A Muslim Convert Once Before

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ The following is taken from Lady Evelyn Cobbold’s High Road to Islam by Alasdair Soussi, on 26 th  October 2012.   As possibly the first British-born woman to make the haj , Lady Evelyn Cobbold blazed a trail for others to follow.   Alasdair Soussi looks at the life of the Scottish noblewoman, also known as Lady Zaynab, who embraced Islam.   She was buried in accordance with the principles of Islam on a distant hillside on her estate at Glencarron, Wester Ross, in the Highlands of Scotland, on a bitter day in January 1963.   Britain was in the grip of a vicious winter.   A lone piper, shaking from cold, played MacCrimmon's Lament while an imam , who had travelled from London to perform the burial rites, stood firm against the biting Scottish chill as he recited verses from the Qur’an.   It was an extraordinary moment for one of the most remarkable women of 20 th century Britain.   Born 145 years ago,...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ This is a report of Lady Zaynab Evelyn Cobbold’s funeral.   Mawlana Ya’qub Khan was Head of the Woking Muslim Mission at the time, and the Imam was Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Thufayl.   He sent this report to Lahore from the Woking Mosque and Mission.   “It was on the 26 th January 1963 that at 8 p.m. there was a telephone call, asking to speak to the imam .   I answered it and found that the caller was a British woman, who informed me that Lady Evelyn Cobbold had died at her ancestral home in Inverness.   The caller said that as Lady Cobbold was a Muslim, she had phoned the Islamic Cultural Centre in London to ask for help in organising the funeral, and they had given the contact of an undertaker.   I said that the undertaker would not be able to conduct the janazah prayer, and that prayer is the crux of the funeral.   She said, ‘This is why I have phoned you, because I know that for the funeral prayer, an ima...