Quick question: does it make sense to you that an empire which used to run Pakistan, Mesopotamia, and Egypt wouldn't have had a Muslim in the House of Lords until 1988?
Well, you wouldn't think so, and you'd be right. Lord Ahmed, the scourge of Salman Rushdie, is most certainly not Britain's first Muslim peer, no matter what the Evening Standard or the New Statesman may write about him. Plenty of other writers are blowing this, too (in Britain and in America), and it appears Lord Ahmed even believes himself to be Britain's first Muslim peer. If so, he's as wrong as the rest of them. He may be the first Muslim life peer, but he's not the first Muslim to be a member of the House of Lords.
Rowland Allanson-Winn, the 5th Baron Headley, was Britain's first Muslim peer. Al Haj Lord Headley became a Muslim in 1913, and, according to a book I bought and read in Jeddah, he was the President of the British Muslims Society in London and made the haj twice, in 1923 and in 1927. He died in 1935.
I'm just a humble blogger, and I'll tell you, this kind of research really kills me. Between checking my book and running a few online searches, I bet it took me a good fifteen minutes to put some facts together. It's a good thing we have real professionals in the field of journalism. 'Cause, you know, they have editors and fact-checkers and all.
Posted by Craig Ceely at June 24, 2007 08:49 PM