On the basis of fresh documents, the paper deals with the Dutch convert to Islam Mohammed Ali van Beetem (d. 1938), who travelled to Egypt in 1934 and established ties with Muslim reformists, such as Muhhib al-Din al-Khatib (1886–1969). It sheds new light on Van Beetem’s leading role among Indonesian communities in the Netherlands, his conversion to Islam, his attempts to establish a mosque and a Muslim graveyard in The Hague, his relations with Muslim reformists, and participation in the first European Muslim Congress in Geneva under the auspices of the Druze Prince Shakib Arslan in 1935.
The chapter investigates the new religious life of a few well-known British converts to Islam in the interwar period; and how they practiced and defended their new faith in their colonial "secularized" state. In their eagerness to spread Islam in Europe, British converts swung between two social and religious groups at the height of European imperialism and modernism. How far can we categorize their writings as "apologetics" for Islam in the land of the colonizers? In what way did they attempt to combine their new Islamic beliefs with their background as Europeans? The chapter discusses some of the issues which they raised in response to the public debates on Islam in Britain, especially about questions related to the Caliphate, pan-Islam, colonialism, atheism and the position of women in Islam.
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