Churchill’s relatives feared he might convert to Islam

Relatives of the late Sir Winston Churchill feared he might convert to Islam, a recently discovered letter reveals.

A missive written in August 1907 to Churchill by his future sister-in-law Lady Gwendoline Bertie, in which she pleads with him not to convert, was discovered at the University of Cambridge, the Telegraph reported.

“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,” wrote Bertie, who would later marry Churchill’s brother Jack.

“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,” she urged.

The letter was discovered by Dr. Warren Dockter, a history research fellow at Cambridge who was conducting research for his book “Winston Churchill and the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire and Diplomacy in the Middle East.”

“Churchill had fought in Sudan and on the North West frontier of India so had much experience on being in ‘Islamic areas’,” Dockter told the Telegraph on Sunday.

The British prime minister, a key figure in the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, was a strong admirer of Islam and the “culture of the Orient,” Dockter indicated.

“His views of Islamic people and culture were an often paradoxical and complex combination of imperialist perceptions composed of typical orientalist ideals fused with the respect, understanding and magnanimity he had gained from his experiences in his early military career, creating a perspective that was uniquely Churchillian,” he wrote in his book.

Despite the fascination however, Churchill is said to have had a limited knowledge of the religion as demonstrated in an incident in which, as colonial secretary during the early 1920s, he asked what the difference was between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.