How Churchill's future sister-in-law had to plead with him not to convert to Islam

The Prime Minister who led Britain to victory in the Second World War was apparently so taken with Islam and Oriental culture that his relatives wrote to try and persuade him not to become a Muslim. 

He had been exposed to the religion during his time serving in North West India and Sudan.

The revelation contradicts some of the beliefs expressed by Churchill in his own writings. 

In the note, written in August 1907, Lady Gwendoline Bertie - who would later marry his brother, Jack - urged Churchill to 'fight against' the desire to convert. 

She wrote: 'Please don’t become converted to Islam; I have noticed in your disposition a tendency to orientalise [fascination with the Orient and Islam], Pasha-like tendencies, I really have.

'If you come into contact with Islam your conversion might be effected with greater ease than you might have supposed, call of the blood, don’t you know what I mean, do fight against it.'

The letter was discovered by Warren Docker, a history research fellow at Cambridge University, while researching his forthcoming book, Winston Churchill and the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire and Diplomacy in the Middle East.

He told the Sunday Telegraph that Lady Gwendoline's concerns may not have been unfounded as Churchill admired the military prowess and expansion of the Ottoman Empire. 

The future Prime Minister also took the progressive stance that Islam and Christianity should be viewed as equal.

In the same year as Lady Gwendoline's letter, Churchill wrote one to Lady Lytton that read: 'You will think me a pasha [a rank of distinction in the Ottoman Empire]. I wish I were'. 

Dr Dockter said that Churchill had 'much experience on being in "Islamic areas" after serving in Sudan and on the North West frontier of India. 

But he added that his fascination was 'largely predicated on Victorian notions which heavily romanticised the nomadic lifestyle and honour culture of the Bedouin tribes'.

(dailymail.co.uk)