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 event which will see more than 200 mosques from London to Wales 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 communities, including projects for homelessness, hunger and refugee support.
Harun Khan, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, which is behind the event, emphasized the “positive difference” mosques make to their local communities.
Speaking at a launch on Thursday at the 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.”
The 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.
“This is a very important day to highlight the existence of local institutions like mosques that can be accessed by anyone,” said Abdulrahman Syed, Chief Executive Officer at Al-Manaar. “For us every day of the year...is an open day.”
“Mosques are more open than ever before,” Khan added, expressing his hope that Visit My Mosque would be, “A small step toward greater community cohesion in Britain today.”
Organizers anticipate a high turn-out building on last year’s event when around 10,000 people took part, with the highest number visiting Cumbernauld mosque in Glasgow, which welcomed up to 3,000 people and York Mosque, where around 1,000 showed up.
A YouGov poll commissioned by the Muslim Council of Britain, which is hosting the event, found that 90 percent of Britons haven’t been inside a mosque while almost 70 percent haven’t seen inside another faith’s place of worship. In addition, one in four Britons said they did not know a Muslim.
“Despite the multi-religious and multi-cultural society we live in, these poll results show that the majority of Britons have not seen what the place of worship of another faith looks like,” Khan said.
The event helps counter misconceptions around Islam and mosques in the UK. It’s a way of showing “There’s nothing sinister, there’s nothing strange” about mosques, Khan added. “Mosques are very welcoming places.”
The day comes during a time of increasing islamophobia in the UK, 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, killing Makram Ali and injuring others as they left Ramadan prayers.
Discussing the need to address islamophobia, Dent added, “We have to counter ignorance with knowledge and hate with love and this is what we’re doing here.”
Nadeem Ali, with 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 neighbours and for them to find out that we are normal, non-violent, law-abiding and hopefully nice people, contributing to British society.”
“We hope the event gives them the chance to dispel negative impressions of Muslims they may have from the media, and to see first-hand the kinder, warmer and more welcoming side of the Muslim community.”
The Reverend Anna Macham, priest at St Philip's church in Camberwell, London said the open day “brings greater understanding.”
“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,” while an advertisment 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 added.
Mufiti, Mohammed Amin Pandor of The Peace Institute 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.”
This year Visit My Mosque merchandise was released for the first time, including branded pens and balloons available for participating mosques to order.
The Muslim Council of Britain has also recently launched “Better Mosques: A Community Consultation” inviting anyone to submit ideas on how mosques can become better in Britain today.
Non-Muslims welcomed to UK mosques for annual open day
Non-Muslims welcomed to UK mosques for annual open day
North Korean POWs in Ukraine seeking ‘new life’ in South
- North Korea has sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine, according to South Korean and Western intelligence agencies
SEOUL: Two North Korean prisoners of war held by Ukraine have said they hope to start a “new life” in South Korea, according to a letter seen by AFP on Wednesday.
Previous reports have indicated that the two men, held captive by Kyiv since January after sustaining injuries on the battlefield, were seeking to defect to the South.
But the letter represents the first time the two of them have said so in their own words.
“Thanks to the support of the South Korean people, new dreams and aspirations have begun to take root,” the two soldiers wrote in a letter dated late October to a Seoul-based rights group which shared it with AFP this week.
North Korea has sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine, according to South Korean and Western intelligence agencies.
At least 600 have died and thousands more have sustained injuries, according to South Korean estimates.
Analysts say North Korea is receiving financial aid, military technology and food and energy supplies from Russia in return.
North Korean soldiers are instructed to kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner, according to South Korea’s intelligence service.
In the letter, the two prisoners thanked those working on their behalf “for encouraging us and seeing this situation not as a tragedy but as the beginning of a new life.”
“We firmly believe that we are never alone, and we think of those in South Korea as our own parents and siblings and have decided to go into their embrace,” they wrote.
The letter is signed by the two soldiers, whose names AFP has been asked to withhold to protect their safety.
- ‘Death sentence’ -
Under South Korea’s constitution, all Koreans — including those in the North — are considered citizens, and Seoul has said this applies to any troops captured in Ukraine.
The letter was delivered during an interview for a documentary film coordinated by the Gyeore-eol Nation United (GNU) rights group, which works to help North Korean defectors.
That interview took place at an undisclosed facility in Kyiv where the two POWs are being held after they were captured.
During the interview, the pair also pleaded to be sent to the South, according to GNU chief Jang Se-yul, himself a North Korean defector who fled the isolated country in the 2000s.
The video has not yet been made public but is expected to be released next month, Jang said.
Yu Yong-weon, a lawmaker who met with the prisoners during a visit to Ukraine in February, said the prisoners had described witnessing wounded comrades kill themselves with grenades.
Sending the soldiers back to the North would constitute “a death sentence,” Yu said.
South Korea’s foreign ministry has urged Ukraine not to “forcibly repatriate North Korean prisoners of war against their will” and has asked that their desire to go to the South be respected.
