Images of Arrival

Images of Arrival

It was a grainy black and white photograph of her father, sharply dressed in a suit and tie, smiling as pigeons flap around him for seed in London’s Trafalgar Square that planted another in Sadiya Ahmed’s mind.

“It was like I was seeing him for the first time, not as my father, but as a young man in his 20s with hopes and aspirations in his eyes,” recalled Ahmed, a former teacher.

Knowing that stories of migration and newly forging identities primarily existed as oral histories, Ahmed decided to create a central archive of Muslim life in Britain, mainly since the 1950s.

The Everyday Muslim Archive was created in 2010 in conjunction with the Bishopsgate Institute, a cultural hub in East London. Three years later, Ahmed launched EverydayMuslim.org, initially populating the site with her own parent’s photographs.

Over the past decade, Ahmed and a team of volunteers have interviewed scores of British Muslims about their experiences, from being the only Muslim in the village to the search for halal meat.

The Everyday Muslim Archive now hosts three digital archive collections including an overview of Britain’s first purpose-built mosque and a history of London’s Black Muslim community. The site also offers a podcast and tailored educational packs for schools.

More than a mere resource, the archive offers a rich exploration that taps into psychological, socio-economic, emotional and cultural perspectives. The records are as comprehensive as they are compelling, sometimes painful, sometimes hopeful. Significantly, they give those sharing their experiences ownership over their own stories.

Eye-opening snapshots reveal degree-wielding women who became seamstresses to support their families; they include headhunted engineers such as Ghulam Haidar from Pakistan who led the construction of the Thames Water barrier; and they highlight white English converts like Major John Farmer who became a voice for British Islam.

While a lack of authentic accounts can lead to misinformed notions that feed toxic debates regarding the loaded question of integration and cast Muslims as ‘outsiders’, such archives wield a soft power that challenges negative attitudes and encourages more understanding.

“Archives are not only stories of what happened, more than that they give the British Muslim experience shape, context and texture. We need to mediate tangible connections between our heritage, our struggles and our representation in wider society,” says Ahmed.

She is now working on a ‘digital map’ built with user created content that bridges researchers to communities, and links museum documents to family albums hitherto left on dusty shelves.

The digital map is almost ready to launch, but inevitably needs funding to become sustainable. But the greater obstacle, Ahmed finds, is apathy from Muslim communities themselves. “We have to invest in our own histories, otherwise there is a danger of losing them. There is a danger of losing who we are.”

Thanks to Ahmed’s perseverance, the Everyday Muslim Archive has received some recognition, winning best new community archive in 2015 at the Community Archives and Heritage Awards, a national initiative promoting community archives, as well as being cited in several academic theses.

It was a grainy black and white photograph of her father, sharply dressed in a suit and tie, smiling as pigeons flapped around him in London’s Trafalgar Square, that planted an idea in Sadiya Ahmed’s mind.

“It was like I was seeing him for the first time, not as my father, but as a young man in his 20s with hopes and aspirations in his eyes,” she recalled.

Knowing that stories of migration and newly forged identities are generally passed on orally, rather than being formally documented, Ahmed decided to establish a central archive of Muslim life in Britain primarily since the 1950s.

The Everyday Muslim Archive was created in 2013 in conjunction with the Bishopsgate Institute, an archive and library in Liverpool Street in east London. Ahmed launched the website, initially hosting old photographs of her parents along with images from her first archive project featuring post war migration of South Asians to London.

Over the past decade, Ahmed and a team of volunteers have interviewed hundreds of British Muslims about their varied experiences, which include settling in rural communities and searching for places to buy halal meat.

The Everyday Muslim Archive now hosts three digital archive collections, including an overview of Britain’s first purpose-built mosque and a history of London’s Black Muslim community. The site also offers a podcast and tailored educational packs for schools.

The photographs and oral histories offer a rich exploration of British Muslim life. Most importantly, they give those sharing their experiences ownership of their own stories.

Highlights include photographs of university-educated women who became seamstresses to support their families; engineers such as Ghulam Haidar from Pakistan, who led the construction of the Thames Barrier; and white British converts like Major John Farmer, who became a campaigning voice for British Muslims.

According to Ahmed, archives such as this one “give the British Muslim experience shape, context and texture” and create “tangible connections between our heritage, our struggles and our representation in wider society.”

She is now working on a “digital map” consisting of user-created content that will link researchers to communities and museum documents to old family photograph albums.

While the digital map is almost ready to launch, it requires funding from the heritage sector as well as Muslim communities to become sustainable. “We have to invest in our own histories, otherwise there is a danger of losing them. There is a danger of losing who we are,” she said.

The Everyday Muslim Archive has also received some recognition, winning best new community archive in 2015 at the Community Archive Awards. The collection has also been cited in several academic theses.

For Ahmed, the archive is not only a public service but a deeply personal undertaking. She recalls a particularly moving interview with a husband and wife from an affluent family in Pakistan, who moved to a squalid box room in east London in the 1960s. Far from encountering a promised land, they were met with poor living conditions, smog and isolation.

“It can be heartbreaking to hear these tales, but it’s all part of our journey. If we don’t know our stories, we can’t celebrate, understand or learn from them,” she said.

For Ahmed, the presence of Muslims in Britain isn’t to be viewed from the margins, but centrally contextualised within British history.

“I never intended the project to be a Muslim-only archive,” she said. “I have always wanted it to be housed in our local and national archives. Because this is part of our shared British history. These stories belong to everyone.”

This article was originally published in Hyphen Online on 7th June 2022. To view it and to see the images and captions, click here.