200 UK mosques to welcome non-Muslims for annual open day
LONDON: Non-Muslims will be welcomed with tea and biscuits at mosques across the UK this weekend during an annual open day that encourages integration and understanding among people of all faiths.
Visit My Mosque 2018 marks the fourth edition of the annual event, which will see more than 200 mosques run tours and talks covering Islam, prayer practices and daily Muslim life.
Under this year’s theme “Open doors, open mosques, open communities,” participating mosques will also outline some of the benefits they bring to their neighborhoods, including projects for homelessness, hunger and refugee support.
Harun Khan, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which is hosting the event, emphasized the “positive difference” mosques make to their local communities.
Speaking at a launch on Thursday at Al-Manaar Center in Kensington, which has been holding mosque open days for years, he said: “Mosques are part and parcel of the fabric of British society.”
Al-Manaar Center was proactive in the response effort following the Grenfell Tower fire, which devastated the community in June 2017.
“We saw last June how they stepped up without hesitation when others didn’t,” said Kensington and Chelsea MP Emma Dent.
Al-Manaar CEO Abdulrahman Syed said: “This is a very important day to highlight the existence of local institutions like mosques that can be accessed by anyone. For us, every day of the year ... is an open day.”
Organizers anticipate a high turnout, building on last year’s event, when around 10,000 people took part. The highest number visited Cumbernauld Mosque in Glasgow, which welcomed up to 3,000 people, followed by York Mosque with around 1,000.
A YouGov poll commissioned by the MCB found that 90 percent of Britons have not been inside a mosque, and almost 70 percent have not been inside another faith’s place of worship. One in four Britons said they did not know a Muslim.
Kensington and Chelsea Councillor Gerard Hargreaves said visiting their local mosque is an opportunity for people to see the similarities between different faiths.
“I’m a Christian, and so many of our core beliefs overlap,” he told Arab News. “That’s what we really need to be promoting, and that’s what this sort of day does.” He said members of the community he represents are “surprised when they come here and see how (Muslim) people are just like them, going about their daily lives, bringing up their children, having careers and dreams.”
The event helps to counter misconceptions about Islam and mosques in the UK. It is a way to show that “there’s nothing sinister” or “strange” about mosques, Khan said. “Mosques are very welcoming places.”
It comes during a time of increasing Islamophobia in the country, with hate crimes against Muslim places of worship more than doubling between 2016 and 2017.
Last week saw a life sentence handed down to Darren Osborne, who drove a rented van into a crowd of people outside Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, killing Makram Ali and injuring others as they left Ramadan prayers.
Discussing the need to address Islamophobia, Dent said: “We have to counter ignorance with knowledge and hate with love, and this is what we’re doing here.”
Nadeem Ali of the Muslim Cultural & Welfare Association of Sutton, which is taking part in the open day, said: “We see this as an opportunity to welcome our non-Muslim neighbors, and for them to find out that we are normal, non-violent, law-abiding and hopefully nice people, contributing to British society.”
He added: “We hope the event gives them the chance to dispel negative impressions of Muslims they may have from the media, and to see firsthand the kinder, warmer and more welcoming side of the Muslim community.”
Rev. Anna Macham, a priest at St. Philip’s Church in Camberwell, London, said the open day “brings greater understanding.”
She added: “It’s so easy for people to get the wrong idea about what Islam or any religion is from the media, but the impression you get from actually meeting Muslims, sharing food with them and enjoying their hospitality is very different.”
A poster advertising the open day at Derby Jamia Mosque invites people to “pop in, meet the Imams (spiritual leaders) and ask questions.”
An advertisement for Quwwat-ul-Islam in Newham, London, reads: “Come and see beyond the walls.”
Others promise traditional British refreshments. “Sharing tea and cakes is really the best antidote,” Khan said.
Mufti Mohammed Amin Pandor of Masjid Ibrahim in Leeds said: “The most important thing for us is the Q&A. We want people to ask us any questions… We will never be offended. We will answer the questions truthfully.”