Islam in the United Kingdom is about the development of Islam in the United Kingdom since its formation in 1707.Though Islam was not legalized until the Trinitarian Act in 1812, Muslims were present prior to this. Today Islam is the second largest religion in all four countries of the UK with some estimates suggesting a total Muslim population of 2.4 million, due, in part, to immigration from former colonies from the 1950s.[3] The growing numbers of Muslims has resulted in the establishment of more than 1500 mosques of which about 50-60% are affiliated with the Deobandi school of thought.There are a number of UK-wide Islamic organisations, including; the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association UK, the Islamic Society of Britain, the Muslim Council of Britain, the United Kingdom Islamic Mission (UKIM), the Sufi Muslim Council, the Mosques & Imams National Advisory Board, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain and the Muslim Educational Trust.The vast majority of Muslims in the UK live in England and Wales: of 1,591,000 Muslims recorded at the 2001 Census, 1,536,015 were living in England and Wales,where they form 3% of the population; 42,557 were living in Scotland, forming 0.84% of the population and 1,943 were living in Northern Ireland.
Although Islam is generally thought of as being a recent arrival in England, there has been contact between the English and Muslims for many centuries. An early example would be the decision of Offa, the eighth-century King of Mercia (one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms existing at that time), to have a coin minted with an Islamic inscription – largely a copy of coins issued by the contemporary Muslim ruler, Caliph Al-Mansur. It is thought that they may have been minted simply for prestige or to facilitate trade with the expanding Islamic empire in Spain, as Islamic gold dinars were the most important coinage in the Mediterranean at the time. Offa’s coin looked enough like the original that it would be readily accepted in southern Europe, while at the same time his own name was clearly visible.References to Britain are also found in early Islamic geographical literature, such as the 9th century work of Ahmad ibn Rustah (d. 910) which describes the islands of “Bratiniya”.Muslim scholarship, especially early Islamic philosophy and Islamic science, was well-known through Latin translation among the learned in England by 1386, when Geoffrey Chaucer was writing. In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, there is among the pilgrims wending their way to Canterbury, a ‘Doctour of Phisyk’ whose learning included Rhazes (Al-Razi), Avicenna (Ibn Sina, Arabic ??? ????) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, Arabic ??? ???). In the Pardoner’s Tale, Chaucer mentions part Avicenna’s work concerning poisons. Avicenna’s The Canon of Medicine (1025), in Latin translation, was a standard text for medical students up until the 18th century.Roger Bacon, one of the earliest European advocates of the scientific method, was inspired by the works of early Muslim scientists. In particular, his work on optics in the 13th century was largely based on the Book of Optics (1021) by Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen).
Professor John Makdisi’s “The Islamic Origins of the Common Law” in the North Carolina Law Review,suggested that English common law was inspired by medieval Islamic law.[11] Makdisi drew comparisons between the “royal English contract protected by the action of debt” and the “Islamic Aqd”, the “English assize of novel disseisin” and the “Islamic Istihqaq”, and the “English jury” and the “Islamic Lafif” in the classical Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, and argued that these institutions were transmitted to England by the Normans, “through the close connection between the Norman kingdoms of Roger II in Sicily — ruling over a conquered Islamic administration — and Henry II in England.” Makdisi also argued that the “law schools known as Inns of Court” in England (which he asserts are parallel to Madrasahs) may have also originated from Islamic law.He states that the methodology of legal precedent and reasoning by analogy (Qiyas) are also similar in both the Islamic and common law systems.Other legal scholars such as Monica Gaudiosi, Gamal Moursi Badr and A. Hudson have argued that the English trust and agency institutions, which were introduced by Crusaders, may have been adapted from the Islamic Waqf and Hawala institutions they came across in the Middle East.Dr. Paul Brand also notes parallels between the Waqf and the trusts used to establish Merton College by Walter de Merton, who had connections with the Knights Templar, but Brand also points out that the Knights Templar were primarily concerned with fighting the Muslims rather than learning from them, making it less likely that they had knowledge of Muslim legal institutions.The conventional view sees English law as deriving from Anglo-Saxon law of many centuries earlier.
The first English convert to Islam mentioned by name is John Nelson. 16th century writer Richard Hakluyt claimed he was forced to convert, though he mentions in the same story other Englishmen who had converted willingly.This king had a son which was a ruler in an island called Gerbi, whereunto arrived an English ship called the Green Dragon, of the which was master one M. Blonket, who, having a very unhappy boy on that ship, and understanding that whosoever would turn Turk should be well entertained of the a yeoman of our Queen’s guard, whom the king’s son had enforced to turn Turk; his name was John Nelson.Portrait of Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, a Moorish ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I in 1600. Captain John Ward of Kent was one of a number of British sailors who became pirates based in the Maghreb who also converted to Islam (see also Barbary pirates). Later, some Unitarians became interested in the faith, and Henry Stubbes wrote so favourably about Islam that it is thought he too had converted to the faith.From 1609 to 1616, England lost 466 ships to Barbary pirates, who sold the passengers into slavery in North Africa.In 1625, it was reported that Lundy, an island in the Bristol Channel which had been a pirate lair for much of the previous half century, had been occupied by three Turkish pirates who were threatening to burn Ilfracombe; Algerine rovers were using the island as a base in 1635, although the island had itself been attacked and plundered by a Spanish raid in 1633.[20] Around 1645, Barbary pirates under command of the Dutch renegade Jan Janszoon operating from the Moroccon port of Salé occupied Lundy, before he was expelled by the Penn. During this time there were reports of captured slaves being sent to Algiers and of the Islamic flag flying over Lundy.The Muslim Moors had a noticeable influence on the works of George Peele and William Shakespeare. Some of their works featured Moorish characters, such as Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus and Othello, which featured a Moorish Othello as its title character. These works are said to have been inspired by several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England around 1600. A portrait was painted of one of the Moorish ambassadors, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, who had come to promote an Anglo-Moroccan alliance.Turbans can be found in Renaissance England. While friendly relations were formed between health clinics and bowtrol colon cleanse use in England and the Islamic civilization of the Middle East in the early sixteenth century, Persian and Turkish style fashions were sometimes worn by the higher classes as a form of a skin health with revitol hair removal cream and a party or fancy dress. During times of interaction with Istanbul, Queen Elizabeth I of England wore Turkish clothing styles.[citation needed] It was believed that she favoured working with the Islamic sultans of Istanbul rather than the Roman Catholic leaders of Europe. These suspicions were heightened when she asked Sultan Murad III and his son Mohammad III for military assistance. Although she never did receive any assistance from the sultans, her relations with the Sultan and his son did not waver.In 17th-century England, there was a ‘second wave’ of interest in the study of Arabic science and Islamic philosophy. Arabic manuscripts were considered the key to a ‘treasure house’ of ancient knowledge, which led to the founding of Arabic chairs at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, where Arabic was taught. A large collection of Arabic manuscripts were acquired, collected in places such as the Bodleian Library at Oxford. These Arabic manuscripts were sought after by natural philosophers for their research in subjects such as observational astronomy or mathematics, and also encompassed subjects ranging from science, religion, and medicine, to typography and garden plants.Besides scientific and philosophical save marriage literature, works of Arabic fictional literature were also translated into Latin and English during the 17th and 18th centuries. The most famous of these was the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which was first translated into English in 1706 and has since then had a profound influence on English literature. Another famous work was Ibn Tufail’s philosophical novelHayy ibn Yaqdhan, which was translated into Latin as Philosophus Autodidactus by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671 and then into English by Simon Ockley in 1708. The English translation of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, set on a desert island, may have inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, considered the first novel in English, in 1719.Later translated literary works include Layla and Majnun and Ibn al-Nafis’ Theologus Autodidactus.By the time of Union with Scotland in 1707, only small numbers of Muslims were living in England. The first large group of Muslims to arrive, in the 18th century, were lascars (sailors) recruited from the Indian subcontinent (largely from the Bengal region) to work for the British East India Company, most of whom settled down and took local wives.Due to the majority being lascars, the earliest Muslim communities were found in port towns. Naval cooks also came, many of them from the Sylhet Division of what is now Bangladesh. One of the most famous early Bengali Muslim immigrants to England was Sake Dean Mahomet, a captain of the British East India Company who in 1810 founded London’s first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostane Coffee House. He is also reputed for introducing shampoo and therapeutic massage to the United Kingdom.The practice of Islam in the United Kingdom was legalized by the Trinitarian Act 1812.