The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

British intelligence on Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din and Lord Headley

About five years ago when I was collecting material about the Hajj of Lord Headley in 1923, in the company of Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, I obtained some British government documents from the National Archives of the UK. Visit this link at the Woking Muslim Mission website to read them.

On the way to the Hajj they passed through Egypt. One document, marked “Secret”, is the political intelligence assessment of their visit. See under heading “6. Secret note from High Commission in Egypt”. And what was the intelligence assessment? It was that Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din:

“is a particularly active Islamic propagandist”.

Then, under “7. Report from Lord Allenby to Lord Curzon”, there is the report sent by the British ambassador in Egypt, the famous general Lord Allenby, to the British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon (earlier viceroy of India). In it, Allenby writes:

“Lord Headley showed himself as an ardent Moslem and the speeches which he made revealed great devotion to the Mohammedan faith and attracted considerable attention.”

So that’s what British intelligence concluded about them!