Churchill’s sister-in-law, who urged him to rein in his enthusiasm for Islam. The letter was discovered by researcher Warren Dockter, while working on his forthcoming book, “Winston Churchill and the Islamic World”, a report said on 29 December.
The Sunday Telegraph quotes Lady Gwendoline’s letter to Churchill as stating, “Please don’t become converted to Islam; I have noticed in your disposition a tendency to orientalise [fascination with the Orient and Islam], Pasha-like tendencies, I really have.” She adds, “If you come into contact with Islam your conversion might be effected with greater ease than you might have supposed, call of the blood, don’t you know what I mean, do fight against it.”
According to Dockter, not only did Churchill appear to regard Islam and Christianity as equals, he also admired the military prowess and history of expansion of the Ottoman Empire. The newspaper noted that in October 1940, Churchill approved plans to build a mosque in central London and set aside £100,000 for the project, which became the London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park.
PALESTINIANS JOIN WAR CRIMES COURT
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed on to 20 international agreements on 31 December, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a day after a bid for independence by 2017 failed at the United Nations Security Council. The move paves the way for the court to take jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestinian lands and investigate the conduct of Israeli and Palestinian leaders over more than a decade of bloody conflict.
Under the ICC rules, Palestinian membership would allow the Hague-based court to exercise jurisdiction over war crimes committed by anyone on Palestinian territory, without a referral from the U.N. Security Council. Israel is not a party to the Rome statute but its citizens could be tried for actions taken on Palestinian land.
GAZANS RALLY FOR RELEASE OF DETAINED RELATIVES IN ISRAEL
Dozens of Palestinians demonstrated in the Gaza Strip on 29 December to call for the release of their detained relatives from Israeli jails. Protesters raised photos of their detained relatives and chanted slogans calling for rights groups to secure the release of their relatives from Israeli prisons.
On Sunday, Israeli authorities cancelled out family visits – scheduled for Monday morning – to Palestinian prisoners at the southern Nafha jail. The authorities notified the ICRC, which coordinates the visits of the relatives of the Palestinian prisoners, that the relatives of the prisoners would not be able to visit them on Monday, an ICRC spokesperson said.
BOSNIAN MUSLIMS IN SAREJEVO ENTER 2015 WITH QURAN RECITALS
The United Islamic Assembly organised a Qur’ān recital at the Cekrekci Muslihudin Mosque and great interest was shown by the Sarajevo Muslim community. The mosque muezzin Bilal Efendic said that each year a Qur’ān recital night was organised for the last night of the year and that the youth came together at the mosque in celebration of this. Efendic said that during the event 30 youths who are hafiz – those who have committed the entire Qur’ān to memory – read from the Qur’ān until late night. Many hymns were also sung as part of the event.
Organised each year, the programme opened with a ceremony at the Bascarsi Mosque. Mevlud programmes, where hymns and poetry are recited in honour of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him), book launches and Islamic song concerts are also part of the programme, which will continue until the 23rd January.
MILF LAUNCHES POLITICAL PARTY IN PHILIPPINES
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is converting itself into a political party to be able to take part in elections in the envisioned Bangsamoro government. It has sought accreditation from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for the new United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP) to field candidates for local positions. On 24 December, thousands of MILF supporters converged at Camp Darapanan in this province in a show of force and to highlight the launching of UBJP.
Sammy Al-Mansour, UBJP secretary-general, said the gathering of “volunteers” at Camp Darapanan is an initial decentralization stride meant to organize community-based partisan blocs to help educate the public on their party’s peace and development objectives.
MUSLIMS TO PROTEST ANTI-ISLAM GROUP IN GERMANY
At least 13 non-governmental organisations of Muslim and ethnic-Turkish immigrants in Germany on 1 January announced their joint decision to protest against the right-wing populist PEGIDA movement. “We are calling on all citizens to join demonstration in Cologne on 5 January and take a stance against racism, xenophobia, hatred against foreigners and hostility against Islam,” the organisations said in a joint statement. “We will support all democratic initiatives and allies that oppose PEGIDA and other groups inspired by it,” the statement added.
Germany’s Muslim Coordination Council, a platform of four large Muslim organisations in the country, signed the joint statement along with associations representing Turkish-German businessmen, TUMSIAD and MUSIAD-NRW.
EGYPT POLICE ARREST 477 BROTHERHOOD MEMBERS IN 12 DAYS
Egyptian security forces have detained 477 members of the Muslim Brotherhood in security swoops in the past 12 days, a report said on 29 December. Since last year’s ouster of elected President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s military-backed government has waged a relentless crackdown on political dissent – largely targeting Morsi supporters – which has seen hundreds killed and thousands detained.
Last year, Egyptian authorities designated the decades-old Brotherhood, the group from which Morsi hails, a “terrorist” organization, blaming it for a spate of deadly attacks on security officials in the country. The Brotherhood denies the allegations, saying that it is committed to peaceful activism.
BJI LEADER SENTENCED TO DEATH
A leader in the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party has been sentenced to death on 30 December for alleged crimes against humanity committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence. ATM Azharul Islam, who was the party’s assistant secretary general until his arrest in 2012, was found guilty of five of the six charges against him. The sentence was handed by the “International Crimes Tribunal”, a domestic court investigating war crimes committed in the 1971 war.
This was the 15th verdict given by the tribunal. Seven of those found guilty were from BJI leaders and two were former BJI leaders. Two others sentenced were from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and one was a former minister from the Jatiya Party, which is in the current ruling coalition.
A MOSQUE OPENED IN SIBERIA
The Tulip Mosque (Lala Tulpan) in Siberia has opened for worship in Ufa, the capital of Baskurtistan and is attracting attention with its unique architecture, which is under snow for most of the year, a report said on 1 January. The Tulip mosque in Russia’s Siberia is attracting attention and adding vitality to the city that is near the North Pole. The mosque which had begun construction in 1989 during the Soviet era overcame many obstacles to be built. The mosque has been named the Tulip mosque because of its uniquely tulip shaped minarets.
ESSEBSI SWORN IN AS TUNISIA’S PRESIDENT
Beji Caid Essebsi on 31 December took the constitutional oath as Tunisia’s first democratically-elected President following a 2011 revolution that ousted autocrat Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Essebsi, who served as a parliament speaker under Ben Ali, defeated incumbent interim President Moncef Marzouki in the presidential runoff on 21 December. The new president is due to start his official tenure on 14 January. But the return of a former Ben Ali old guard stalwarts like Essebsi has worried opponents.