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Marmaduke Pickthall

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Marmaduke Pickthall
Marmaduke Pickthall Portrait
Born
Marmaduke William Pickthall

(1875-04-07)7 April 1875
Cambridge Terrace, London, England
Died19 May 1936(1936-05-19) (aged 61)[1]
Porthminster Hotel, St Ives, Cornwall, England
Resting placeBrookwood Cemetery, Brookwood, Surrey, England
Occupation(s)Novelist, Islamic scholar
Known forThe Meaning of the Glorious Koran

Muhammad Marmaduke William Pickthall (7 April 1875 – 19 May 1936) was an English Islamic scholar. His 1930 English translation of the Qur'an, titled the The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, is one of the most widely known and used in the English-speaking world.

Biography

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Pickthall was born in London, on 7 April 1875, the elder of the two sons of the Christian cleric Charles Grayson Pickthall (1822–1881) and his second wife, Mary Hale.[2] As a schoolboy at Harrow, Pickthall was a classmate and friend of Winston Churchill.[3] In June 1917, Pickthall gave a speech defending the rights of Palestinian Arabs, in the context of the debate over the Balfour Declaration. In November 1917, Pickthall converted to Islam, publicly taking the shahada at the Woking Muslim Mission. 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.[4] Pickthall was buried in the Muslim section at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, England.[5]

References

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  1. "Marmaduke Pickthall - a brief biography". British Muslim Heritage. Retrieved 4 February 2020.
  2. Shaheen, Mohammad. "Pickthall, Marmaduke William (1875–1936)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.
  3. "The Victorian Muslims of Britain". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2016-06-18.
  4. Jamie Gilham (2017). "Marmaduke Pickthall and the British Muslim Convert Community". Marmaduke Pickthall : Islam and the modern world. Leiden. ISBN 9789004327597.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. "The Victorian Muslims of Britain". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2016-06-18.