Dr. Nyla Ali Khan has been appointed as a Commissioner on the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women. She has been appointed for a five-year term by Senator Greg Treat, who is President Pro Tempora of the Oklahoma Senate.
“The Oklahoma Legislature created the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women in 1994 to act as an advisory entity on equity issues relating to gender bias; monitor legislation to determine whether it is discriminatory toward one gender or the other; act as a resource and a clearinghouse for research on issues related to women and gender bias; report annually to the governor, president pro tempore of the Senate, and speaker of the House of Representatives regarding its activities and make recommendations concerning needed legislation or regulatory changes relating to equity and gender bias.”
Dr. Nyla Ali Khan is the first South Asian Muslim member of the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women. She said that as a member of the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women, she acts as a resource and provides expertise to the Commission. She provides research and information on societal violence and structural inequities that result from deep-rooted prejudices against women. Dr. Nyla Khan said, “The questions to which I seek to provide well-substantiated answers are as follows: How can we, as women, develop the ability to organize and mobilize for social change, which requires the creation of awareness not just at the individual level but at the collective level as well? How can we develop self-esteem for which some form of financial autonomy is a basis? How can we make strategic life choices that are critical for people to lead the sort of lives they want to lead? We require a quality education for these mammoth tasks.”
c.reddirtreport.com
source: http://www.caravandaily.com / Caravan Daily / Home> Indian Muslim / March 12th, 2019
It was a scholarship that helped Feroz A Padder to get the best education and become an interventional cardiologist. Now the proud owner of a hospital in the USA with a yearly turnover of $10 million, he tells Masood Hussain his story and how he has started paying back by creating a world-class school, in the memory of two slain kids, an idea, if successful, he wishes to clone a piece each for every Kashmir district
Ayesha Ali Academy
I was born in a Kulgam village called Kanipora. My father had died when I was three years old. I was raised by my mother.
But I stayed in the village until I was in the fifth primary. In sixth grade, I was selected by Jammu and Kashmir government for a scholarship to attend a premier school in India. It was a fully funded scholarship.
My mother didn’t want me to go. She was crying. A Pandit lady was our neighbour whose son was my friend. Probably, she also did not want me to go. She took my mother to a faith healer to stop me from going but the Soun Saeb told my mother that’s she should allow me to go. Later, my brothers convinced her but it was very hard for my mother.
It was a major scheme of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Afzal Beg. In order to give an opportunity for poor students from government schools, they devised the visionary scheme. Almost 1000 students who would pass their fifth primary in the first class would sit in a written examination and those who passed faced an interview by a panel comprising Director School Education and the principals of various colleges. Finally, three students were selected from each district. I was one among them in the very first batch in 1976.
That is how I studied in Punjab Public School and later in DPS, Punjab. It was the destiny that I became a medical doctor.
But I am not the only doctor in the family. The fifth sibling in my family, I have two older brothers, two older sisters and another brother, three years younger to me. Except for my oldest sister, my older brother was in tenth class when our father died. He took a job in the forest department to run the family. During Sheikh Sahab’s time, the medical college started admitting students after matriculation, so one of my older brothers made it to the medical school in 1976.
Feroz A Padder
As my brother came to Srinagar, one of my older sisters also migrated. She was an art student but soon she changed her subjects, studied well and also joined the medical school. Later, my younger brother also took medical. Now we are four doctors in the family of which three pursued their studies from Srinagar. My younger brother studied psychiatry in South America; my older brother is a cardiologist and my sister is a family practitioner. We all work in the US.
After my brother went to London and later to the US, I followed him. Later, my sister and her husband came after me. Four of our families are in the US and our mother was with us all along till she died and we flew her body for burial in our ancestral graveyard.
My migration was dramatic. I finished my medical school in 1989 and was in the six months of house job when the situation deteriorated and my family wanted me to join them in the US. I did not get the US visa, so I went to the UK where I sat in an examination and started working. In 1992, I qualified for the US examination and went straight to America.
I was lucky again. I got jobs in higher level hospitals. I was in Boston where I did my residency. There I got a fellowship from the National Institute of Health, the biggest institute of health in the US. Later, I did my cardiology fellowship and combined with clinical fellowship. Then I went into more interventional cardiology in which I did further specialization from the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Once I came out after seven years of training, it turned out that I was the best fellow trained as a doctor in the whole country. I had almost nine interviews and eight job offers. But I came back to Maryland and took a job with John Hobbes University in 2000.
Soon, I realised that I didn’t want to work for anybody. I put in my papers and started my own practice, right before 9/11. As I grew gradually, I started hiring more people. Now, I have about seven cardiologists in my group and 19 physicians. I run my own group Padder Health Services with around 60 employees.
I have probably done thousands of invasive procedures. In our area, it is more competitive. We cover two to three geographical locations, and on average, I do around 400 interventions a year.
I am good at business ventures. I own a separate company Padder Reality which owns all the real estate that is under use of Padder Health Services. Right now, we have about the US $ 10 million yearly revenue and we are growing by 5-10 per cent every year. We are in talks with some people and if the process succeeds we will be taking over management of a chain of hospitals in the region, in which we already have strong footprints. That will help us reach the next level.
Dr Farooq Padder, my older brother, a cardiologist is an academic and works in New Jersey. Gulshan Nazir, my sister, is with me. A psychiatrist, my younger brother Tanveer does part-time with me. My wife, Edisa Tokovic, is a paediatrician and is originally from Bosnia but was raised in Michigan, US.
I got scholarships right from the start and whatever I am I owe this to Kashmir and its people. I want to produce thousands of myself. We can give education to the poor students the way I got. I want to pay back and contribute in any way. I run a charitable organisation which is basically our family foundation. We give scholarships to students, in memory of my mother. It has a marriage fund for the orphaned girls also.
Padder with his second wife and children.
It was a fully funded education that changed me. So I want to use education to replicate the same kind of stories. Finally, I decided to build a school – from nursery to twelfth grade – in Kulgam. It is already into operation.
We will give a scholarship to one-fourth of the enrolled students who are smart but are either orphaned or their parents are less privileged. If this brand and the business model works, I will replicate the same models in the other districts, hopefully in Baramulla and Srinagar, soon after.
The building has around 50,000 sq ft built-up the area and I have probably spent around Rs 8 – 10 crores on it. It’s my personal investment.
Once the school starts, our Foundation will fund it till it becomes self-sufficient. It eventually will be a private entity that will reinvest its excess earnings to fund the education of one-fourth students enrolled in it.
I have tied up with one of America’s oldest school systems to create a curriculum and teaching system which is global and the best. We have people in the USA who are willing to help us in imparting education and training the teachers. I pray the initiative is a success.
Behind the school is a story, a tragedy. It was in 2006 when my (first) wife met a road accident and died along with our two kids. She was from Pakistan; her name was Amira Abbas. She was a cardiologist too. Ayesha, my daughter, was nine years old, and Ali, my son, was five.
Ayesha was born on September 5, 1997, the same time when Lady Diana died. The very next day, Mother Teresa died. I used to tell her that God created you for a reason, not knowing that she would not live long. She was brilliant, religious and a loving daughter. She completed the Quran at age seven and there was a party for her scheduled for November 5. But she died on October 31. She had been selected for a kid leadership three-week course and I got the selection letter a week after her death.
When someone was driving me back from the accident spot, that time, I decided that whatever money I had saved for my children’s future, I will create an institution in their name. So I have named this school Ayesha Ali Academy. That’s why we initially created the Ayesha Ali Foundation.
I met my second wife in Washington DC where she was doing a residency. She is very much younger than me. We married in 2008. We have three kids – two sons and one daughter. Ibrahim, my older son, tells me: “God gave you two children back and one more in bonus.”
I tell my children that the two countries had to go to war for us to get married. It is unfortunate both these conflicts occurred. Had there been no crisis in Kashmir I might not have migrated. Same is true with my wife. She has been to Kashmir a few times. I come here often and I go to Bosnia too. But the only difference is that it is much militarized here unlike Bosnia.
I even thought of constructing a special hospital in Kashmir, but later, I thought I have to be physically here for that because it was such a big project. Since I have little kids, I didn’t want to take that chance. But I still have some ideas and I have been thinking about it. But if the school goes as per the script, we could get into health care too.
Ayesha and Ali, padder’s kids from his first wife had died in an accident.
We don’t even need a hospital to start with. I had a major polyclinic where we have a big infrastructure and where we have different doctors working under the same roof. But rather than being a government institution, it’s a private institute and most of the doctors have some stakes in it. Hopefully, we may try to develop that here in Kashmir.
In Kashmir, hospitals are understaffed and doctors overworked. There is less awareness among people about the preventive medicines. The absence of medical insurance is a crisis that would prevent quality investment in the health sector.
source: http://www.kashmirlife.net / Kashmir Life / Home> Cover Story> Diaspora / by Masood Hussain / March 27th, 2019
A night’s stay in the hotel, which is set to open later this year, might cost up to Rs 8 lakh.
A view of the Great Scotland Yard (Photo | http://www.twenty14holdings.com)
Kochi :
Malayalee billionaire Yusuff Ali, who bought the Great Scotland Yard, which served as headquarters for the Metropolitan police in London, has converted it into a luxurious 5-star hotel. The renovation that cost Rs 685 cr. (£75 Million) was done in 3 years.
The business tycoon, who is chairman of Abu Dhabi-based retail giant LuLu Group had earlier bough the iconic building in 2015 for Rs 1000 crore (£110 Million). The renovated hotel is all set to open later this year and will be managed by the Hyatt Group.
When asked about the property, Yusuff Ali said: “This is a very prestigious project for us as this is one of the most well-known property not just in the UK but around the world. We have not left any stones unturned to make this the most sought-after hotel while retaining the essence of the original building, so that each of our guests get a truly memorable experience”.
Great Scotland Yard has special relevance in UK history as it was chosen by the then Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel as the headquarters for the Met police in 1829. Even after the renovation, the essence of the original building has been preserved.
The hotel will have 153 rooms and the tariff per night is expected to go up to Rs 7,79,842 (10,000 euro). These suites offer guests picturesque views of Nelson’s Column, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, making it one of the most unique locations in London.
The luxury hotel that is steeped in British political history will include references to the famous criminals of the time gone by. In a secret whisky bar, a decadent chandelier made of glass shards will be a nod to the Forty Elephants, the 19th-century gang of women known for smashing shop windows to steal jewellery. There will also be artwork by prisoners and old military uniforms.
Adeeb Ahamed, Son-in-law of Yusuff Ali and the Managing Director of Twenty14 Holdings, the hospitality arm of Lulu Group said, “Renovating the Great Scotland Yard building and unveiling the UK’s first Unbound Collection hotel will bring a truly individual and world-class hotel to London.
“The Great Scotland Yard is really an important part of the fabric of London and it is a great opportunity for us to be a part of the culture and legacy of this great city and help in its development. The Great Scotland Yard will be an enriching landmark in Westminster as a high-end luxury boutique hotel that recaptures the history, culture and essence of the London of yore.”
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Kerala / by Express News Service / March 26th, 2019
From the desk of Sunday magazine to a celebrated chef now on Netflix’s Chef’s Table, Asma Khan’s story is one of strength, confidence and ambition
The first British chef to make it to Chef’s Table, Asma Khan is also opening all-women kitchens in conflict zones in Syria(Ming Tang-Evans)
It is a funny feeling when a colleague from decades ago becomes a success in a totally different field. And it feels even stranger when you find yourself writing a profile of somebody you once knew as a sub-editor.
In 1990, when I edited Sunday magazine, a young girl came to see me to ask if she could try her hand at journalism. She worked at Lintas, the ad agency, she said, and wanted to do something different but not entirely unrelated.
I hired her on the spot and all of us in the office thought she was very bright and articulate. Then, a few months later, she announced that she was getting married, resigned from her position and went off to live in Cambridge with her new husband.
And that, I thought, was the last I would hear of Asma Khan.
Wrong, very wrong.
A few years ago, she sent me an email. She was now a chef in London, she wrote. Not only did she organise private dinners at home but she was also running a pop-up in a pub in Soho. Why didn’t I drop in and try her food?
I had to search my memory to remember Asma (time to be candid!) and when I asked old colleagues from the Sunday days, they said that they found it hard to believe that she was now a chef.
Then, in 2015, my friend Fay Maschler, London’s most influential critic, wrote about Asma’s pop-up. It was an unqualified rave review and she rated Asma’s little restaurant serving Kosha Mangsho and Kathi rolls ahead of most of London’s fancy Indian places.
The day the review came out, there was a line outside the pub where Asma ran her pop-up. It began raining but the people still continued queuing. Asma and her cooks were stunned. But like good Indians, they felt bad for the crowds. So they made little bowls of rice with dal and distributed them for free to those lining up. The gesture did not go unnoticed and every night after that, the small restaurant was packed. It became the cool place to go for people who wanted real Indian food.
“Fay Maschler changed my life,” says Asma now. And indeed, the changes have been dramatic. A year and a half ago, the owners of Kingly Court, a new development off Carnaby Street in the centre of London, offered her a dream deal on a site for a full-fledged restaurant. The restaurant opened to glowing reviews and became a symbol of the new London. Nigella Lawson came. Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, praised it. And Asma appeared on the list of the 100 most influential people in food in the UK.
Fay Maschler, London’s most influential critic, discovered Asma
But a few months ago, Asma received her biggest accolade yet. The Netflix series Chef’s Table has featured some of the world’s greatest chefs. It has the power to turn a chef’s life around. Gaggan Anand says that even more than all the honours and awards he has earned (two stars from Michelin, number one restaurant in Asia for an unprecedented four years in a row etc.), it is Chef’s Table that made people from all over the world fly in to Bangkok to eat at his restaurant.
There has been much heartburn in the UK that no British chef has ever made it to Chef’s Table.
So when Netflix announced that it had finally selected a British chef, there was much anticipation. To everyone’s surprise, they chose Asma.
The show airs later this month and as I told Asma, her life will never be the same again. She will soon be one of the world’s most celebrated chefs, the best known Indian chef in the UK and perhaps globally, with the exception of Gaggan.
Chicken samosas served with spicy sesame and red chillies chutney, and tamarind chutney ( Ming Tang-Evans )
As wonderful as all this is, a little voice inside my head kept asking, “How did Asma, the same old Asma from the Sunday desk end up becoming one of the great chefs to be featured on Chef’s Table? Had she been a secret cook all along even as she laboured over copy? Had she worked at some of the world’s best restaurants? Had she reinvented classic Indian dishes?”
The answer: none of the above.
The Asma story is so incredible that if you made a movie with this plot, you would be accused of asking too much of the viewer. Suspension of disbelief is okay, but Asma’s life takes us far beyond that.
Darjeeling Express started as a dinner for 12 guests at home and is now a hugely successful restaurant ( Ming Tang-Evans )
She was born in Calcutta to a family with roots in nawabi culture (what we would call landed gentry, I guess). She had a standard middle-class upbringing (La Martiniere and Loreto) before going out to work (Lintas and then Sunday). Her parents introduced her to Mushtaq, a brilliant Bangladeshi economist who was a don at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. Asma and Mushtaq had, what was for all practical purposes, an arranged marriage and she moved to Cambridge.
Beetroot chops, Bengali spiced croquettes made with British beetroots ( Ming Tang-Evans )
She was miserable. “I thought the Quran had it wrong when it described hell,” she recalls. “Hell was Cambridge.” She hated the cold, the greyness, the drab English environment (especially after the sights, smells and sounds of Calcutta).
Asma’s book, a collection of authentic Indian recipes
Though her mother had run a catering business in Calcutta, Asma did not know how to cook. She could read copy, she could give clever headlines. But she had no kitchen experience. Fortunately Mushtaq had no interest in food.
So she turned to studying. She got a law degree, and then decided to do a PhD in law. By then, Mushtaq had shifted to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London so she applied to King’s College at London University. She talked the dons at King’s into letting her go directly to a doctorate without a Masters.
Black chickpeas (kaala channa) cooked with ginger and dried red chilies at Darjeeling Express ( Ming Tang-Evans )
She chose, for her thesis, a subject that was as far removed from Calcutta as possible: how the UK handles the separation of Church and State. But even as she was discussing whether the British monarch should be ‘defender of the faith’, a hitherto undiscovered cooking gene deep inside her reasserted itself.
Chef Vivek Singh offered Asma a pop-up at Cinnamon Club
She began to make the food of her ancestors, going back to old family recipes. Eventually, cooking became such an obsession that she started hosting pop-up dinners. Her husband disapproved of the idea so she cooked the dinners when he was travelling. (“We cleared up the house so well,” she laughs “that usko pata hi nahi chala!”)
But her two children, who were not happy with having the house taken over by strangers, complained to their father and soon the jig was up.
Asma is nothing if not super confident, so she called such famous London chefs as Cyrus Todiwala and Vivek Singh to her house for dinner to try her biryani. Even though none of them knew her, they came anyway. They were kind and encouraging. Vivek Singh was so impressed that he offered her a pop-up at his The Cinnamon Club restaurant. She took her all-women team of cooks and won over the all-male Cinnamon Club kitchen team. (“I will always be grateful to Vivek for that,” she says.)
The all-women kitchen team at Darjeeling Express, London
That gave her the credibility to do a full-time pop-up. Word of her skills got out. Fay discovered her. And the rest is the stuff Chef’s Table episodes are made of.
Now, with the success of Darjeeling Express, Asma is well-known in London. People make much of her nearly all-women team. (My wife, who came to lunch at Darjeeling Express with me, loved the female energy; she was sold on the restaurant even before the first dish arrived.) Asma is overtly political, speaking out about sexual harassment in restaurant kitchens, breaking the conspiracy of silence that women in the business have gone along with and has become a symbol of the success that Asian women can find if they overcome prejudice and their own apprehensions.
But ultimately, I judge chefs by their food not by their stories. And Asma’s was terrific. We had puchkas, Bihari phulkis (like pakoras), Kosha Mangsho, a Calcutta mutton chaap, kaalachanna, chicken samosas, beetroot chops and so much more. None of it was molecular or clever, clever. It was just excellent.
You will hear more about Asma in the months ahead.
After Gaggan, she is Kolkata’s second contribution to the global food world.
And you will hear about her in non-food contexts. She is opening all-women kitchens in conflict zones in Syria. As she says, “I don’t want to be remembered as a great chef. I want women to come to my grave and say ‘she changed my life’; that’s what matters.”
She is not short on confidence and ambition, our Asma. And I have a feeling that she will end up being the most successful person to ever emerge from the offices of Sunday magazine!
From HT Brunch, February 24, 2019 / Follow us on twitter.com/HTBrunch /Connect with us on facebook.com/hindustantimesbrunch
source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Brunch / by Vir Sangvi, Hindustan Times / February 24th, 2019
Bertram Sheldrake converted to Islam at the age of 15 and spent much of his fortune promoting the religion in Britain
His efforts brought him an invitation from leaders of the newly proclaimed Muslim nation of Islamestan in China’s far west
The Muslim distribution in the world, circa 1940.
It’s a long way from the south London suburb of Forest Hill to the once dreamed of Republic of Islamestan.
You may never have heard of Islamestan, in Chinese Turkestan, or its one-time “king”, Bertram Sheldrake. Islamestan is long gone, swallowed up in the historical shifts of a turbulent region, but for a brief and unlikely moment, an English pickle-factory heir ruled, with his wife, Sybil, over the newly independent Muslim country, to the far west of China.
The whole of what was then referred to as Chinese Turkestan, or Sinkiang (now Xinjiang), was, in the 1930s, subject to tribal rebellions and warlord uprisings. It was ultimately concluded by the chiefs of various tribes in the region that only an outsider (but necessarily a Muslim one) could bring unity to the region. Having read newspapers brought by travellers, they sent a delegation to south London to visit an Englishman who had caught their attention. Sheldrake was invited to assume the throne of Islamestan. Not being quite sure of the correct title for the new ruler, the British press helpfully offered some suggestions – “The Pickle King of Tartary”, “The English Emir of Kashgar”, “Lord of the Rooftop of the World”.
To contemporary British newspaper readers, it must have seemed as if Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King(1888), wherein two English adventurers, Dravot and Carnehan, become the leaders of Kafiristan, a remote region of Afghanistan, had come true. Having had a good public-school education on his father’s pickle profits, Sheldrake would have known Kipling’s cautionary tale. Things hadn’t turned out well for Dravot and Carnehan in Kafiristan; neither would they go smoothly in Islamestan for “The Pickle King of Tartary”.
Bertram William Sheldrake was born in the same year that Kipling’s cautionary tale was published, the son of Gosling Mullander Sheldrake (known simply as “George”), who ran the successful firm of G. Sheldrake, Manufacturers of Pickles, Sauces, Chutney, Ketchup, Vinegar, etc.; Bottlers of Capers, Curries, and other Condiments, located at 293-295 Albany Road, London, SE5. The business had done well since being founded in the 1870s, changing its name to the rather pedestrian South London Jam and Pickle Manufactory and then Sheldrake’s Pickles while trading up from the insalubrious surroundings of Southwark to the leafier environs of Denmark Hill.
Bertram must have been a precocious schoolboy. Although raised Catholic, in 1903, at the age of 15, he converted to Islam (then generally termed “Mohammedanism”), learned Arabic and changed his name to Khalid.
Sheldrake in an Evening Report newspaper article dated March 14, 1934.
Sheldrake was a relatively early convert. A decade later, the first Muslim missionary to Britain, the Indian Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, would make several high-profile conversions among socially connected and wealthy British people. These included Irish peer Lord Headley, who became known as Shaikh Rahmatullah al-Farooq, or more commonly in the newspapers as “The Moslem Peer”, and the scholar and novelist Marmaduke Pickthall, who became, more prosaically, Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall. In 1930, Pickthall was to publish the most complete English translation of the Koran to date.
British people converted for various reasons. For Headley and Pickthall, it seems to have been because of an aesthetic appreciation of the Middle East and “Arabia”. Similarly so for the Scottish noblewoman and Mayfair socialite Lady Evelyn Murray, who had grown up in Cairo and Algiers. She converted and became Zainab Cobbold, undertaking the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, several times. She was buried on her estate in the Scottish Highlands facing Mecca.
For others, such as Charles Hamilton, who converted in 1924, it was part of a wider search for order. Hamilton became Sir Abdullah Charles Edward Archibald Watkin Hamilton. A staunch Conservative, he would, in the 1930s, change tack and join Oswald Mosley’s far-right British Union of Fascists.
Less extreme was well-known Liverpool solicitor and temperance advocate William Quilliam, who converted after visiting Morocco. Having changed his name to Abdullah Quilliam, he used a donation from Nasrullah Khan, the crown prince of Afghanistan, to buy three terraced houses, establishing the Liverpool Muslim Institute in one of them.
The success of Sheldrake’s Pickles meant young Khalid didn’t need to work full-time for the family firm. He devoted his spare hours to Muslim causes, helping to found the journal Britain and India in 1920, launching the Muslim News Journal and serving as editor of The Minaret, an Islamic monthly based in London. He wrote frequently and sometimes provocatively. An article by Sheldrake in The Minaret in September 1927 suggesting Napoleon had flirted with conversion to Islam caused a stir on both sides of the English Channel.
Dr Khalid Sheldrake, as he was now referred to in the newspapers (having been awarded an honorary Ecuadorean doctorate of literature), found a wife, Sybil, who also converted, becoming Mrs Ghazia Sheldrake. They had two sons, who they raised in the Muslim faith. The family set up home in a detached house on quiet Gaynesford Road, in Forest Hill. It had a decent-sized front drive, a well-tended rear garden and was only a short commute from the Denmark Hill pickle factory.
Sheldrake worked hard and committed his resources to opening mosques in Britain. He was involved with the financing and construction of London’s first purpose-built mosque, in Wandsworth, in 1926 (previously, London’s Muslims had gathered in private houses). He organised another mosque in Peckham Rye, in the converted basement of a house he donated.
Here, Sheldrake presided over his own group of activists and missionaries, the Western Islamic Association, which sought to spread the word of the Prophet among the Christian English. In 1927, it was reported that he had opened a mosque in East Dulwich, known as the Masjid-el-Dulwich, after raising funds through “Oriental Bazaars”.
Lord Headley (left), who became known as “The Moslem Peer”, with the first Muslim missionary to Britain, Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din.
Sheldrake also paid for the funerals of Muslims who had died in Britain. In 1928, his self-financed Indigent Muslims’ Burial Fund bankrolled the funeral of Sayed Ali, the long-standing elephant trainer at London Zoo.
Fleet Street was confused by Sheldrake. He was referred to as the “Sheik of all British Moslems” (which isn’t and wasn’t an official position) and often a picture of an unknown Muslim, portly, dark-skinned and in traditional clothing, was featured and identified as “Khalid Sheldrake”.
In reality, Sheldrake was slight, with sharp features, and not dark-skinned in the slightest. He did, though, often wear a red fez. The papers made various claims: that he was a nobleman of French or Irish stock and that he had renounced his ancient title to become a Muslim. It was suggested he converted to Islam to become polygamous and have several wives. It seemed inconceivable to the newspapers that he could simply be the son of a suburban London pickle manufacturer who had voluntarily adopted Islam.
Sheldrake toured Britain giving talks on Islam. He visited small Muslim communities, such as the Yemeni former seamen in South Shields and Hull, who had grouped together in the 1860s and were subject to much misunderstanding and racism around race-related riots in 1919 and 1920. He toured Morocco in 1927 and, following a large party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his acceptance of Islam, undertook a lecture tour of India, in 1928.
Nevertheless, Sheldrake by this time was feeling disheartened at the lack of uptake of Islam in Britain. In the early 1900s, when he had converted, there had been fewer than 300 converts in the country; 30 years later, there were still fewer than 600 among only 3,000 Muslims resident in Britain. He started to think about a future in the wider Muslim world.
Sheldrake considered launching a missionary campaign in America. Writing in The Minaret, he said he felt the time might be right for the United States to embrace Islam. He was encouraged by Muslim conversion rates in Brazil and Guatemala but, ultimately, he opted against what would have been, by any stretch of the imagination, a massive undertaking.
In 1930, The Malaya Tribune newspaper in Singapore commented that Khalid Sheldrake’s name was known in almost all Muslim countries because of the propaganda work he conducted in Britain on behalf of the faith. And, by the time the Xinjiang delegation arrived in Forest Hill, the Muslim world was familiar with Sheldrake’s part in the conversion of Gladys Palmer, better known at the time as the daughter of Lord Walter Palmer, of the Huntley and Palmer biscuits empire, and the Dayang Muda of the Kingdom of Sarawak.
At 21, Gladys had married Captain Bertram Willes Dayrell Brooke. The British Brooke family, known as the “White Rajahs”, had ruled Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, as a private kingdom for a century. As a brother of the raja, Charles Vyner Brooke, her husband was titled Tuan Muda (literally “Little Lord”). When he married Gladys, in 1904, she became Dayang Muda, and was referred to as “Her Highness” in English.
Gladys Palmer and Sheldrake on the plane aboard which she converted to Islam.
Gladys, however, never spent much time in Sarawak. A leading socialite, she relished mixing with peers of the realm, minor royalty and show-business celebrities. She discussed literature with James Joyce in Paris; attended opening nights in London with actress Ellen Terry; and toured the cellar bars of Berlin with the sexually rapacious Irish writer Frank Harris. She formed a movie company in 1922, which made a single (forgotten and lost) film. By the late 1920s, the London society columns were reporting that the celebrated marriage was on the rocks. The couple parted, with Gladys gaining a very favourable settlement.
Then, in 1932, Gladys decided to convert to Islam.
Despite her love of the social whirl, Gladys had long sought spiritual enlightenment. Born into the Church of England, she had already passed through Catholicism (having had a personal audience with the pope) and Christian Science before accepting Islam.
Being wealthy, Gladys didn’t convert in any normal way but rather, “wishing my conversion to be performed on no earthly territory”, undertook the ceremony while flying over the English Channel in a chartered 42-seat Imperial Airways aircraft. Sheldrake, having boarded the plane at Croydon Aerodrome with the Dayang Muda, performed the ceremony mid-flight, reportedly shouting to be heard over the roar of the engines.
Gladys Palmer Brooke, the Dayang Muda of the Kingdom of Sarawak, clad in quite extraordinary robes for the occasion, was renamed by Sheldrake, Khair-ul-Nissa (“fairest of women”). Visiting a mosque in Paris soon afterwards, Gladys Khair-ul-Nissa told the press she had now, after a couple of false starts, found the “perfect faith” and was planning a pilgrimage to Mecca before an extended trip to the US.
Muslims in Xinjiang are facing human rights abuses: time to break the silence
Newspapers across Europe, America, the Middle East and Asia covered Gladys’ mid-air conversion. Many Muslim readers, even in the remote far west of China, were fascinated by Khalid Sheldrake – this Englishman who had converted to Islam at just 15 and subsequently done so much for their faith and seemed so well connected. Perhaps he was a man destined for higher office? Perhaps he was the man to rule a fledgling Muslim kingdom looking for a king?
What is now known as Xinjiang (“new frontier”), home to the Uygur people, was largely converted to Islam in the 9th and 10th centuries by Turkic Muslims. In the 1200s, Uygur rulers retained control of their kingdom by offering taxes and troops to the Mongol empire. Tribal alliances formed and collapsed, khanates came and went. By the time of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), part of the region was under Peking’s control and, by the 1870s, the Chinese considered it a province.
All of this was (and, of course, still is) contentious and many tribal chiefs, warlords and political factions bickered, fought and brokered alliances only to break them the next day. China was the dominant influence, though the area was contested by first the Russian empire and then the Soviet Union, just over the border in Central Asia.
In November 1933, the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (known simply as the ETR) was officially announced by various tribes and warlords who were united in their desire to form an Islamic kingdom with the city of Kashgar as its capital. It was decidedly not to be part of either the Chinese empire or the Soviet Union.
Upon his conversion, novelist Marmaduke Pickthall became Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall.
The 150,200 sq km ETR, often dubbed “Islamestan” in the Western press, was Uygur-dominated, but with Kyrgyz and other Turkic ethnic groups included as equals. The fledgling government claimed the ETR’s population was about 2 million people.
In Kashgar, Uygur warlord Hoja-Niyaz Haji had assumed the presidency of the ETR; Sabit Damolla, the post of prime minister; and Mahmut Muhiti was appointed minister of defence. Deputations were immediately sent to key people and nations. But nobody was swift to officially recognise the ETR. The Nationalist Chinese government in Nanjing thought the whole thing preposterous; the Soviets refused to deal with religious Muslims; while Afghanistan’s King Zahir Shah was wary of annoying the Chinese.
Still, one deputation had been dispatched to London to sound out Dr Khalid Sheldrake, and there they received a more positive reception.
Over tea in his living room, served byGhazia (formerly Sybil), Khalid Sheldrake welcomed the deputation from Kashgar. The men sat around making pleasantries, admiring Mrs Sheldrake’s prize-winning marigolds and dahlias and Sheldrake’s goldfish bowl. In Sheldrake’s telling, there was only one question: would he consider becoming the king of Islamestan, his wife queen, and the couple taking on the “Overlordship of Sinkiang”?
He told them he would … and that he would leave for Asia immediately.
Among the arrivals by the Dollar liner President Coolidge yesterday was Dr Khalid Sheldrake, the Moslem leader of the West, who is visiting Hongkong as part of his tour to meet Moslems of all Eastern lands South China Morning Post report, March 30, 1934
In 1933, Sheldrake headed east, first visiting Muslim communities in the Philippines and Borneo. He lectured on “The Beauties of Islam” at each stop, attracting – according to the Sarawak Gazette – large and enthusiastic Malay audiences. From Kuching, in Sarawak, Sheldrake headed to Singapore and then Hong Kong.
On October 3, 1933, the South China Morning Post reported, “Among the arrivals by the Dollar liner President Coolidge yesterday was Dr Khalid Sheldrake, the Moslem leader of the West, who is visiting Hongkong as part of his tour to meet Moslems of all Eastern lands.” While in the city, he gave a series of lectures, including one at the Lane Crawford restaurant.
On March 30, 1934, under the headline “King of Sinkiang”, the paper reported that “When Dr Sheldrake was in Hongkong a few months ago, he told a South China Morning Post reporter that he had been offered the kingdom of Sinkiang, but swore the reporter to the strictest secrecy, on the ground that if the news reached certain quarters, attempts on his life would most certainly be made.”
Leaving Hong Kong, he headed to Shanghai and then to Peking. In May 1934, he checked into the Grand Hotel des Wagons-Lits, near Peking’s main railway station. A delegation from Kashgar met Sheldrake at the hotel.
From the start, the Chinese authorities were nervous about just what this Muslim Englishman intended to do in Xinjiang. A very obvious police watch was kept on his hotel and on the entourage of ETR officials who came to meet him.
Upon entering his room, according to Sheldrake, the officials fell to their knees and kissed his hand, rendering him exceedingly embarrassed. They then formally requested he be their head of state. Sheldrake later told TheTimes of India, “I had the choice of becoming a monarch or refusing these earnest and poor people, who might lose heart and become desperate, or fall the prey of some political adventurer.”
A formal title was agreed upon – His Majesty King Khalid of Islamestan.
Sheldrake then briefly visited Japan and Thailand, for scheduled lectures, before planning to leave for Kashgar. In the meantime, the British newspapers had taken up the story – “Deserts Pickles to Become King”.
A 1932 picture of Palmer with the mystery Muslim who was often and incorrectly identified as Sheldrake.
Returning to China, Sheldrake told journalists that he would proceed immediately to Kashgar and that Queen Ghazia had arrived from England with ceremonial robes run up by her seamstress in Sydenham. She was reportedly keen to become queen of Islamestan, and her sons delighted to be princes, though she regretted that she would have to forgo her regular bridge games back in Forest Hill as these had been a great comfort to her while the future King Khalid was engrossed in his books on Islamic history, preparing to rule.
Departing Peking, the king and queen of Islamestan headed 4,350km overland to Kashgar, to attend their coronation. They travelled by camel train, accompanied by their trunks of ceremonial robes and two portable metal bathtubs Ghazia had bought in Croydon.
By June 1934, however, the newspapers were reporting that Islamestan had “hit a snag”. Rumours swirled that Sheldrake was becoming king only to steal all of Xinjiang’s not inconsiderable deposits of jade; that he was a British spy; and that, if he assumed the throne in Kashgar, then Islamestan would become a “British-controlled kingdom”.
The Chinese, naturally, complained to London; London assured Nanjing that it would not tolerate a British national attempting to rule “any form of independent regime within Chinese territory”. Japan, keen on extending its own influence in the region, also lodged an objection to Sheldrake’s coronation while fellow Muslims in Afghanistan withdrew their support for the ETR under Chinese pressure.
The shaky coalition in Kashgar started to fall apart, factions split, fighting broke out across Xinjiang. Two Chinese warlords fought each other as well as any forces either once or still aligned to the ETR. But it was probably the Soviet Union’s hostility that finished off the Islamestan dream.
The Islamic Republic was part of the buffer zone between Soviet territory and British India as well as bordering Mongolia. Succeeding the tsarists, the Soviets had continued the infamous “Great Game”, vying for influence with Britain on the Indian border while being concerned about an expansionist Japan on the Soviet-Mongolian border.
Russian newspaper Izvestia hinted that Khalid’s coronation could presage a British annexation of Xinjiang in a style similar to Japan’s recent annexation and occupation of Manchuria. There, Tokyo had placed the “last emperor” Puyi on the throne as chief executive of what they now called Manchukuo. Islamestan, a self-declared Muslim theocracy effectively controlling the large strip of land bordering Soviet Central Asia, and perhaps influencing Russia’s Muslim population under the guidance of a British subject as king, was unthinkable to Moscow.
Sheldrake, deprived of access to newspapers during his long overland journey, approached Xinjiang in early August to find the ETR collapsing and its last loyal troops surrendering to what appeared to be Soviet-backed forces. The dream of the ETR was dead and Sheldrake’s dream of ruling the new state was disappearing, too – “King’s Dreams of Asian Rule Smashed”, reported veteran United Press China correspondent John R. Morris.
The 1926 inauguration of London’s first purpose-built mosque, in Wandsworth, which Sheldrake helped finance. Picture: Alamy
King Khalid and Queen Ghazia swiftly changed direction and fled with some of the deposed leaders of Islamestan towards India, and the city of Hyderabad. Once safely in the British Raj, Sheldrake explained his relocation to India to TheIrish Times, “I am not ready to be the pawn of any political game or the nominee of any particular political power. For the moment I prefer to be an ‘absentee king’. I am awaiting events before actually proceeding to my kingdom.”
He would never proceed to Islamestan.
Eventually, Khalid and Ghazia made it back home to Forest Hill, her magnolias and his goldfish. China was glad to see the back of him, as was Moscow. His return averted a potential diplomatic incident for the Foreign Office in Whitehall. Xinjiang descended back into warlord feuding.
Back in England, Sheldrake gave lectures on Turkestan affairs but few were interested in somewhere too far away, too foreign and too complex to understand. He went back to raising funds for new mosques and Muslim charities in Britain. He travelled to Libya and Egypt; to Switzerland and Austria. He also went back to the family business, as a buyer of sour pickles in Turkey. During the second world war, he worked for the British Council in Ankara.
He returned to Forest Hill in 1944 and died in 1947, still technically the exiled king of a state that had ceased to exist 13 years earlier, and had hardly existed at all.
source: http://www.scmp.com / Post Magazine / Home> Long Reads / by Paul French / March 02nd, 2019
The Blue Plaque scheme run by English Heritage honours notable people who lived or worked in particular buildings across London.
A Blue Plaque about Walworth-born comedian and actor Charlie Chaplin is seen near East Street Market in south London on September 1, 2017. (Photo | PTI)
London :
Britain’s World War II spy Noor Inayat Khan was on Monday confirmed as the first Indian-origin woman to be honoured with a Blue Plaque at her former London home.
The Blue Plaque scheme run by English Heritage honours notable people who lived or worked in particular buildings across London.
Khan’s plaque is set to go up at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury, where she lived as a secret agent during the war. Khan, the daughter of Indian Sufi saint Hazrat Inayat Khan, was an agent for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II and was captured and killed by the Nazis in 1944 at just 30 years of age.
“It is from this house that she left on her final and fatal mission. Noor gave her life in the fight against fascism and her message of peace and tolerance of all religions is even more relevant today,” said Shrabani Basu, Chair of the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust (NIKMT).
“The blue plaque will be a wonderful addition to the area that has a special association with Noor. It will be the first Blue Plaque for a woman of Indian-origin in Britain and is a real honour,” said Basu, who has been campaigning for the plaque since 2006 as the author of ‘Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan’.
Taviton Street is close to Gordon Square, which the NIKMT chose for the installation of a memorial bust in 2012 of the spy, a descendant of the 18th century Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan.
The Blue Plaque at her home is expected to be installed following building approval within the next few years.
“The Blue Plaques Panel have agreed that Noor Inayat Khan should be commemorated with a plaque. Once a nomination has been approved, it can take a further two or three years for a plaque to be unveiled,” an English Heritage spokesperson said.
“Noor Inayat Khan has deserved recognition for years. A hero who joined Britain’s effort to fight tyranny,” said Tom Tugendhat, Chair of the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Born in September 1914 in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother, Khan was raised in both Paris and Britain.
As a Sufi, she believed in non-violence and also supported the Indian Independence movement but she felt compelled to join the British war effort against fascism. She went on to become the first female radio operator to be infiltrated into occupied France, where she was tortured and killed at Dachau concentration camp.
The SOE was an underground force established in Britain in 1940 by war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill to “set Europe ablaze”.
It recruited men and women to launch guerilla war against Adolf Hitler’s forces.
Historial records show that despite being repeatedly tortured and interrogated, Khan revealed nothing and was executed by a German SS officer and her last word was recorded as “Liberte” or freedom.
She was later awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian decoration in the UK, in recognition of her bravery.
In recent months, Khan was also a frontrunner of a campaign for an ethnic minority personality to be honoured as the face of a redesigned GBP 50 note until the Bank of England announced that the note would feature a scientific figure.
Major Indian figures to be honoured with Blue Plaques in London include Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and B R Ambedkar, who spent time in the city during the Indian national movement against Britain’s colonial rule.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> World / by PTI / February 25th, 2019
Lulu Group chairman Yusuffali M A is ranked fifth in the list of top 10 philanthropists in the Hurun Indian Philanthropy List 2018 published on Saturday.
Yusuffali M A, CMD, Lulu Group, and A J Pai, Director, Lulu Tech Park, looking at a scale model of Lulu Cyber Tower-2 | Albin Mathew
Kochi :
Lulu Group chairman Yusuffali M A is ranked fifth in the list of top 10 philanthropists in the Hurun Indian Philanthropy List 2018 published on Saturday.
Yusuffali is the lone Malayali to figure in the list which ranks benefactors who have donated `10 crore or more during the October 2017- September 2018 period, said Anas Rahman Junaid, managing director and chief researcher, Hurun Report India.
He had donated more than `50 crore to the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund in the aftermath of the flood havoc last year.
He had donated generously during the devastating temblors at Latur, Maharashtra and Bhuj in Gujarat, the 2004 tsunami tragedy, Uttarakhand deluge and floods in Jammu and Kashmir.
Yusuffali has also assisted several Indians, stranded in the Gulf countries, providing them financial aid and flight tickets.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Kerala / by Express News Service / February 10th, 2019
Dr. Arshia Khan Ph.D, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Swenson College of Science & Engineering, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA
An East End teen who shares his two bed council house with his parents and two brothers has won a £76,000 scholarship to Prince William and Harry’s old school Eton College.
Hasan Patel, 16, became the youngest speaker at a major political party conference, beating former Conservative leader William Hague.
He now has an army of followers after his rousing speech at the Labour conference last August when he was 15.
The state school student from a council estate, will rub shoulders with the elite when he joins the world-famous Berkshire school next September.
The rising political star, who currently studies at George Mitchell School in Leyton, will enter the sixth from to study A-Levels in four subjects; History, Geography, Politics and Drama and Theatre Studies.
It is a far cry from the two-bedroom council flat he shares with dad Abdul, 69, mum Aysha, 49, and two brothers Yusuf, 17, and Adam, 21.
He won his place after coming through a gruelling three-day assessment at the Berkshire School which included three entrance exams, seven interviews and a group interview.
Aged just 15 at the time, he was a year younger than the previous youngest speaker, former Conservative party leader William Hague.
Speaking of his future at Eton, he said: “I am very much there to provoke lively debate.
“I am a boy from a Leyton council estate who receives free school meals. My parents are on welfare and I share a room with my brothers.
“My dad was very smart and politically engaged but lived in abject poverty in India.
“The students at Eton are from the most privileged corners of society, we could not be any more different.
“My views may be different to them because my life experiences are very different. I think that is what impressed Eton, they wanted someone who could offer a different perspective.
“Eton is a place where they encourage debate, I genuinely believe I can offer something to the school.
He added: “My politics won’t change because I am entering a different type of environment.
“I may be attending Eton but I will still be the same boy from East London when I arrive and when I leave.I am not joining the elite but simply benefiting from the education my family would never in a million years be able to afford.
“This opportunity will allow me to return to my community better armed to tackle the many social problems we face.”
Hasan was mentored throughout the application process by his school’s Headteacher Saeed Hussain.
Hasan said: “George Mitchell is an exceptional school. The support I have received from the school, and particularly from my Headteacher, has been incredible.
“This is a place which gives us the students the tools and support to pursue our dreams. I have been here since I was three years old when I joined the nursery; it has played a crucial part in developing me into the person I am today.
Headteacher Saeed Hussain said: “Hasan is a truly exceptional young man. Aside from being incredibly bright he is one of the most engaged and motivated students I have known in my years of teaching.
“He is the type of person who will seize this opportunity generously offered by Eton. His is a name I expect we will all be hearing more of in the near future.”
Hasan’s dad left India in the early 1970s to build a better life for himself and his family. His mum moved over in the mid-1990s.
source: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk / East London & West Essex GUARDIAN / Home> News / January 22nd, 2019
Delhi Youth Welfare Association (DYWA) in collaboration with American Federation of Muslims of Indian Origin (AFMI), organized the DYWA Annual Award Celebration on 13thJanuary 2019 at Hindi Bhawan, Rouse Avenue, New Delhi.
96 students from 15 schools were felicitated with a shields, certificates and cash prizes. Five special awards were also given. Maulana Azad Education Foundation (best government organisation), Society for Promotion of Education (best non-government organization), Shehnaz (best student, class XII), Nikhat Urooj and Iffat Zareen (best students, Urdu Language/Literature in class XII) and Rabea Girls’ Public School (the school with highest number of individual awards in class X & XII).
This was the 28th edition of annual awards.
Various educationists, social activists and political leaders such as Arfa Khanum (Senior Journalist, The Wire), Dr. A.S. Nakadar (Founder Trustee and Former President AFMI), Dr. Aslam Abdullah (Editor, Muslim Observer and Director Islamic Society of Nevada) attended the convention as guests.
Siraj Hussain, former vice chancellor, Jamia Hamdard University, was the chief guest at the event. He shared a few tips on how to become civil servants. “Befriend as many books as you can. And choose best universities to pursue higher education,” he said.
Dr. Nakadar encouraged students to identify their latent talents. “Stop comparing yourself with others. It will make you better person and best among the people,” he said.
Arfa Khanum shared her journey from a small town in Uttar Pradesh to charting a successful career in journalism. “Being in Delhi is a privileged which many of you may have overlooked. You must make use the resources available to you to the optimum. You are the future of India and you would decide what this nation wants,” she said.
Aslam Abdullah underlined the perils of patriarchy. “We ought to treat at par with men. That is a perquisite for us to bring about any change,” he said.
DYWA is a well-known organization of old Delhi and has been working in the field of education for the last 28 years and AFMI (American Federation of Muslims of Indian origin) is a philanthropic charity formed by American Muslims of Indian Origin in the year 1989.
source: http://www.twocircles.net / TwoCircles.net / Home> Education> India News> Indian Muslim> Lead Story / by TCN News / January 15th, 2019
