Intro
In November 1917, Pickthall publicly took shahada at the Woking Muslim Mission with the support of Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din. However, this doesn’t count, since the Lahori-Ahmadi’s are not Muslim and thus, they have no right.

Pickthall, who now identified himself as a “Sunni Muslim of the Hanafi school”, was active as “a natural leader” within a number of Islamic organizations. He preached Friday sermons in both the Woking Mosque and in London. Some of his khutbas (sermons) were subsequently published. For a year he ran the Islamic Information Bureau in London, which issued a weekly paper, The Muslim Outlook. Pickthall and Quran translator Yusuf Ali were trustees of both the Shah Jehan Mosque in Woking and the East London Mosque. We have checked his Quran and his translations of the famous verses of the Quran which deal with Ahmadiyya are translated properly. However, soon after his alleged conversion, he joined the British military and was sent to British-India. Wherein he remained until 1930.

Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (born Marmaduke William Pickthall; 7 April 1875 – 19 May 1936) was an Englishman noted for his 1930 English translation of the Quran, called The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. His translation of the Quran (usually anglicized as “Koran” in Pickthall’s era) is one of the most widely known and used in the English-speaking world. A convert from Christianity to Islam, Pickthall was a novelist, esteemed by D. H. Lawrence, H. G. Wells, and E. M. Forster, as well as journalists, political and religious leaders. He declared his conversion to Islam in dramatic fashion after delivering a talk on ‘Islam and Progress’ on 29 November 1917, to the Muslim Literary Society in Notting Hill, West London.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
1917

In November 1917, Pickthall publicly took shahada at the Woking Muslim Mission with the support of Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din. He followed this with a speech contrasting the Christian and Muslim approaches to religious law, arguing that Islam was better equipped than Christianity to handle the post-World War world.

He declared his conversion to Islam in dramatic fashion after delivering a talk on ‘Islam and Progress’ on 29 November 1917, to the Muslim Literary Society in Notting Hill, West London.

While browsing Woking Muslim Mission archives (link) in the journal Islamic Review & Muslim India, August 1917, p. 337, I came across an article by Marmaduke Pickthall ‘Islam and Progress,’ which he opens with the following paragraph:

THE opinion prevalent in Christian countries with regard to El Islam is that, as compared with Christianity, it is a religion essentially unprogressive, and to some extent degrading to the human intellect. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The sort of lethargy, comporting ignorance and superstition, which has weighed upon the Muslim masses for the last three centuries, is the result of historical circumstances very similar to those which darkened Western Europe in the period before the Renaissance. It has little more than a geographical connection with the Muhammadan religion; and now, with the revival of a scientific education, it is at an end. It would be a serious mistake to suppose, in view of the relatively backward state of the Islamic world, that El Islam itself is unprogressive in the modern meaning of the word. How can it be, when one reflects that modern progress is the outcome, not of any Christian doctrine, but free, thought, and that Islam: unlike Christianity, prescribes free thinking as a duty for believers.

With the above read, the verse of Quran, in its chapter ‘Al-Rum – The Byzantines,’ resonated in my mind:

30:30. So pay your whole-hearted attention to (the cause of) faith as one devoted (to pure faith), turning away from all that is false. (And follow) the Faith of Allâh (-Islam) to suit the requirements of which He has made the nature of humankind. There can be no change in the nature (of creation) which Allâh has made. That is the right and most perfect Faith, yet most people do not know (it). [Nooruddin]

In the same issue of Islamic Review, a few pages down, in Editor’s mail [p. 353] is a letter under the title – ‘MORNING STAR OF A CREEDLESS FAITH – which apparently is excerpted from the letter of a Minister to the Unitarian Church:

There is so much in your Faith that rings harmonious with my own deepest belief that I hardly think it necessary to mention points on which there is a difference, and I cannot help thinking that an unprejudiced reading of such publications as the ISLAMIC REVIEW would do much to prepare the way for the rising of that “Morning Star of a Creedless Faith” which, if I interpret aright, was the dream of Jesus and the Faith of your Holy Prophet.

‘Morning Star of a Creedless Faith’ is a quote within a chapter ‘The Idea of a Church’ in the book ‘God, the Invisible King’ by H. G. Well (p. 185, link) that was published in the same year as Islamic Review. I could not help but reproduce it in its entirety below.

Due to its length this post is continued below as a comment.
______________________________________________________________________________________________1920-1929

In 1920 he went to India with his wife to serve as editor of the Bombay Chronicle, On the behest of Nizam of Hyderabad he was appointed Principal at Chadarghat High School in the Princely State of Hyderabad in 1926. The Nizam’s Government proposed to establish a Publicity Bureau in the Hyderabad State as it appeared in the Mushir-i-Deccan on 14 June 1931, that Marmaduke Pickthall is to be appointed Publicity Officer in addition to his own duties as Principal of the Chadarghat High School. Returning to England only in 1935, a year before his death at St Ives, Cornwall.

______________________________________________________________________________________________
1930

Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (born Marmaduke William Pickthall; 7 April 1875 – 19 May 1936) was an Englishman noted for his 1930 English translation of the Quran, called The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. His translation of the Quran (usually anglicized as “Koran” in Pickthall’s era) is one of the most widely known and used in the English-speaking world.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Links and Related Essay’s

Marmaduke Pickthall – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmaduke_Pickthall

The Quran Translation by M. Pickthall

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Tags

#ahmadiyya #ahmadiyyafactcheckblog #messiahhascome #ahmadiyyat #trueislam #ahmadianswers #mirzaghulamahmad #qadiani #qadianism