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.

Bengali Muslim migration had reached its peak during the 1970s with the influx of people coming from the Sylhet region...

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,...

1964

Khurshid Ahmed

Posted in:

People

Author:

Amirah

Khurshid Ahmed was a member of the Pakistan navy and in 1964, he arrived in the UK as part of his role of naval attache serving as a diplomat of his country. Khursid Ahmed was a married man and had three young children and he had hopes of achieving a better quality of life for his children, specifically his daughters after witnessing the difficult life that his sisters had gone through as they had to get married at a very young age with little to no education. Ahmed did not want this life for his daughters and hoped for them to have better opportunities that he and his family grew up with.

At the time in which Khurshid was eligible to receive his full military pension and be discharged, Pakistan was ruled by the military dictator, General Ayub Khan, the fragmented political position of Pakistan endangered his potential ability to settle down in the UK under the comfort of his well earned military pension. His request for discharge was denied and Khurshid and his wife were forced to make the decision to split the family with his wife, Naseem, in the UK and Ahmed in Pakistan.

After multiple requests for his discharge and constantly being denied, Kurshid Ahmed decided to take a risk and appeal to his Navy Commander's wife who he believed would resonate with his reasonings in regard to his discharge from the military. To his joy, the tactic of sympathising with the wife of the Navy Commander worked and within weeks, Khurshid returned to the UK with his children and was able to reunite with his wife, Naseem.

Tags

Sources and Attribution

My Father – Petty Officer Khurshid Ahmed by Farkhanda Khurshid

Spotted an issue Report this record

Loading please wait