The first Islamic seminary in Britain was founded by a disciple of one of the most influential figures in the 81-year international history of Tablighi Jamaat.

Muhammad Zakaria, a renowned Deobandi scholar from India, was the author of the book, Fazail-e-Amaal (The Blessings of Pious Acts), which has been described as “the bible” of Tablighi Jamaat. Containing inspirational stories about the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, and detailing the rewards which await observant Muslims, it is known as the Tablighi Nasab (Tablighi syllabus), is used daily by millions of Muslims worldside and has earned Zakaria iconic status within the movement.

Zakaria, who died aged 83 in 1982, sent his devoted student, Yusuf Motala, to Britain with instructions “to light the candle of Islam in a land of darkness”.

The Deobandi seminary that he established in 1975 near Bury, in Greater Manchester, remains the most powerful in the country and is still headed by 61-year-old Mr Motala. It has close bonds with its sister seminary, the Islamic Institute of Education, which opened in 1982 and forms part of Tablighi Jamaat’s European headquarters in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Alongside their GCSE studies, students in both seminaries absorb a rigidly literalistic interpretation of the Koran and collections of hadith, accounts of the life and sayings of Muhammad and his companions.

Modernist Islamic critics say the syllabus pays more attention to the rote memorisation of medieval Arabic and Urdu texts than it does to analysing or understanding them.

Students at the Dewsbury seminary are banned from reading newspapers, listening to the radio or watching television.

They take part in active missionary work and many are sent for advanced studies at madrassas in Pakistan or India.

Among the many sins condemned by the Bury seminary are the wearing Western clothes and most artistic activity.