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Hello everyone and welcome back to New Books and Christian Studies, a channel on the New Books Network Podcast. I'm your host, Graffr Gribben. Today, my guest is Brendan McNamara. Brendan teaches Religion at University College Cork and is the author of this outstanding new monograph, a reception of Abdull Bahah in Britain, East Comes West, just published by Brill 2021.
Brendan, congratulations in the book and welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Graffr, lovely to see you. It's good to see you as well. No, it's great to see you.
Listen, before we talk about the book, tell us about yourself. You've been working in this subject, the information, the expansion of the Baha'i Faith for a long time. Tell us how you came to publish this book earlier this year. Thanks, Graffr, yeah, I have actually.
In a sense, too, I've come to academic work quite late, but I've always had an interest in history and I've been, if you like, an amateur historian, so working away, and particularly around the history of the Baha'i Faith and its connection to Ireland. So I did edit a compilation of essays, a public number of essays, around the early lengths between the Baha'i Faith and Ireland about 10 years ago. But I was wondered about Abdull Bahah's visits, which were a particular interest to the West between 1911 and 1913, which were a huge event within Baha'i history. But I wondered also because it was such a public event and created such an interest on the part of that number of people at times, even from press coverage of the day.
I was wondering, well, what was it about Abdull Bahah that people were interested in? So in other words, looking at it from the other side, and having become involved in academic work a number of years ago and eventually getting to the stage where I did start the PhD, a little bit late, but better than late than never, I chose that subject, the reception of Abdull Bahah in Britain, to try and get behind that. So who were all these high-profile people who welcomed Abdull Bahah into discussion around religion just in the early years of the 20th century? What was their agenda?
What was the nature of their interest in this, if you're like Eastern religious figure who had come out of a period of mostly life being in prison, in fact, being in prison and in exile? And so in a sense, the work then developed in my mind around what would it be like not to do a book about Abdull Bahah per se, but about that reception, those individuals, who I found were quite extraordinary, interesting, fascinating people in their own right, and had multiple ideas around what was happening with respect to religion in their own time for various different reasons. And so in a way, it was kind of recovering that history. I think what you find is that that history is looked at in a particular way, that's what I found, what I would contend, and that maybe not the full picture.
So it wasn't necessarily trying to recover everything the way it actually was, but to somehow throw some light on some obscure aspects of that period, which would be significant, and would be significant for us in the here and now. So I've worked on that. I've worked also on issues of identity and looking at figures in Irish history who were involved in the, within the Empire, the Age of Emperor, is very topical at the moment, and one of the projects I'm interested in doing now is around that as well. People from Ireland who fenched up Eniran in the early days of the Bahai fate, for example, who a doctor from, who was half Irish from Clekely, wife of the British Minister to the Shah in 1852, around the very tumultuous days of the birth of the Bahai faith Eniran, and how they, in service to the Empire and being from Catholic backgrounds, how they negotiated all those different challenges around identity, and were witness to some very extraordinary happening, and left records of them, so which was quite interesting.
So I've published on that as well. So yeah, this was a labor of interest, but it was also, I was very conscious that coming from my own, but my background that I was going to be looking around the corner at it to some extent, around areas that haven't been looked at before, and I was very grateful then having come through the study of religious department in UCC, and having studied under some wonderful people, Professor Brian Buckingham, Oliver Shabra, that really I was, it was almost, I was training to do this piece of work, and hopefully other pieces of work are into the future. Great. Well, thanks Brian, that's really helpful just to contextualise the book that we're talking about today, the reception of Abdu'l-Baha in Britain, as I say, just published by Brill 2021.
You've mentioned there the Bahai faith, and obviously Abdu'l-Baha as well. Could you tell us really, really quickly for any listeners who aren't familiar with that tradition, how it emerged, when it emerged, where it emerged, maybe some of the principal themes in Bahai teaching that Abdu'l-Baha then was able to take forward? Well, it emerged in Iran in the mid-1800s, and Abdu'l-Baha is actually the son of the founder of the Bahai faith, and there are two principal figures in Bahai history, founding figures, the Bab and Bahawala, both of them were mentioned in the book just to give background Crawford, and they emerged in a Shia context, in Shia milieu, and the idea was that they were teaching, that sense that was the founding theme of their new religion, was that they really were fulfilling prophecies within Shia tradition, that there would be a new messenger, a prophet of God would come, and that it would bring new teachings for humanity in this material. So, what happened as an outcome of that is that for a variety of different reasons, and fascinating reasons, it caused a tremendous tumult, tremendous air of interest on the part of many, many thousands of people from all different sections and segments of society, such that the clerical and civil authorities arose to try and extirpate this new religion, and as a result many thousands of people were killed, the Bahab himself, the first founding figure was executed.
Bahawala, because of his family background perhaps, which was from a very influential family, with very strong royal connections, rather than being executed, he was exiled, and so that begins the story of Adubha, because Adubha is a child with his father, was sent out of their home country from place to place, until eventually in a distant part of the Ottoman Empire, which was Syrian Palestine, they were consigned to the prison city of Akka, and that was their final, was to be their final destination, to try and remove them from any centre of influence, and so Adubha, Bahawala of course, lived and passed away in 1892 during that period, and Adubha for another number of years was still consigned, not necessarily always within a prison cell, but under house the rest, sometimes those restrictions were eased, but certainly always within the city of Akka, and until he was in his late 60s. So the major themes of the Bahawala are around the onus of God and onus of religion, and so the teachings teach that there is a connection between all the religions in that they come from one divine source, and that this is the latest emanation of God's will to humanity socially, it has aspects that meet the needs socially, but spiritually it reiterates and amplifies spiritual themes that existed all the major religions, that would have been quite challenging, of course at the time within an Islamic milieu, particularly where that is regarded as being the last chapter in the scheme of divine revelation, and explains some of the pretty awful treatment that was meted out to people who accepted this new faith. So the life then of Adubha in the prison city of Akka is one of support and very much serving the needs of this newborn faith, the center of which is his father, and during these times of exiles from one place to place, it so happens then of course that the seed of this new faith is moving further and further away from its country of origination, and small communities of the highs are developing in all those eastern countries that surround Iran, Iraq, and then of course into the Syrian Palestine, which of course I should say has now become modern the Israel, which is quite an interesting fact that the world center of the Baha'i faith, the center of it spiritually and administratively surrounding the resting place, the tomb of Baha'u'llah, and administrative center close by is all in modern Israel. So Adubha then finally in his middle to late 60s, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan and the Yom Tark revolution, was finally allowed along with many other religious and political prisoners, finally to be free.
But at that stage, even during those years, as I mentioned, there was an interest that developed in countries close by, but also that word spread far and wide, and sometimes it came actually interestingly enough from missionaries returning to the west, for one word, who would bring word or newspaper reports or diplomats. I think for example, I think I mentioned the wife of the British Minister in Tehran at the time of the Bob, was Lady Shee, who was actually a wolf from, her name was Wolf, named named Wolf from Ennis, and she wrote a very influential travelogue in 1856, having been in Tehran around the time of the the Babi upheavals, called glimpses of life and manners in Persia, in which she details quite a number of the events that take place, that she kind of gathered information about from her time in the British mission there. So word was spreading, and interestingly enough, even in the newspapers in Ireland, the north and south local newspapers had syndicated reports of these happenings. So it was that a number of sympathizers, even before Adubha'a's release from prison, were able to travel from the United States, from the United Kingdom, there was a very famous group of people under Mrs.
Hirst, who was the wife of the newspaper mogul who travelled in the early 1900s, before Adubha'a was released in 1909, 1908, that they were able to visit with Adubha'a, it was difficult, there were restrictions, but they were still able to see him in his home. And so in that way, word was coming out of this very extraordinary charismatic figure who was in prison for practically most of his life. And Adubha'a had taken over, which I should have said, on his father's passing as head of the Baha'i religion, he was the head of the religion after his father's passing, by didn't of his father's appointing him as such in his will and testing. So Adubha'a was a known figure then, he was certainly in the Levant and also becoming more known otherwise.
So the scenes, if you like, of the Baha'i faith, then were beginning to spread in the 1890s, early 1900s, and obviously as you mentioned, there are some very significant society figures who take an interest in Adubha'a, his situation, his teachings and so on. And one of the things you should always find in the book is that when these ideas eventually begin to migrate to England, that they take root in quite surprisingly, perhaps, a little you that might be characterized by obviously an interest in Eastern religion, but also an interest in Celticism and spiritualism. What's going on when people with those kinds of interests take an interest in Adubha'a? It's quite fascinating, isn't it, Crawford?
And it was quite fascinating to me to see, I remember speaking about Adubha'a at a summer school once and talking about this marvelous figure, Orje Campbell, who was a congregationalist minister in London at the time, probably the most renowned religious figure of his era in terms of how well known he was, very charismatic, known as being the arbiter of a new reformation, some people thought within liberal Protestantism. And somebody said when I mentioned his name, they said, well, why was he interested in Adubha'a? Because he became very interested in Adubha'a'a. He and a number of others, kind of Wilberforce, who was really a scion of the Anglican church, one of his background, his grandfather had been the abolitionist, he was the Archdeacon of Westminster, Chaplin to the Parliament in Westminster, and he also became quite interested.
And then you have other people, Teletus' spiritualist, Wesley Tudor-Paul, who are the theosophists, of course. So I think what it be tokens is, and when we see what happens is that there is a tremendous interest in religious inquiry, and that if you're looking at it from the perspective of what is normally considered Victorian crisis of faith, which has been problematized by scholars now, it wasn't a matter of just people losing their religion as a factor of new interest in science, development and enlightenment thinking and so forth. There was also a tremendous evangelical movement at that time, and you probably know more about this than I do certainly, Crawford. And there was a certain response to that.
And one of those responses was within, it was a religious response or Protestant response, was to look for ideas outside. I know one of the commentators at that time, when they look at what was a time of very perturbation for Protestantism within the British experience. When they look at that time, they say there was no need to look outside Christianity to understand what that was all about, but in fact, looking back at that period now, what we can see is in fact that people began to really look outside. There was a tremendous universalist idea that religions were connected to each other, albeit people were looking through a Christian lens or filter, they still believed very deeply in the principles of Christianity.
They were still willing to think that there wasn't just one religion in the world, that many religions had something that they needed to connect with. And I think why were they interested was an interesting question. I think perhaps they also thought that if they could find some kind of spiritual germs of inspiration, that it would somehow also be helped to renew what had become in their estimation somewhat Moribond, that was trying to respond to this evangelical movement, a great movement in Britain at the time. And that brought together a quite extraordinary diverse range of people who were beginning to inquire about religions outside of Christianity.
And so I think he's called it journeying outside of traditional Christianity. So they were journeying, they weren't necessarily going to leave most of them. Some of them did, but they were journeying and they became interested in Buddhism. There's a great movement and interest in Buddhism at the time.
If we talk about the late 1800s, early 1900s, there's an interest in, and then theosophy and Baha'i and all kinds of pelticism and Tudor Paul and the peltism is very interesting in this context. And I think that maybe you're looking at then also what wasn't looked at in great detail, I thought when I came to write the book, was that this actually resulted in the visits to Britain of these very interesting religious figures, real icons, like Vivekananda, who was the dentist Hindu figure, like Dharmapala, the great Buddhist modernist, Inaiyat Khan, who was also very influential, maybe not known founder of Western Sufism. And then Abdubaha, and I thought, well, there's a kind of a genre there. There's nothing happening here.
And a lot of the people who were interested in Abdubaha were also interested in Vivekananda, slightly earlier, were also interested in Dharmapala, were also interested in theosophy. Theosophy also seems to be one of those connectors between people like Tudor Paul, the Keltist, and Wilberforce, the Anglican Archdeacon, and Orjay Campbell, the Congregations Minister of the Minister of the Minister of the Minister of the Indian, and then also, and it did seem to be, you mentioned earlier, that people in high society, it did seem to be people in high society, maybe people who had more time to think about these things who were interested in these religions. So you have figures in the establishment, Lady Blumfield, actually, was Irish, also an Irish woman who married into an establishment family in Britain, and others, Sister Nivedita, who was from Armah, who became Vivekananda's star believer in support, in Britain, and later in India. There was an extraordinary figure like this, and I could see that there was a kind of a web of connection between them.
There was a kind of a field of religious inquiry, I think, I began to think about it in terms of this field, that had connections between the centre and the edge, and there was movement between one area and the other in terms of influence and so forth, and it created a great energy that somehow later on was not captured in the recording of it, and that comes then to later on in trying to think about why if that was such an exciting milieu, if that was so important, and when Abdu Baha came to Britain, he was already a known figure that people had known about the Bob, that people like E.G. Brown, who had spent most of their academic career, a lot of their academic career bringing the figure of the Bob to an English reading audience, that why isn't that remembered? I think the amount of coverage that attracted at the time are of interest that attracted at the time. So, criticism is very interesting, because there is that connection between people like Wesley Tudor Paul, I mentioned and wrote through this in the book the Glastonbury Cop, and his idea of creating an indigenous Christian identity, again, a kind of a renewal, a Christian renewal around Glastonbury, around Sacred Landscape of that Glastonbury, finding this Cop, which had actually been placed there, but still they believed had been at one time in the possession of these, certainly in that around at that time, and had been at one time, not the Holy Grail, he said, and there's this fascinating story about how he tries to track down the prevalence of that Cop, trying to again ignite this renewal of Christian, not just in England, but also in Scotland and Ireland, which brings him to Constantinople, because he feels that there is documentation, it's a quest of extraordinary proportions, and it's wild in a way, it's a dog, it's a dog, it's a robot, he's arrested, but what happens there is that it's the first time that he comes in contact with Baha'is and with the idea that there is this figure who has been imprisoned for most of his life in nearby Aca, and who has this influence, albeit being a prisoner, he has this influence and popularity, and he became enchanted with the idea and began to investigate, came back to Britain after one of these quest adventures, thinking that he probably was the person who knew about the Baha'is, the Baha'is figure of Abdu'baha, and found that there were actually others, and amongst them, amongst those others, were people who were also interested in this last and very cops, so there's all these connections.
So, I mean, you book described really vividly Brendan, both the very personal quest of some way to the pole, but also, Abdu'baha's visits, for example, to RJ Campbell's church, where I think you tell us 5, 6, 7,000 people regularly crowding out, and he has the opportunity to address a vast audience in the centre of London and the city temple, and I think you also tell us that Campbell presents Abdu'baha as someone who is essentially preaching the same thing, the same message. So, what does that tell us about the nature of liberal Protestantism, or that phase of liberal Protestantism? Often, you know, often when we read the intellectual history of this period, Protestant liberals are presented as being very rational, very hard-edged, in quite in contrast to the theosophists and the spiritualists and the kelterists of this world, and yet Abdu'baha speaks to them all. How do you explain that?
That's a really good question, Crawford. I think also, you know, it's a factor of how this history is captured, and it's probably a later point in the book to see why the story of these figures and their interests is not fully drawn, and it's some part of the, they have a part in that themselves, in the way that they later on recall their history, or they may be like Wilberforce in the war comes, and he dies during the war, never really probably has a chance to reflect Campbell does, because he lives quite a lot longer. But for a variety of reasons, some of it to do with themselves, that history is not very well drawn, and anything before the war is kind of looked at it being just a little bit, a little bit idiosyncratic, a little bit off the wall, I think even one of the well-known historians, which talks about that period being a feat, you know, so in a way they're blamed also for causing everybody to get involved in this war, and I'm not to be forgiven, but the understanding of that period before the war is not very good, and that was one of the things that I wanted to do in the book, was to recover the story of these wonderful individuals, and how they did strike out to experiment and explore religious ideas, and have a discussion which was vibrant around religion in a way that really didn't come about again until the 1960s with the rise of the counterculture, if you like, maybe that's a bit fanciful, but I think that that's probably not a bad comparison. And so it doesn't, you don't find these things easily, I couldn't find those things easily as to why these people were interested.
Until I began to read the newspapers at the time, in particular the Christian Commonwealth newspaper, which was the vehicle of Orje Campbell, the congregation of Christianity. Now, you mentioned about the 7000, I think we can't get an idea about how popular this man actually was, you know, the boroceros made, I don't know, coming from a Catholic background myself, I don't know what Protestants have used in rosaries, but it is a recovery count that rosaries were made from his sermons, and you could write in and get a picture of him, and a calendar, and all kinds of, there was all kinds of a personal memorabilia around him, and he was an explorer, but of course he inspired tremendous affection, and also from the hardline members of the establishment, the opposite as well. He was a very controversial figure, in that sense, but hugely popular. And maybe that's one of the reasons why he did attract such an evanement response from some of the, from the, some of the people in the African church, because he was so popular, and of course that wasn't necessarily always the case with Kergebir, but he was quite an explorer figure, and he was very interested in, you know, for example, not only did he have Adro Baha come along and speak at his church, one of those, one of those Sunday sermons, I think it was, just after Adro Baha had arrived in London for the first time, in September, 1911, Campbell and the editor of that newspaper, a man called Dawson, visited him, and they covered his arrival, his big spread about him being in the newspaper.
In fact, they covered every one of his appointments or appearances in Britain throughout his visit, but they also asked him to come, to the city temple on a Horbarn, Apodok, to, to, to speak, and there was a great closeness of interest on, on, on, on, on, as well, there's no doubt about it, and he also had, and he best, and come and talk about, about the ossophy, he had to seek a chested income, and you know, so there was, there was all kinds of people that he was interested in having, but you don't get that very much in his writings, or in writings of the time, but you do get it in the Christian Commonwealth, you get the interest, his interests expressed in articles about Buddhism and Hinduism and about Vedantism and all kinds of interesting ideas, you have people like Tudor Paul writing in, in the Christian Commonwealth, you have people like T.K. Chaney, who was a, or a professor of, of, of, of, of, of Christianity's that, that is not the exact concept of, it's no interpretation of Christianity. Thank you. Goford, at Oxford, and you have him also editing, being a part of the, the editorial board of that newspaper, it really is an extraordinary expression, I think, of maybe your response to the, to their, to their time, maybe, a zeitgeist, of, now, beginning to find out about new religions for the first time, you know, you have material appearing in English, English language for the first time around different religions, you have these figures who are known who actually have come to Britain and who were quite familiar to many.
You have, I suppose, if you could call it a religious literacy, it didn't exist afterwards and wasn't reflected back on the period. It was almost like those many years after the war and those difficult times. And if you think of it in Irish terms after independence and the whole construction of what it meant to be decided of the border of the river Crawford, about what it meant to be Irish and what that actually left out and what it could only include. And one of the things about the identity generally of people around those middle centuries after the First World War was that it lost that element of religious literacy which seemed to take the air, seemed to be taken out of this religious field of inquiry with the onset of the First World War.
So, your book tells us around in the first two visits that I've done about how I made to Britain, wasn't there? The first one takes place very much and with that iris celebrity about it. The second one will be a little bit different. Some of his supporters, Campbell, Wilberforce have backed away a little bit and of course, Campbell won't just back away.
He will eventually come to recognise this as a very grievous mistake. And you mentioned the war. Is it the war? I think you mentioned earlier on as well that Wilberforce for example is promoting participation in the war due to pull himself, signs up, doesn't he?
And serves within the army. Is it the war that takes this team out of this movement or is something else at play? Again, I think that probably could do with even more examination Crawford. What I tended to think having looked at it was that the war is that great big climactic tarrick which kind of collapses a particular worldview and it brings home something like you mentioned Wilberforce.
Wilberforce was sometimes would step back and would sometimes come forward as with the Glastonbury cup, as with Abdu Baha. It didn't be talk and that he lost personal interest but he was sometimes the subject of mild removal from the authorities. I suppose looking to the positions that he occupied he probably was wise to be careful at times. And also maybe he suffered for his interests because he was never made a bishop and there was all kinds of other things that happened.
Even when he's a bitter he's written it's a little bit, it's a little bit, it's not very complimentary shall we say. So he does step back a little bit during the second visit. I think particularly because of something that happened in the United States, when Abdu Baha comes to Britain and then he goes back to the Levant and then goes to the United States and on his way back stops in Britain and France and other countries on the way. That's the second visit.
So during the second visit there is a year between, yes, things have happened. Abdu Baha has been in the United States and has been a little bit of a frison in that he has been invited to speak at the Episcopalian Church in New York and says something, was invited to sit on the bishop's chair and this is because the minister there, like Milver Force was quite interested in what he had to say. And this makes its way back by the end of newspaper reports that are contained in the church times. And it's like a little bit of a approval to Wilber Force, but it certainly seems to soften his interest.
But what happens when the war comes is of a different order I think, in that the war comes his nephew and his son is it all involved after the front and it becomes much more personal and there is a crisis within Christianity's then. This is a crisis of values I think is the way I put it in the book where now you are fighting your friendly, formerly friendly German, Christian people and it's Christian against Christian which brings in, it really must have been so difficult. When they were thinking of Christianity, moving out and in a sense into this bright new world of other religions and maybe even being the kind of overshadowing or overarching religion or religious sensibility that would somehow take them all in and now you have this happening and it's frightfully traumatizing. And you saw you have Wilber Force actually saying which is something that seems so out of character in a set piece, a sermon he gives in Westminster Abbey, very dignituous with the government and so on in present and officers and soldiers ready to go off that it's really doing the will of God to kill Germans basically, which is something that seems to be completely opposite to what he would have felt.
Campbell is a slightly different, I suppose saying you look at what has happened individually with them as well. There is this great trauma but it's experienced of course individually. For Campbell who always had that kind of a certain fragility of temperament and it was always this kind of mystery illnesses that he would suffer from. Which before the onset of war in fact he did seem to suffer some kind of a breakdown and he's withdrawn from public life.
So during the second visit even though he invites Abdul Bahati's home and invites seminarians to come and meet Abdul Bahar and there is a very convivial discussion and interplay between them and a lot of affection would seem to be obvious. Wilber Force, sorry Campbell at that stage has very much retired from public life and his breakdown becomes complete with the onset of war and he really resides from all previous positions, withdraws from computationalism and takes Anglican orders and then enters into a life of quiteism really until he's passing in 1956. So he was around for quite a long time but never afterwards craved the public eye and in fact went to such lengths and he writes in his autobiography which is 1916 quite early and really Force wears any interest in any of the other religions. And it seems to kind of as you say said this was all a mistake but other commentators have said that it wasn't necessarily this sort of a lucid mind that one of them says.
But all those years afterwards he doesn't comment on it and at the end he leaves instructions that all his papers should be destroyed which they were unfortunately. So they're only passing the rest of it. So I thank Tudor Paul, so I went to these figures I suppose to exemplify the fact that the crisis was fairly generally the crisis of values would experience individually. Tudor Paul is kind of anti war but still feels this sense of duty and is very interested in spiritual experiences and spiritualism and Celticism as I mentioned this idea of an indigenous Christianity growing up around sacred landscape in Glastonbury.
But he also has this sense of the movement of souls from here to what he called Odila the next level and how he could facilitate that. He doesn't really think he enlists as a soldier even though because of his status and the work he did he was in a protected employment he didn't have to go but he also could have gone in as an officer and he lives as an enlisted soldier and is for those first number of months the experience of being there until eventually the persuading to take a commission and he finds himself in the wounded and then transferred to the intelligence wing in Egypt where in a very interesting serendipity he also is involved in Abdu'baha's protection around the coming to the conclusion of the first World War when Abdu'baha back now in Palestine the Israel is under threat as the war has come to an end from the Mufti of Jerusalem who was kind of out to again religious persecution thing and the and should of Paul is influential in garnering support amongst high profile people back in the UK that when Alan D is going into take Palestine that they actually protect the position of Abdu'baha that's why that's what actually happens so an interesting comment along with an answer to your question I'm sorry I'm not so offended as always a real pleasure thing that when you read the pages of the Christian Commonwealth and you realize just how diverse were the interests of these people and how they were connected to each other and how they're kind of intersected like a web connection that it really I think the war did exploded in a way and showed them all the other factors that are not aware of. Well it's a fascinating inclusion to fascinate and book Brendan and I'm really grateful for you for writing it and for coming on to the show to talk about it today. Can we ask you what you're working on next?
I'm sorry I didn't realize this going to it. I've talked too much. I know you said we should talk but I'm actually very interested in that whole religious environment in Ireland prior to independence and I became interested in this graduate of A.U.I. Galway called James O'Kanili who went out as a member of the Indian civil service and became a high ranking judge of the High Court and a scholar of Islam and so I'm interested in this whole juxtaposition of identity and empire and also then the validity of the work that is done in these circumstances because these are orientalists and that whole dimension and he was translating texts around Wahhabism and they were of course for the purpose of protecting the powers that be against what they perceived to be arising islamist movement connected to Wahhabism in Arabia that had come out of that.
So this is the late 1800s, late 1856. So I'd become interested in that. I was looking at something that Brian Buckingham Christopher Shackill wrote around Max Arthur McAuliffe who you may know is this Irish guy who also went out to be part of the Indian civil service and ended up as a scholar of Sikhism and a translator of the sacred texts of the Sikhs and who's very highly regarded and when he was writing about him in one of the Irish academic studies, academic studies, religion journal articles he talks about the fact that in Ireland in the 1900s there was more known about religion in the east than there was in the year 2000. And of course the fact is that is the movement between places like Indian Ireland and the involvement in empire at all different levels from the highest level to the lowest level.
But there's also this milieu that I just spoke about or that I cover in the book which also affected Ireland because Abdu'l-Baha is also appearing in the newspapers in Ireland. The going back even further the predicament of the Babis and their persecution is appearing in the Ross common chronicle and in the, you know, there's advertisements for talks about Abdu'l-Baha in the Unitarian church in the Balamina Observer and so that everybody's reading newspapers. But there is this kind of religious literacy and Brian Buckingham, Christopher Schack, had mentioned people like Max Arthur Macaula and Sister Navidita and you know you have other people, Mir Olad Ali who was a great Islamic scar teaching at Trinity in those times, a little bit later on the Bhai Rhaaju George Townsend, people who actually stayed here as well as people who went out and of course Uda Madoka scholars have just written this wonderful book, Brian and a couple of others have written this wonderful book about the Irish Buddhist monk in Burma around this time. So what I've done is I'm interested in that period and in those figures who are generating knowledge and how we can place that knowledge, where we can place it.
I think it's a very contemporary issue, maybe even a contentious issue now where we are in this side of the country about Ireland's involvement in empire but also just celebrating the fact that there is some very interesting because I mean, okay, nearly the person I mentioned, of course, is not Black and white, he's not just an orientalist, he's not just trying to stave off this movement of Wahhabism, he's also trying to promote education, he's also involved in translating other things around Islam, he's become a kind of a lover of and that's quite complicated. Well, Brian, that sounds fascinating, that sounds like a great project and hopefully we'll have you back to talk about it sometime. That would be great. Very much, go for it.
Listen, thanks for your time today and thanks for rating this book with a reception of Adal Bahan, Britain East Comes West published by Brill 2021. Thanks for your time and take care. Thank you so much, Crawford and great to see you. Thank you so much.
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