INTRODUCTION

Abstract

In November 2010, the East London Mosque celebrated its centenary. One hundred years earlier, the Aga Khan and Syed Ameer Ali convened a public meeting at the salubrious Ritz Hotel where, with support from some sympathetic members of the British establishment, they set about putting in place a strategy for the construction of a mosque in London, one that would be ‘worthy of the capital of the British Empire’. The London Mosque Fund was founded to finance its construction. Often regarded as the first mosque in London, the ELM, like many other mosques in the UK, took a long time to materialize. As with other mosques, the ELM also had to move several times during its long history. From the three converted houses in Commercial Road in the East End of London in which it had finally been set up in 1941, following a compulsory purchase order in 1969, it first moved to a prefabricated structure in Fieldgate Street in 1975 and then on to the present purpose-built one in Whitechapel Road in 1985. This in turn was extended to incorporate the London Muslim Centre in 2004 to meet the needs of the locality's fast-growing Muslim community. The story of its journey enables us to throw fresh light on the changing nature of interactions with wider society and the relationships between London's Muslim community and the institutions of the British state; the latter's expedient character was starkly reflected, for instance, during the Second World War when Churchill and his government sought Muslim support in a global conflict in which the loyalties of Muslims throughout the British Empire could prove crucial.