Project: World War One & Muslim and Loyalist Identity

World War One & Muslim and Loyalist Identity

This ground-breaking project in Belfast aimed to create better integration and understanding between the city’s Muslim and Loyalist communities through the unlikely medium of the First World War centenary.

The project, from thinktank British Future and New Horizons in British Islam, working with the Mitchell Institute at Queen’s University engages Belfast’s Muslim and Loyalist communities to raise awareness of the common history of WW1 contribution shared by both groups living in Belfast today.

1.5 million soldiers from undivided India fought for Britain in the First World War, 400,000 of them Muslim soldiers from what is now Pakistan.

After workshops exploring British and Northern Irish identity and its connection to the First World War, and the contribution of commonwealth soldiers to the armies of 1914-18, the two groups came together to meet and discuss this new common ground of shared history – building new trust and understanding between two communities that have previously had little contact with each other.

The film can be viewed on YouTube

For more information please see http://ww1muslimsoldiers.org.uk