Winston Churchill’s Putative Conversion to Islam (Part 2)

Part 1 is here.

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT [1840-1922]

Let us now turn to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who dressed up in “Arab clothes” with Churchill. It is a bit of stretch to go from dressing up in Arab clothes to converting to Islam. What exactly are “Arab clothes”? Not all Arabs are Muslims. There are Christian Arabs, and do not Jews, Berbers, Druses, Yazidis, Mandaeans, in the Middle East wear similar “Arab clothes”? Does wearing such clothes lead inexorably to conversion to the religion of any number of religions of the Middle East?

As for Mr Blunt, he realized that he had romanticized the so-called Muslim reformers, and he sees no hope for a “modernized Islam”. Here is an extract from his celebrated diary,

“Since then I have been resting, except that on the 20th I went into Cairo and lunched with Gorst, and at his suggestion drew up a memorandum in writing for him of the circumstances of my journey. There have been two political events during my absence, the war in Crete and Rodd’s mission to Abyssinia. I hardly know what to say yet on either case. Personally I have come back from my journey with my mind cleared on one point important to my life. It is as to religion. My experience of the Senussia at Siwah has convinced me that there is no hope anywhere to be found in Islam. I had made myself a romance about these reformers, but I see that it has no substantial basis, and I shall never go farther now than I am in the Mohammedan direction. The less religion in the world, perhaps, after all, the better.”^[23] No desire for conversion on Blunt’s part.

According to his biographer, Elisabeth Longford,^[24] Blunt was an atheist in his later days.

The Independent article continues, “’Churchill never seriously considered converting,’ Dr Dockter told The Independent. ‘He was more or less an atheist by this time anyway. He did however have a fascination with Islamic culture which was common among Victorians.’”

WHAT FASCINATION WITH ISLAM AND THE ORIENT?

What is Dr Dockter’s evidence for Churchill’s putative fascination with Islamic culture? In the literally thousands of pages I have now read by and on Churchill, there is no sign whatsoever of such a fascination. The first time he encountered Islam and Islamic culture was in the NW Frontier in India. There he did not have a favourable impression of Muslims and their culture. The second time he encountered them was in The Sudan, where he was equally critical of “Mohammedan culture”. So where and when did he acquire this supposed “fascination” with all things Islamic?

Love of the Orient? Here is Churchill’s opinion of the Turks: First, some background: In Spring 1897, The Greeks had sent an expeditionary force to fight rebellious Turks on the island of Crete. The British Mediterranean fleet, joining those of five other nations, was blockading the island to prevent the landing of Greek reinforcements. Churchill was furious, “What an atrocious crime the Government have committed in Crete! That British warships should lead the way in protecting the blood bespattered Turkish soldiery from the struggles of their victims is horrible to contemplate.”[25] His mother argued that The Concert of Europe was obliged to act as they did although they certainly were slow in making up their minds. Churchill was not convinced, “We were doing a very wicked thing in firing on the Cretan insurgents & in blockading Greece so that she cannot succour them.”[26] He thought it was all a devious plot to help the Turks and thereby deny Constantinople to the Russians: “The Turkish Empire he is determined to maintain. He does not care a row of buttons for the sufferings of those who are oppressed by that Empire. This is not only wrong but foolish. It is wrong because it is unjustifiable to kill people who are not attacking you- because their continued existence is inconvenient: and because it is an abominable action, which prolongs the servitude under the Turks of the Christian races. It is foolish because, as surely as night follows day – the Russians are bound to get Constantinople. We could never stop them even if we wished. Nor ought we to wish for anything that could impede the expulsion from Europe of the filthy Oriental.”[27]

It is clear where Churchill’s allegiances lie: Western civilization. “Filthy Oriental”: there is no respect or fascination of the Orient here.

CHARLES MONTAGU DOUGHTY [1843-1926]

And what Victorians did Dr Dockter have in mind? One Victorian explorer who travelled in Arabia, was Charles Montagu Doughty, whose two volumed account of his journeys, Travels in Arabia Deserta came out in 1888, and was republished in 1921 with an introduction by T.E. Lawrence [Lawrence of Arabia]. Doughty, though he did encounter some kindness and hospitality (but not always) is less than enthusiastic about Arabs and Islamic culture that he witnessed in 1876. If you can bear his Biblical or perhaps Pseudo-Biblical language, extravagant and mannered style, with an admixture of Elizabethanisms and Victorianisms, and his inordinate  fondness for exclamation marks, here are some of his observations:

ARABS: SUPINE AND RUDE.

“All the khurbets or ruined sites of this country are in the infirm heads of the Arabs, too supine and rude to cast a sum of them, ’three hundred and sixty’; a round number of theirs, where they have one for every day in the year” ^[28]

“There are fainting ones left behind in every years’ pilgrimage; men of an old fibre and ill-complexion, their hope was in Ullah [Allah], but they living by the long way only of unwilling men’s alms, cannot achieve this extreme journey to Mecca. The fallen man, advanced in years, had never perhaps eaten his fill, in the Haj, and above two hundred miles were passed under his soles since Muzeyrîb.^[29] How great is that yearly suffering and sacrifice of human flesh, and all lost labour, for a vain opinion, a little salt of science would dissolve all their religion!”^[30]

NO ORIENTALISM FOR CHARLES M. DOUGHTY 

“The sour Waháby fanaticism has in these days cruddled the hearts of the nomads, but every Beduin tent is sanctuary in the land of Ishmael (so there be not in it some cursed Jael ^[31]). If the outlandish person come alone to strange nomad booths, let him approach boldly, and they will receive him. It is much of they heard of thee any good report; and all the Arabs are at the beginning appeased with fair words. The oases villages are more dangerous; Beduin colonies at first, they have corrupted the ancient tradition of the desert; their souls are canker-weed beds of fanaticism.- As for me who write, I pray that nothing be looked for in this book but the seeing of an hungry man and the telling of a most weary man; for the rest the sun made me an Arab, but never warped me to Orientalism.”^[32]

CONTEMPT FOR REASON IN RELIGIONS. DUNG THROWN ON PROPHET MOHAMMED’S SEPULCHRE, FOLLOWED BY A LYNCHING.

“Oh what contempt in religions for the human reason! But it is a wonder to hear these poor foreigners, how they mouthe [sic] it, to say their prayer in the canonical strange speech, and only their clerkish men tell what! … Sometimes at Medina there had befallen certain imprudent and embittered Persians an extreme and incredible mischief; this is when they would spitefully defile Mohammed’s sepulchre, in covertly letting fall dung upon it; yet not so privily but they were espied by Argus-eyed sunnîs. Mahmûd at Maan, yearly wont to ride with the Haj soldiery, had three years before my coming thither seen such an hap at Medina. The denounced wretch was haled forth to the raging execrations of the fanatic hajjàj. The sunnî multitude condemned him to die in hell torments; there was fetched-to and heaped timber, and the fire kindled they thrust him in; and said Mahmûd, with a sigh of vengeance satisfied, ‘we burned him the cursed one.’ ”^[33]

This article is the epilogue of Ibn Warraq’s new book on Churchill and Islam. The quote given by Hugh Fitzgerald forms the Frontispiece to the book, and within the book itself there is a careful examination of the quote and why it is so important.

[23] W.S. Blunt, My Diaries, Vol. 1, New York: A.A.Knopf, 1921, p.276.

[24] Elizabeth Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979, pp. 120–122, 132 and 235–237.

[25] Randolph S. Churchill, WSC, Companion Vol. II, Part 1 1901-1907, p.734.

[26] Ibid.,p. 750.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Charles M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, Vol I, New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1979 [Ist Edn., 1888], p.60.

[29] Muzeyrîb, assembly place of the Syrian Hâj Caravan nigh forty miles S. of Damascus.

[30] Charles M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, Vol I, p.92.

[31] Biblical reference: Book of Judges, 5, 24-26:

Most blessed of women be Jael,

the wife of Heber the Kenite,

most blessed of tent-dwelling women.

He asked for water, and she gave him milk;

in a bowl fit for nobles she brought him curdled milk.

Her hand reached for the tent peg,

her right hand for the workman’s hammer.

She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,

she shattered and pierced his temple.

[32] Charles M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, Vol I, p.95.

[33] Ibid., p .108.