Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive Initiative

Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive Initiative (EMHAI) was established in 2013 to create an archive collection to document and preserve the lived experience of Muslims in the UK.

The archive collection is an ever-expanding collection of video and audio recordings of oral history interviews from Muslims of diverse ethnic backgrounds across the UK. Alongside a wide-ranging depository of approximately 2000 digitised documents and photographs, that provide both a historical and contemporary narrative of the everyday lives and diversity of the UK's Muslim community.

Additionally, the collection contains video footage of conferences, presentations and other events curated by the EMHAI team.

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Iqbal Geoffrey

Iqbal Geoffrey was a man of Pakistani origin who travelled to London after being accepted as a legal professional in...

Bahadur Sher

Bahadur Sher was born in Northern Pakistan in 1930 and arrived in the UK in 1961 with the aspiration to...

Gladys Milton Palmer

Gladys Milton Palmer was a well known and respected British socialite and heiress who converted to the religion of Islam...

Khurshid Ahmed

Khurshid Ahmed was a member of the Pakistan navy and in 1964, he arrived in the UK as part of...

Altab Ali Park

Altab Ali Park can be found on the intersection of Adler Street, White Church Lane and Whitechapel Road. This green...

Chanan and the Goat

Chanan was born in 1926 in a village near Hoshiarpur. His family owned and farmed the land. He was the...

Caxton Hall

Caxton Hall is a location in which many momentous events occurred, including the assassination of Sir Michael O'Dwyer, the campaign...

EMBS was founded in 1988 as a self-help business service for racialised minority groups in Oxford. One of its founders...

Balliol College

In trying to identify some of the earliest Muslim students to matriculate at the University after the enactment of the...

Founded in 1921, City of Oxford Motor Services Limited was an important site of employment in the 1950s and 1960s...

Al Shami

Al Shami restaurant was the site of Oxford's first halal butchers, and was established in the 1960s. Prior to its...

Trinity College

Brothers Wasif Ali and Naseer Ali Mirza became the first racialised minority and Indian students to be enrolled at Trinity...

Somerville College

Somerville College houses archival materials related to the Oxford Majlis, which was a student society modeled after the Cambridge Majlis...

Oxford Union

On 3 December 1964, Malcolm X addressed the Oxford Union when he partook in the 'Queen and Country' debate. He...

Oxford Martin School

The Oxford Martin School was the sity of of the Oxford Indian Institute, which provided training to Indian civil servants....

Site of the first mixed congregational prayer led by a woman (Prof Amina Wadud) in the UK, 18th October 2008....

A major site of employment which attracted Pakistani Muslims from Sheffield and Bradford. According to the newsreel source linked to...

The UK’s first halal farm, located in Cherwell. In 2002, Lutfi Radwan, a lecturer at the University of Oxford, and...

Noor Inayat Khan GC

Noor served in the military during World War II who served as a wireless operator for the Special Operations Executive,...

1878

Caxton Hall

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Building

Author:

EMHAI

Caxton Hall is a location in which many momentous events occurred, including the assassination of Sir Michael O'Dwyer, the campaign for women's suffrage, and the inaugural meeting of the Muslim League party. Some of the first Jummah prayers were organised at Caxton Hall in 1908 by the actor and writer Duse Mohamed Ali. 

Caxton Hall was the location of meetings of the British Cabinet Mission, which had been sent to India to find a solution to the political crises. The meetings were held between May and June 1946 and were important in negotiations between the Indian National Congress and Muslim League. The failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan led to the creation of two separate nations.

Indian Revolutionary Udham Singh assassinated the former Lieutenant Governor of Punjab in Caxton Hall to avenge the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. When arrested, he said that he’d only meant to protest, not to kill anyone. ‘I just shot to make protest. I have seen people starving In India under British Imperialism. I done it, the pistol went off three or four times. I am not sorry for protesting.’ 

Singh was tried and convicted of murder and hanged in July 1940. Interestingly, while in custody, he adopted the name “Ram Muhammad Singh Azad” and signed many letters with this name. This title combines a Hindu, Muslim and Sikh name and ends with the Indian word for Freedom (Azad). The adoption of this name in itself was a powerful symbol of religious unity in opposition to British Rule. It depicts the shared struggles of Indians, regardless of religion and creed, against the British. This alias also depicts his deep anti-colonial sentiments and his desire to free India from imperialism. 

The Times of London called him a "fighter for freedom", his actions "an expression of the pent-up fury of the downtrodden Indian people."

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Sources and Attribution

Article by Mazna Khan

https://www.everydaymuslim.org/projects/remembering-partition/

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