Muslim brothers in arms at rest in UK peace garden

The restoration of The Muslim Burial Ground Peace Garden in England is a timely reminder of the bonds that tie the country to its Muslim brothers and sisters.

At first sight there could not be a more English scene: a walled garden, complete with an ornamental pool, mowed lawns and climbing roses whose tranquillity is disturbed only by the sound of birdsong and gently trickling water.

Surrounded by a pine forest enjoyed by dog walkers, joggers and squirrels alike, the garden sits on the edge of Horsell Common in Surrey – a county the poet John Betjeman described as the “patio of England” – and Woking, a town whose claims to fame include being the setting for HG Wells’ science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds and the home of the punk/mod-revival band The Jam.

But closer inspection reveals that appearances can be deceptive. Rather than a traditional gate, the garden’s entrance is formed by a chhatri, a small, domed pavilion topped with gilded finial in the form of a lotus flower that is as much a feature of the Edwin Lutyen’s Edwardian imperial architecture of New Delhi as of South Asia’s traditional Islamic architecture.

Inside, subtle lines of planting and two permanent stone prayer mats are aligned on the qibla to face Mecca and the 27 white birch trees that line the garden’s central pool are of the Himalayan variety rather than a British native species.

Just as the garden’s sandstone paving is Indian, its small memorial, which acts as the garden’s focal point directly opposite the chhatri, is inscribed with the traditional Muslim funerary phrase “For God We Are and To God We Go” and bears 27 names including Khan, Shah, Muhammad and Ali whose origins are unmistakably Islamic.

The Muslim Burial Ground Peace Garden is a registered war memorial that sits very close to the UK’s first purpose-built Muslim place of worship, Woking’s Shah Jahan Mosque.

Commissioned in 1915, the Peace Garden was originally known as the Woking Muslim Cemetery and soon became the final resting place of 19 soldiers from the First World War and a further eight from the Second World War. All of these servicemen fought for the Allies in different regiments, three from North Africa served with the French Foreign Legion, but most were recruited from the areas now known as the Punjab and Pakistan.

The bodies of the soldiers and their gravestones were moved to the nearby Muslim burial ground in Brookwood Military Cemetery in 1969. However, thanks to its recent restoration, the Muslim Burial Ground and Peace Garden is not only playing a key role in the UK’s commemorations of the centenary of the First World War but is becoming a key site in the battle for hearts and minds that surrounds contemporary debates about Islam, migrants and what it means to be a Muslim in 21st-century Britain.

“This garden works in a very unique way because it serves as an icon for a very English Islam and a harmony between the cultures that is beautiful,” says poet and playwright Avaes Mohammad.

“It’s a combination of English and Islamic garden design. Obviously it’s influenced by Islamic gardens of the Mughal variety but to make it work the designers couldn’t use the pomegranate and fig trees you might see at the Alhambra, they’ve used yew trees and an English lawn and climbing roses.

“I think it’s a wonderful metaphor for how the confluence between English and Islamic culture can occur because the garden is revered so highly in both.”

Mr Mohammad is managing An Unknown and Untold Story – The Muslim Contribution to The First World War, a 14-month community outreach programme that is attempting to raise public awareness about the Muslims who served in the British army in the First World War.

A joint effort between British Future, a think tank dedicated to debating issues relating to migration, integration and contemporary British identity – and New Horizons in British Islam, and organisation committed to reform in Muslim practise and thought, An Unknown and Untold Story uses workshops, presentations and seminars to reach out to community and youth-based groups as well as members of the British military.

“The reason we think it’s a pertinent story is because of its contemporary significance,” says Mr Mohammad, who is also a trustee of the Bhopal Medical Appeal and works closely with English PEN, the worldwide writers’ association, as a writer and facilitator.

“The story of the 400,000 Muslims who fought for Britain during the First World War contributes to the immigration and integration debate in ways that are positive for both camps.

“We think that the fact Muslims have served this country historically can help show that there need not be any concerns about allegiance or loyalty. The culture and identity we enjoy today is as much a part of their sacrifice as anybody else’s.”

For Avaes Mohammad, the often-overlooked narrative of the 1.2 million and 2.4 million soldiers who served in the British Indian army during the First and Second World Wars respectively, also serves young British Muslims who lack confidence in their British identity, by telling them about the sacrifices made by their ancestors or by people who came from their own countries of origin.

“It can allow them to feel a legitimate claim on and connection with this country that goes beyond the traditional narrative of immigration in the 1970s and the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis by underlining the strong and shared claim that Muslim and non-Muslim Britons can all make to British identity today.”

Mr Mohammad attended the garden’s official opening on November 12 in the presence of Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, members of the British armed forces and Sophena Alison Chisembele, the daughter of Youssif Ali, the last soldier who was buried in the cemetery in 1947.

The ceremony was accompanied by a minute’s silence, prayers were read by a military chaplain and the ministry of defence’s Islamic religious adviser Imam Asim Hafiz. The Last Post was sounded by a bugler from the Royal Logistics Corps.

The garden would not have existed in its current form had it not been for the work of Zafar Iqbal, a policy adviser with Woking borough council and Elizabeth Cuttle, a volunteer trustee with the Horsell Common Preservation Society (HCPS), the trust that owns and manages the local land for the benefit of the environment and the community.

Mrs Cuttle and Mr Iqbal first started to work on the project in 2011, securing funding for the restoration of its walls and chhatri in 2013, but succeeded in raising money for the peace garden only thanks to grants from government agencies.

Donations from the HCPS, the local Shah Jahan mosque, which is the UK’s oldest purpose-built place of Muslim prayer, raised more than £10,000 (Dh55,332) during a single day of Friday prayers and the project also received a gift of 20,000 rials (Dh2097) from the government of the Sultanate of Oman.

The new garden was designed by Terra Firma Ltd, a team of UK-based landscape architects who have experience of designing war memorials and was built with the help of serving soldiers from the British army, including members of the Armed Forces Muslim Association and the Horsell Common Preservation Society while the planting was completed by students from a local school, the HCPS and community members from the local Shah Jahan Mosque.

“There really aren’t many precedents of Islam in the English landscape and we thought that maybe there should be,” says Terra Firma’s director, the landscape architect Lionel Fanshawe. “We thought it was appropriate that the garden should be Islamic in style but that it should also include something of the English landscape.

“The garden deliberately has the traditional elements of an Islamic garden. You have the formal geometry and symmetry throughout, a central axis and it also uses water, the water of life, which moves down from an upper pool and you can hear that from the moment you enter the chhatri.”

Mr Fanshawe points to the design of the new garden’s memorial as evidence of this hybridity. Composed of four panels, one of which is engraved with the Islamic phrase “For God We Are and To God We Go” while the other three bear the names of the soldiers originally buried in the cemetery. “The memorial stone is made from Indian granite with Portland stone inlaid within it,” he said. “Engraving works far better on Portland stone but we still wanted to use an Indian stone so we ended up setting an English stone inside an Indian one, which we thought was very appropriate.”

For Mr Iqbal, who has a special responsibility for Woking borough council’s community engagement and interfaith initiatives, the cemetery’s contemporary relevance was one of the driving forces behind his push to transform a place that had become forgotten and neglected.

“We plan to use the cemetery as a site for an annual memorial service and for community events,” Mr Iqbal says.

“With Ramadan falling during the summer months for the next few years we are thinking of holding iftar events on the site and the army is also looking at the garden as a place where they can hold their diversity training for recruits and cadet officers.”

That outreach to the military is something that the Unknown Story’s Mr Mohammad has embarked upon with seminars at the UK’s elite royal military academy Sandhurst.

“I delivered a seminar to the officer cadets about the historic Muslim contribution to the First World War in the hope it would give them a more rounded understanding of what it means to be a Muslim,” the playwright says.

“To show that historically they are people who have fought side by side with the British armed forces and that they’re not just somebody who appears at the end of their gun.”

nleech@thenational.ae