Maulana Abdul Majeed
by Mirza Masud Beg, M.A.
The Light (Pakistan), 16th/24th April 1977 Issue (Vol. 57, Nos. 15–16, p. 16)
Readers of the “Light” will be grieved to know that our dear friend Maulana Abdul Majeed of the Woking Muslim Mission, passed away on 1st March 1977.
Inna lilahi wa inna ilaihi rajiun (Surely we are Allah’s and to Him we shall surely return) [The Holy Quran, 2:156].
Funeral services were offered for him at the Islamic Cultural Centre, Regent’s Park, London on Tuesday 8th March, 1977 and on the same day he was buried at Brookwood Cemetery (Muslim Section) Brookwood, Surrey. Funeral prayer (Janaza ghaibana) was offered for him at the Ahmadiyya House on Sunday 13th March. Ahmadiyya Jama’ats in India, Pakistan and other parts of the world also offered prayers for the deceased. His loss was mourned throughout the Muslim World.
Maulana Abdul Majeed will be remembered in the English speaking world as a leading spokesman of Islam. For 20 years he was the Imam at the Shah Jehan Mosque, Woking, Surrey. This Mosque which was built in 1889, became the Headquarters of the Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust founded by the late Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, the renowned Muslim Missionary of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement. Maulana Abdul Majeed joined the mission in 1926 and was also appointed Editor of the Islamic Review, which for a long time was the only journal in the English language on Islamic topics circulating throughout the world. During World War II, he edited for the Ministry of Information in London, two weeklies in the vernacular for Indian troops and seamen, and used the proceeds to keep the Woking Mission alive. He always defended the cause of Arab nationalism. He also played valuable part in the activities of inter-faith understanding and had long associations with the World Congress of Faiths and its founder the late Younghusband. Professor Musa Mazzawi a friend of his writes in The Times (London), Saturday, March 19, 1977:
“Abdul Majid was a person of profound learning and compendious knowledge of literature and languages (with university degrees from Germany and India, where he was born). His many friends will remember him as a man of abundant humanity and charity and as a gentle, self-effacing and tireless worker for his fellows, of all religions.”
May his soul rest in eternal peace.