Patrick Comerford
The Muslim holy and fasting month came to an end today (9 April 2024). During our visit to Norwich two weeks ago, I visited the two cathedrals, many churches and the principal synagogue. I also had an opportunity to see the Ihsan Mosque in Chaplefield East, a four- or five-minute walk from Saint Giles House Hotel, where we were staying.
The Muslim community at the Ihsan Mosque in Chaplefield East, is made up of about 150 men, women and children from a wide variety of backgrounds. But the majority are British-born converts to Islam, making it the only continuous, indigenous Muslim community in Britain.
The mosque also claims it is the first mosque in Britain established and owned by British converts to Islam, although this claim might be contested by the Shah Jahan Mosque on Oriental Road, Woking, which was built in 1889 and is the first purpose-built mosque on these islands. Its founding figures included the Budapest-borb orientalist Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840-1899) and the Irish peer Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn (1855-1935), 5th Baron Headley, who were early converts to Islam in Britain.
Nevertheless, these claims are important elements of British social history. Significantly, they also point to the only known expression of an Islamic way of life whose roots are in this country.
From the street, the mosque looks more like a church or chapel. In fact, the building was built in 1876 as a school called Saint Peter Mancroft School for Boys. It was part of the Parish of Saint Peter Mancroft and it stood beside the Saint Peter Mancroft Chapel-in-the-Field Congregational Church.
Since the mid-20th century, the building had a variety of uses, including a scout building and a discotheque.
The early members of a new Muslim community in Norwich began renting the building in the mid-1970s to use as a mosque. An Egyptian businessman who visited Norwich in 1977 was impressed by the community and decided to buy the building on behalf of the community with money he inherited from his mother. His only request was that the mosque be named after his mother Ihsan.
The community says it is growing rapidly. It has a healthy relationship with the wider community of Norwich, resulting in a steady flow of people becoming Muslims and joining the mosque. It has a busy programme of activities, including the five daily prayers, Sunday gatherings, open days, markets and seminars.
A 50-minute documentary film produced in 2016, Blessed Are The Strangers, tells the story about of this small but influential community of Muslim converts in Norwich, their British and Caribbean roots, and their beginnings in west London in the 1960s and early 1970s.
The community has made many contributions to Islamic literature both classical and contemporary, from a translation of Kitab Ash Shifa (The Book of Healing) from Arabic into English, to discourses on economics and psychology.
A key figure in the story of the mosque is the Scottish playwright and actor Ian Dallas (1930-2021), who embraced Islam in Morocco, changed his name to Abdalqadir as-Sufi and became the student of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al Habib.
He gathered a small group of followers who formed a small community in Maida Vale, west London, before trying to build a self-sustaining, Muslim village in Norfolk until their dilapidated Tudor mansion burned down.
By 1977, they had bought old church school building in central Norwich, converted into a masjid known as Ihsan Mosque and that is still in use today, welcoming hundreds of worshippers.
A second strand in the community traces its origins back to Brixton in London in the 1980s, when a growing number of people of Caribbean descent were embracing Islam.
The mosque they set up in Brixton was taken over by an extreme cleric, Abdullah el-Faisal, by 1991. He was ejected in 1993, was later be jailed for soliciting murder, and was deported from Britain in 2007. His followers issued death threats to the mosque’s founders for resisting his teachings.
Many of the founders, wanting to protect their faith, families and lives, moved to Norwich at the invitation of Shaykh Abdalqadar as-Sufi. Their move contributed to the growth of a multicultural Islamic society in Norwich, with Scottish, English, North African and Caribbean roots and cultural influences.
The 2016 film is not just as a historical documentary but also leaves viewers wondering why the Norwich Muslim community is unique, rather than the norm. Instead, as one reviewer points out, many communities talk of Bengali, Pakistani, Arab, Turkish and Somali mosques in Britain, even though Islam in theory is a way of life open to all.
As well as the Ihsan Mosque near Chapelfield Gardens, Norwich has mosques in Dereham Road, Rose Lane and Aylsham Road, and a community centre in Sandy Lane.
Norwich Central Mosque and Islamic Community Centre in Aylsham Road opened in July 2020, but was firebombed days later, leaving the community traumatised. In the aftermath of the attack, the Conservative MP for Norwich North Chloe Smith visited the mosque.
As part of its community outreach efforts, the East Anglian Mosque and Community Centre in Rose Lane has hosted open days. Nonetheless, the Muslim community in Norwich remains small and often feels it is geographically isolated from larger communities in Birmingham, London and Yorkshire.
Blessed Are The Strangers from C>MEDIA on Vimeo.
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