Shah Jahan Mosque (Woking)
The Shah Jahan Mosque (also known as the Woking Mosque ) is the oldest mosque in the United Kingdom and is located in Woking , 50 km southwest of London , on Oriental Road.
history
construction
The Shah Jahan Mosque was built in 1889 as one of the first mosques in Western Europe by the orientalist Gottlieb William Leitner in an Indian-Saracen style on behalf of Sultan Shah Jahan Begum (1838-1901) and has been maintained since then by a foundation ( Waqf ). Shah Jahan was one of several Muslim rulers of the princely state of Bhopal who ruled it from 1819 to 1926.
Shah Jahan donated considerable sums to the construction of the mosque in Woking. She also contributed to the establishment of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh , which is now integrated into the Aligarh Muslim University .
A drawing by the architect WI Chambers of the Woking Mosque was published in The Building News and Engineering Journal shortly before the mosque was completed on August 2, 1889. In October or November 1889 the mosque was opened to the public.
use
In the period between 1900 and 1912 the mosque was hardly used anymore. In 1913, Leitner's son wanted to sell the mosque to a city planner. Then the Indian lawyer Khwaja Kamal ud-Din , who had just arrived in England, made the decision to use the mosque to set up a mission. He sued with the argument that a mosque had the same rights and status as a church and won in court. So he was able to take over the mosque from the previous owner for a formal amount of money.
Imams of the mosque included Khwaja Kamal ud-Din, Sadr ud-Din , Abdul Majid, HE Shaikh Hafiz Wahba, Marmaduke Pickthall, Muhammad Yakub Khan, Mr. William Bashyr Pickard, Mustafa Khan, Khwaja Nazir Ahmad, Aftab-ud-Din Ahmad , Sheikh Nasir Ahmad , Muhammad Yahya Butt , Mr. Iqbal Ahmad, Ghulam Rabbani Khan, Sheikh Muhammad Tufail.
The current imam of the mosque is the Mufti Liaquat Ali Amod.
Woking Muslim Mission
founding
The mission station was founded in 1913 by Khwaja Kamal ud-Din, who stayed in England from late 1912 to August 1914 on behalf of Nuur ud-Din . After the division of the Ahmadiyya movement in 1914, Khwaja Kamal ud-Din remained associated with the Lahore branch .
The Ahmadiyya Andschuman Ischat-i-Islam Lahore (AAIIL) in Woking provided the Imam of the Shah-Jahan Mosque until around 1964. Until the mid-1960s, the Woking Mosque and the mission station was the center of Islam in England. Since then, the mosque has been used by Sunni Muslims.
job
Khwaja Kamal ud-Din began his work by organizing Friday prayers for the Muslim students in London. From February 1913 he published the monthly journal The Islamic Review , which remained the most important Islamic journal in the western world for 55 years.
During the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice , Muslims of all nations gathered in the Woking Mosque. Woking became something of a Mecca miniature in the west in those days due to the multinational spectacle in its diversity.
People who converted to Islam in England typically did so in the Woking Muslim Mission until the 1960s. In 1924 the total Muslim population of England was estimated at 10,000, of which 1,000 were converts.
Today's reception
Some Muslims who recently wrote brief histories of Islam in England do not mention the Woking Muslim Mission, although it has been the center of Islam in England for over 50 years. On the current website of the mosque there is no reference to the AAIIL with regard to the mission ( "Within a few years, through the work of Kamal-ud-Din and his Muslim Mission Islam had established a definite foothold within England ..." ) .
- Islam - Our Choice
In 1961, the Woking Muslim Mission published the book "Islam - Our Choice", which contained many accounts by converts to Islam who illustrated their path to Islam. Most of these reports were taken from the Islamic Review . An edition of this book is now in circulation which has been censored by other Muslim authors by removing all mentions of the Woking Mission, as well as the name Khwaja Kamal ud-Din and that of many other Lahore Ahmadiyya missionaries.
Web links
- Official Website: Shah Jahan Mosque
- AAIIL: Woking Mosque and the Woking Muslim Mission
- BBC: Forty Eight Hours - Tour: Woking Mosque (picture of the mosque in the 1900s)
- British Muslim Heritage - London's Mosques
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Dr. Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840–1899)
- ^ Woking Mosque architect's drawing, 1889
- ↑ History of the Mosque ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Page 2, read on July 15, 2008
- ^ British Muslim Heritage - London's Mosques
-
↑ Remembering 50 years ago (The Light & Islamic Review, Volume 72, No. 3, May-June 1995, pages 10-13);
Dr. SM Abdullah, Imam of the Woking Mosque ;
Eid Sermons at the Shah Jehan Mosque ;
Biography of Iqbal Ahmad Sahib - ↑ Shah Jahan Mosque: The Imam ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ About Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din (1870–1932) , Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din: Entry in Who's Who
- ↑ a b c d e Brief history of the Woking Muslim Mission
- ↑ Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din's arrival in England, 1912
- ^ Founding of The Islamic Review, 1913
- ^ The Mosque at Woking: A miniature of Mecca in the days of the Pilgrimage
- ↑ a b History of the Mosque ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Page 3, read on July 15, 2008
- ^ Ahmadiyya connections removed from edition of "Islam - Our Choice". (The Light & Islamic Review: Vol. 74; No. 2; Mar-Apr 1997; p. 7-10), ditto
- ↑ Manfred Backhausen (Ed.): The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement in Europe , Ahmadiyya Anjuman Lahore Publications, 2008, p. 250f
Coordinates: 51 ° 19 ′ 18.5 ″ N , 0 ° 32 ′ 51 ″ W.