TRIUMPHANT PILGRIMAGE By Owen Rutter
David Chale (an assumed name), ex-district officer in Sarawak, over lunch at Quaglino's, asked Mr. Rutter to write for him the story of his pil- grimage to Mecca. He explained, with a " strange exalted look in his eyes "— " glittering blue eyes, strangely compel- ling " of course (see carefully posed studio portrait)—that he hoped to unite Islam and make it into a great force for world peace. " His lobster for- gotten," he told of his conversion and of his marriage to a Malayan, and of the struggle he had had to reach Mecca. Exhausted by Chale's intensity, and convinced that it was not another shameful journalistic stunt, Mr. Rutter agreed. Triumphant Pil- grimage (Harrap, ros. 6d.) is as sickly with , sincerity, as exhaustingly tense as its hero. Presumably Mr. Chale approves of his portrait, but if he possessed any of the judgement, modesty and sense of humour with which Mr. Rutter endows him, he would have refused to pass this account of his physical and spiritual adventures which nauseates by its smugness, its exag- geration of difficulties and its lack of any sign of real understanding of the
Islamic world. After reading this • book one sees the wisdom of Ibn Saud's la ‘v (which Chale evaded) forbidding converts of less than six years' standing to go on the pilgrimage..
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