UK Mosques open their doors to public

More than 150 UK Mosques opened their doors to the  public so that the wider community could get a better understanding of the Islamic faith and build greater trust during these times of rising Islamaphobia.

Visiting the North London Finsbury Park Mosque, and putting some focus on the US President Donald Trump, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned, that some people are ‘demonising Muslims’, adding,

"Over the past few weeks, there’s been some awful language used in many parts of the world. Awful language degenerates into awful actions. Those awful actions end up in the deaths of wholly innocent people, as happened in Quebec,” .

Representatives from other faith groups attended Mosques up and down the country to show their solidarity to the Muslim Community during this difficult time.

Imran Ahmed, the mosque secretary, for the Rochdale Mosque, which held a discussion with Mark Coleman a local vicar, said the Neeli was proud to open up to the wider community:

"We are not a fifth column. We want to live side by side. We don’t want them to fear us. They have nothing to fear. This is the ideal opportunity to reach out and educate people.”

In another discussion in Belfast, Muslim member of the Belfast Islamic Centre, Dr Raied Al-Wazzan who has lived in Belfast since 1990 and works for a business that supplies cameras to Nasa said that:

Because I am from Iraq, I would be banned from entering the US if I had to go on business,”,

I am here to tell people in Belfast and Northern Ireland that Isis poses more of a threat to real Muslims than anyone else.”

“One of the things that is great about this centre is that all Muslim believers, such as Sunni and Shia, can worship here.

They might say different prayers, but we worship together. That is a good thing in the context of Northern Ireland, a place which I love,”

We should all welcome this iniative and support faiths who are being targeted by bigotry.

Simon Woolley