Lost letter by sister-in-law indicates Winston Churchill’s propensity towards Islam

The letter was written to Churchill only days before Lady Gwendoline was scheduled to marry the British politician’s brother in 1907. As is conspicuous from the content of the letter, she had observed certain traits in his character implying a strong inclination towards Islam and an aspiration to eventually convert to the same.

Strenghtening the evidence is another letter written by Churchill himself to Lady Lytton, where he expressed a desire to be a ‘pasha’, often referring himself as one too, in the letter. The Independent, in one of the reports, has pointed out that Churchill took to dressing himself in oriental attire privately, an occupation that he shared with his friend Wilfrid S. Blunt, a renowned Arabic poet.

Warren Dockter, a scholar who discovered lady Gwendoline’s letter during his research at Cambridge for his book Winston Churchill and the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire and Diplomacy in the Middle East, has dismissed the speculations of Churchill’s intentions to convert to Islam and has argued that it was only a mere fascination and that Churchill “never seriously considered converting.” He asserted that Churchill’s folks worried in vain.

Churchill’s views “were an often paradoxical and complex combination of imperialist perceptions composed of typical orientalist ideals fused with the respect, understanding and magnanimity he had gained from his experiences in his early military career,” The Telegraph quoted the scholar who clearly told The Independent that Churchill by that time had already become an atheist.

While Dockter seems to have put an end to the conjectures that might have cropped up following the discovery of Lady Gwendoline’s letter, a streak of doubt continues to persist nevertheless.