Pickthall and the British Muslim Convert COMMUNITY 63
occasion, and, at any rate, to manage somehow to say the full number
of their prayers each day, and to remember in their prayers the Muslim
Empire.71But, to the surprise of many British Muslims, by the time the article was pub-
lished at the end of the year, Pickthall had left England for India. Disillusioned
with the Peace Conference and desperately in need of regular paid work, he
had accepted editorship of the nationalist newspaper, the Bombay Chronicle.
Émigré and Twilight Years
Pickthall’s new job and life in India kept him extremely busy. His contribu-
tions to the Islamic Review inevitably declined, with just one “Friday Sermon”
published in 1921. Reflecting on India and his involvement in the Khilafat and
Non-cooperation Movements,72 he argued in the sermon that: “The East was
all disintegrated when the Europeans came there. It is now united. It had no
general consciousness, no common conscience or public opinion. Now it has
both. It was asleep, and it is now awake”.73 However, many British Muslims pri-
vately disagreed with Pickthall in relation to India. For Headley:
the [Indian] administration has been conductive to peace and commer-
cial prosperity. Most of the Indian Muslims with whom I am acquainted
realise that without such a rule there would speedily ensue a condition
of internal strife and disorder. [...] Mistakes there may have been, but
where, in the whole of this world of inequalities and enigmas, can we
point to a condition of affairs which is independent of, or above, human
error? [...] At present let us be thankful that we belong to a great Empire
of which we have no reason to feel in any way ashamed.74Although he was absent from Britain for long spells, Pickthall was not forgot-
ten: his old friend, Arthur Field, chose Pickthall’s recently-published novel,
The Early Hours, as the first book in a series of reviews for the Islamic Review
in 1921.75 Some British Muslims certainly read his novels: Cobbold had copies
71 Marmaduke Pickthall, “Fasting in Islam”, irmi 8, 12 (1920), 459–60.
72 See Fremantle, Loyal Enemy, Chapter 10.
73 Marmaduke Pickthall, “Conception of God in Islam”, ir 9, 1 (1921), 15.
74 Lord Headley, “The Yoke of a Foreign Power”, The Light 6, 12 (1927), 7.
75 Arthur Field, “Review”, ir 9, 6–7 (1921), 262–4.