AT THE beginning of the 20th century there were around 10,000 Muslims in Britain. Today, there are an estimated two million. How Islam is taking a more prominent and confident role in British society was underlined in June, when the largest Muslim centre in Europe was officially opened in the East End of London.

Costing £10 million, the five-storey London Muslim Centre on Whitechapel Road, built on a former car park next to the East London Mosque, contains conference facilities, a library, classrooms, a primary school, IT suites and a crèche. The basement will house a new ablution area and a Healthy Living Project, which will include a sauna and a steam room. Part of the building is being used for small businesses, including a restaurant, offices and shops. The organisers of the East London Mosque, one of 32 mosques in the borough of Tower Hamlets, which is understood to have the largest Muslim population in the UK, decided the centre was needed to provide more space for existing and new services.

Some of the estimated 4,000 Sunnis attending Friday prayers at the mosque each week often have to pray on the pavement. Worshippers come from countries that include Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Somalia, Algeria and Malaysia, The director of the centre, Dilowar Hussain Khan, says that the complex is a symbol both of the permanence of Islam in the UK and of the confidence of local Muslims.

“Initially we thought we would raise £2 million from the community, £2 million in grants and the remainder from overseas. In fact we raised £8 million ourselves, and £4 million of that was from the community. The community now feels really proud and its confidence levels have risen. People now feel that we don’t have to rely on overseas donations, especially from the Middle East. We feel we can stand on our own two feet.

“When my father came here from Bangladesh in the 1950s he thought that he would be going back home one day. This is why Muslims didn’t build mosques. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the community started to build permanent mosques. But the majority of mosques in the UK today are converted warehouses or houses.”

He feels that since September 11, most of the media coverage about Muslims has been negative and that Muslims have often been victims of abuse. Anti-Muslim letters arrive at the mosque regularly. He shows me one that he had received that day. It began, “Please build your mosques in the deserts of your own countries,” and then continued in much stronger language.

“People realise that Christians have big churches in the Middle East,” says Mr Khaan. “Even in Bangladesh there are a lot of churches. I know you can’t build churches in Saudi Arabia but that’s because it’s the holy land for Muslims. In the same way, Muslims wouldn’t be able to build a mosque in the Vatican. I think that people who hate Muslims haven’t seen the world. Muslims didn’t come here by chance or sneak in. Their countries were ruled by Europeans. The Muslims were then asked to help reconstruct.”

He hopes that the centre will underline the fact that Islam is more than about worship. “Islam is not just about prayer and fasting. It’s about how we live in a society and contribute to it, treat our neighbours and other people. Marriage, bringing up a family, honest living are considered worship in Islam, if you do these things in accordance with the teachings of Islam. Prayers take less than an hour a day. But what do we do with the other 23 hours? That’s what really matters.”

A sustainability manager, Shaynul Khan, explains that the centre will provide a broad range of services for the local Muslim community. “The mosque is the hub of community activities, everything from prayer to education and play takes place here. But some women and children don’t use the mosque that much, probably because, the way services are set up. What we want to do at the centre is to create a hub of activity with something for everyone. We will be offering courses in childcare, first aid, computers, English, Arabic and literacy and numeracy. And we are developing a course with the Learning and Skills Council for people with potential to become effective community leaders.

“We want to make sure that the services will continue into the medium term at least. We’re not going for short-term projects. We want services that bring about lasting benefits. We’ve run a number of pilot projects at the mosque, such as Jobcentre Plus for the long-term unemployed, classes teaching English as a second language, and the ‘improving school attendance in partnership’ project, which uses faith- based perspectives to encourage higher attainment and standards at primary school. It has been very successful and was awarded beacon status by the Department for Education and Skills. Now all the primary schools in Tower Hamlets want it. Next year, we will be including secondary schools.”

Helping the wider community to have a better understanding of Islamic beliefs and culture will be an important part in the centre, he adds. There are plans to hold art exhibitions in the concourse along with a permanent exhibition of Islamic art, literature and artefacts. Interestingly, the stone used for flooring the concourse is from Jerusalem and the mosaic above the entrance was made in Syria. The community-cohesion project holds regular open days for schools and organisations such as the police, local authorities and universities.

The Women’s Relief project, which has been running at the mosque for several years, will address issues specific to female Muslims, says the co-ordinator Aneesa Hoque. “The women who come to us feel comfortable because of this. We deal with issues such as forced marriages, physical and emotional abuse, premarital relationships and abortion. During International Women’s Week in March, the imam delivered a Friday sermon about domestic violence. We asked him to do this so that the men would hear about it. We had held a seminar in both English and Bengali for women. Our ethos is to provide advice from a religious perspective. No matter how much stress a woman might be under, she will reflect on it in the light of Islamic teaching.”