Neatly structured, Ron Geaves's Islam and Britain makes an important contribution to the growing field of scholarship on the history of Muslims in Europe before the Second World War. The emerging field focuses on a significant group of activists, thinkers, converts, and missionaries who settled in cosmopolitan centers such as Berlin and London and built Muslim institutions and mosques. Substantial attention has been dedicated to the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam (one branch of the Ahmadiyya movement, arguably the first and most important missionary movement of the early twentieth century) as it managed the successful Woking mosque in Surrey and Wilmersdorf mosque in Berlin. Geaves traces the origins of the Ahmadiyya and focuses particularly on the Qadiani Ahmadiyya in their efforts to found a Muslim mission in the British Empire's capital.

Geaves firmly positions himself as an Ahmadiyya advocate, stating that “the border between ‘neutral’ scholarly aims and objectives and my subjective perception of the world has increasingly blurred” (7). This sympathetic perspective might be provocative to some readers, but it also clearly and openly states Geaves's intentions as he heavily relies on hitherto undescribed sources from the Qadiani Ahmadiyya.

Geaves charts in chapters 2, 3, and 4 the context in which the group's founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), came to power and developed his messianic ideas. He places his exploration of the Ahmadiyya missionaries in London against the background of the responses of Islamic reformist movements to the loss of Muslim power in India and British conquest. He argues that Ahmad's prophesy should be seen as an adjustment in the way Indians, newly aware of their contribution to world civilization, responded to the missionary discourse of Christian superiority and the British narrative of cultural and scientific domination. Ahmad staunchly defended Islam in debates with Christian missionaries, whereas prophetically cursing opponents belonged to his arsenal of debate tactics. Pro-British Empire, he dreamed of bringing Islam to the West. His claim that he considered himself “a perfect reflection of prophethood” (42) would prove deeply divisive among the Ahmadiyya themselves as well as among other Muslims.

Geaves attributes the schism between the Qadiani and Lahori Ahmadiyya branches (in 1914–1915) in great part to different approaches to mission: whereas the Lahoris, under the leadership of missionary and lawyer Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din (1870–1932), presented a universal Islam and Ahmad as a great reformer in the Woking mosque, the Qadiani branch in London wanted its converts to understand Ahmad's doctrine and to complete the original bai'at as proof of allegiance to Ahmad's prophethood (131–32). Disagreement about the succession of the second Caliph of the movement instigated the split.

However, this book is mainly about continuities rather than ruptures. In chapter 5, Geaves describes the existing Muslim mobilization when the Ahmadiyya missionaries arrived on the scene in 1912. He convincingly describes continuities in practice between the convert Abdullah Quilliam's (1856–1932) Liverpool Muslim Institute and the Woking mosque. Still, while acknowledging the continuity between the prewar and postwar mission field, it should also be noted that the aftermath of the First World War brought many Europeans disillusioned with Europe and Christianity to turn to spiritual alternatives, of which Islam was one.

In chapters 6 to 8, we follow the Ahmadiyya as the Lahori and Qadiani branches develop separately in Woking and in London. Geaves claims that “most converts and Indian Muslims in London tried to stay out of the sectarian conflict engendered by the division” (118), using Khalid Sheldrake as an example (130). Geaves makes a convincing case for the fluidity of the sectarian landscape of the period, but the divisive figure of Sheldrake, also often at odds with Woking, might not be the best example. In fact, historian Jamie Gilham rightly calls him a “notable exception” for visiting lectures at both the Lahori Woking mosque and the Qadiani London Mission (Loyal Enemies, British Converts to Islam, 1850–1950, 2014, page 140). Moreover, as Geaves partially describes (166), the British Muslim Society suffered from discord because of disagreements concerning its alleged Ahmadiyya identity.

London's Qadiani Al-Fazl mosque, opened in 1926, is the main focus of chapter 9. Notable is Geaves's persuasive argument that the Qadiani Mission's lower conversion numbers in comparison with those of the Woking mosque should be viewed as a result of a transformation in mission approach. The Qadianis changed their focus from pursuing British converts to approaching other foreign Muslims and Indians in London.

At times, Geaves overstates the centrality of the Fazl mosque for all Muslim religious life in London under the guardianship of the Qadiani missionaries (as he does on page 161). The Qadiani mosque was attended by various Muslims and important dignitaries, but throughout the interwar period mosque initiatives continued to be instigated. The call for a mosque in London proper did not conclude with the inauguration of the Fazl mosque. Geaves identifies politician and journalist Leopold Amery (1873–1955) and politician George Lloyd (1879–1941) as examples of important dignitaries who attended Eid ul-Azha at the Fazl mosque in 1936, but he omits that these two men were important lobbyists for another mosque in London, efforts that eventually led to British support for the two mosques that were opened during the Second World War.

This book has much to offer as an analysis of an episode of Ahmadiyya spiritual leadership over British Muslims and their dominant position in the promotion of Islam in interwar Great Britain. In his close reading of the newly uncovered Qadiani sources, Geaves fills a gap in this fascinating history of early Muslim missions in Britain. Geaves's supportive stance might, at times, lead him to overstretch the trans-sectarian image some missionaries wanted to uphold. However, Islam and Britain illuminates the important contribution of not only the Lahori Ahmadiyya but also the Qadiani branch to the early development of Islam in Britain. During the interwar period, the Ahmadiyya's networks expanded throughout Europe, and future scholarship would do well to build on Geaves's work to further uncover these intercultural exchanges and translocal religious links, not only in Britain but across Western Europe.