“Heave Half a Brick at Him”: Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Muslim Converts in Late Victorian Liverpool

Abstract

Throughout the existence of the Liverpool Moslem Institute, 1887–1908, there were many incidents of discrimination, intimidation, violence, and other acts of hate directed toward the British converts to Islam. This was particularly evident during the first decade after the group’s founding. The band of Muslims, led by Sheik Abdullah William Henry Quilliam, faced continued opposition, be it disruptions of events and religious services, or violent street fighting. This article explores the incidents of hate and discrimination, the milieu in which they occurred, and the reaction of the Muslim community. A brief comparison to the experience of the contemporaneous American Muslim converts also is presented.

Notes

1. Panikos Panayi, “Anti-immigrant Violence in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Britain”, in Racial Violence in Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, rev. ed., London: Leicester University Press, 1996, pp. 5–6.

2. Ibid., p. 3.

3. For more information concerning anti-Irish violence in Liverpool see, Frank Neal, Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 189–1914, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988.

4. Ron Geaves, Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam, Markfield: Kube Publishing, 2010, p. 65.

5. “Fanatics and Fanaticism”, Crescent, September 8, 1898, pp. 138–139.

6. Jamie Gilham, Loyal Enemies: British Converts to Islam, 1850–1950, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 107.

7. Geaves, Islam in Victorian Britain, op. cit., p. 66.

8. Humayun Ansari, “The Infidel Within”: Muslims in Britain since 1800, London: Hurst & Co., pp. 82–83.

9. John Wolffe, ed., Religion in Victorian Britain, Vol. V, Culture and Empire, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997, p. 346. Reprinted from “Moslemism in Liverpool”, Liverpool Review, November 28, 1891, p. 14.

10. “How Our Late Sister Fatima E. Cates Became a Muslim”, Crescent, November 21, 1900, p. 324.

11. “Brother J. Ali Hamilton”, Crescent, December 20, 1899, pp. 388–389.

12. “Death of Sister Fatima Elizabeth Cates”, Crescent, November 7, 1900, p. 298.

13. “Late Sister Fatima E. Cates”, op. cit., p. 323–324.

14. “Death of the Vice-President of the Liverpool Muslim Institute”, Crescent, September 2, 1903, p. 156.

15. “A Short History of the Progress of Islam in England”, Crescent, January 19, 1898, p. 35.

16. John J. Pool, Studies in Mohammedanism, Historical and Doctrinal with a Chapter on Islam in England, Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1892, p. 400.

17. “Progress of Islam in England”, op. cit., p. 35.

18. Quoted in Religion in Victorian Britain, op. cit., p. 347.

19. “Progress of Islam in England”, op. cit., p. 35.

20. “Our Editorial Notes”, Crescent, April 1, 1893, p. 84.

21. “Muhammadans in England”, Crescent, December 30, 1893, p. 397; “Editorial Notes”, Crescent, December 30, 1893, p. 395.

22. “Islam in England”, Islamic World, April 1894, pp. 3–4.

23. “Scandalous Outrage at the Mosque”, Crescent, November 11, 1893, pp. 340–343; “Religious Rowdyism”, Islamic World, November 1893, pp. 26–27.

24. “Scandalous Outrage at the Mosque”, op. cit., p. 340.

25. “Islam in Liverpool”, Islamic World, June 1894, pp. 40–41.

26. “Snowballing the Muezzin”, Crescent, January 23, 1895, p. 27; “The Snowballing of the Muezzin”, Crescent, January 16, 1895, p. 19; “Snowballing the Muezzin”, Crescent, January 30, 1895, p. 34.

27. “Astonishing the Armenian Agitators”, Crescent, May 29, 1895, pp. 172–175.

28. Geaves, Islam in Victorian Britain, op. cit., p. 65.

29. “Another Outrage at the Mosque”, Crescent, October 23, 1895, p. 267.

30. “Anniversary of the Sultan’s Accession”, Crescent, September 8, 1897, pp. 563–567.

31. “Extraordinary Incident”, Crescent, September 29, 1897, p. 604; “The Extraordinary occurrence at the Debating Society”, Crescent, September 29, 1897, p. 620.

32. “The Latest Christian Trick”, Crescent, September 15, 1897, pp. 579–580.

33. “Annual Meeting of the Liverpool Muslim Institute”, Crescent, June 29, 1898, p. 406.

34. “Latest Christian Trick”, op. cit., pp. 579–580.

35. Brent D. Singleton, “Minarets in Dixie: Proposals to Introduce Islam in the American South”, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2006, pp. 440–443.

36. Brent D. Singleton, ed., Yankee Muslim: The Asian Travels of Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb, Rockville, MD: Wildside Press, 2007, p. 38.

37. “Islam is Preached”, Chicago Tribune, September 21, 1893, p. 9.

38. “[Cartoons]”, Chicago Tribune, September 24, 1893, p. 1.

39. “Mahometanism and Woman”, New York Daily Tribune, December 18, 1893, p. 5. For more information concerning the disturbances, see Brent D. Singleton, “Brothers at Odds: Rival Islamic Movements in Late Nineteenth Century New York”, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 3, 2007, pp. 476–477.

40. “Davidyan Against Nabakoff”, Evening Sun, January 1, 1894, p. 5.

41. “Conflict of Two Religious Sects”, Chicago Daily Tribune, January 8, 1894, p. 1.

42. “Mohammed a Bone of Contention”, New York Times, January 22, 1894, p. 5.

43. “Six Polygamists Shut Out”, New York Times, November 18, 1897, p. 11; “Six Mohammedans Deported”, Atlanta Constitution, November 19, 1897, p. 1. The Syrians were: Ali Assail, Abdullah Mohamed, Ahmed Ali, Ali Mohamed, Abdullah Ahmed, Abdullah Hassan, and Ali Hassan. “[News Notes]”, Crescent, January 19, 1898, p. 42.

44. Gilham, Loyal Enemies, op. cit., p. 108. For a further examination of the marketplace for Islamic ideas in late nineteenth-century America, see, Patrick D. Bowen, A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Volume 1: White American Muslims before 1975, Leiden: Brill, 2015.

45. “Annual Meeting of the Liverpool Muslim Institute”, op. cit., p. 406.

46. “Christian Courtesies”, Crescent, November 16, 1898, p. 299.

47. Gilham, Loyal Enemies, op. cit., p. 111.

48. “How a Christian Female Visited the Liverpool Mosque”, Crescent, February 28, 1900, p. 137. The account is related as a poem.

49. “Celebrating the Courban Bairam at Liverpool”, Crescent, March 26, 1902, p. 195.

50. “[News Notes]”, Crescent, May 31, 1905, p. 346.

51. “[News Notes]”, Crescent, January 4, 1905, p. 10.

52. “Editorial Notes”, Crescent, September 6, 1905, p. 153.

53. Quoted from Gilham, Loyal Enemies, op. cit., p. 111.