The Making of the East London Mosque, 1910-1951 Minutes of the London Mosque Fund and East London Mosque Trust Ltd Camden Fifth Series, Vol. 38

In 2010, the East London Mosque celebrated its centenary. One hundred years earlier, the Aga Khan and Syed Ameer Ali had convened a public meeting at the London Ritz Hotel, where they set out a strategy for the construction of a mosque in London that would be 'worthy of the capital of the British Empire'. The Mosque, however, took a long time to materialise. From the Commercial Road in the East End of London in which it was eventually first set up in 1941, it moved to Fieldgate Street and on to the Whitechapel Road in 1985. Through the lens of the original Minutes and related documents, Professor Ansari takes us on the fascinating journey of how the newly emerging confident Muslim community of the early twentieth century and major figures of the British establishment reached out to one another, each looking to nurture the development of this new multicultural society.

Preface; List of abbreviations; Introduction: the London Mosque Fund and the East London Mosque 1910–1941; The London Mosque Fund and the East London Mosque 1941–1951; The East London Mosque from 1951; The East London Mosque and increasing Islamic observance; Minutes and related correspondence of the East London Mosque Fund and the East London Mosque Trust Ltd (1910–1951); Appendix 1. Information on key individuals mentioned in the 1910–1951 minutes; Appendix 2. Articles of Association of the East London Mosque Trust Limited, 1948; Appendix 3. Selected documents relating to the East London Mosque, the Jamiat-ul-Muslimin, and related developments in the late 1930s and early 1940s; Subject index.

Professor Humayun Ansari is Professor of Islam and Cultural Diversity, Department of History, and Director of the Centre for Minority Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has written extensively on the subject of Muslims in Western society, cultural diversity and employment matters, and cross-cultural communication issues, and is the author of The Infidel Within: Muslims in Britain Since 1800 (C. Hurst Publishers, 2004). He is a frequent speaker at international conferences on Muslim issues, particularly Muslims in the West. He was awarded an OBE in 2002 for his services to higher education and race relations in the community.