Unearthed letter suggests Churchill was considering to convert to Islam

Rasa - Recently discovered family letter suggests that the former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was apparently considering to convert to Islam, but was begged not to do so.

News ID: 1935

Date: 31 December 2014 - 14:54

RNA - A recently unearthed family letter shows British leader Winston Churchill was once begged to not convert to Islam. The letter written by Churchill's sister-in-law Lady Gwendoline was discovered by a history research fellow at Cambridge University, Rasa News reported.

“Please don’t become converted to Islam; I have noticed in your disposition a tendency to orientalise [romanticizing the Orient and Islam], Pasha-like tendencies, I really have,” wrote Lady Gwendeline Bertie in a letter dated Aug. 27, 1907.

She adds: “If you come into contact with Islam your conversion might be effected with greater ease than you might have supposed, call of the blood, don’t you know what I mean, do fight against it.”

The research fellow at Cambridge University, Warren Dockter, found the letter in the Churchill Archives Center in Cambridge and said in his interview that Churchill, who set up the Middle East Department in the Colonial Office of the British Empire, had a lifelong interest in Islamic culture.

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