By Maira Butt
“Southport wasn’t even on the map. Nobody even knew where Southport was, you know. Now, everybody knows about Southport,” says Imam Ibrahim Hussein, the chairman of Southport Mosque, which found itself at the hub of the nationwide rioting this summer.
After the killings of three girls on 29 July, misinformation spread online that the killer was a Muslim asylum seeker. It led to the targeting of mosques and the proliferation of Islamophobic abuse.
The first place to be hit was Mr Hussein’s mosque in St Luke’s Road, near the Hart Space, the children’s activity centre where the girls had been killed. Rioters smashed the mosque windows, crushed its brick walls and set its fences and clothing donation bins on fire.
This was an example of the worst aspects of British society, but it also became a beacon of hope. Outpourings of community support demonstrated the area’s resilience and unity in the face of division.
“Any window that wasn’t protected was smashed,” Mr Hussein told the Religion Media Centre. “But all of that was ordered and replaced within a week. The people who came to do it were volunteers. Materials and labour were offered by local people and local businesses.
“Some people donated fences, some people donated bricks, some people donated the windows. Some donated the skips. Everything was rebuilt and ready to go within a week. This is community at its finest. This is multiculturalism.”
But the community response was no coincidence. It had been carefully cultivated over decades. The small Muslim population, the imam says, has been living in harmony in the community for over 30 years.
“We’re here because of the community,” he said. “Thirty years ago, when we wanted to build a mosque here, some people didn’t want it. They said, ‘You’re going to have problems with these people.’
“But the majority backed us and said, ‘Let them have their own place of worship, whether they’re Jews or Christians or Muslims, why shouldn’t they?’ A lot of them stood by us right from the start, so we owed them something.”
Mr Hussein, as well as leading the Muslim congregation, also provides advice to the population, including regular reminders of the Islamic duty of neighbourliness.
“We always told our congregations, ‘Please look after your neighbours. Please don’t upset your neighbours.’ Our religion asks us to look after your neighbours even more than your relatives.”
An example of good neighbourliness, he says, is being conscious of what your neighbours do for you. “So when it comes to something like Ramadan, there are the ugly parking space issues with people wanting to park around the mosque and in the residential areas,” he explained. “The neighbours are patient with us and we always advise our congregation not to park in front of people’s houses.”
Once Ramadan is over, Mr Hussein follows up with a token of gratitude for residents in the surrounding area. “I always go around with a thank you card and a bit of chocolate for our neighbours for being patient,” he says.
“They always say we don’t need to do it. But I say, ‘Well, we love to do it anyway. And to let you know that Ramadan has finished too’.”
He continues: “That kind of thing immediately breaks barriers between us. They think it’s lovely. So, we’ve always been on good terms with them. We always say ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good evening’ to each other. We always greet each other when we are in the same room, asking each other ‘How are you doing?’
“There is an elderly lady who lives near us and we always take some food for her and we usually offer plenty of food in Ramadan. This is the kind of relationship we have, rooted in wisdom. Simple things.”
Mr Hussein added that good relations with other faith leaders, from churches and synagogues, has helped to build bridges between communities. “They come to visit us and we go and visit them. There are bridges between us and the other faiths and between us and the community. That’s why they couldn’t understand why we’d been targeted.”
As the community heals, demand for more information on Islam has increased. The mosque, which runs entirely on donations, tries to raise funds through bank transfers, but does not yet have the resources to set up a website or online system. “We run on donations alone, we’re always running on pennies that we’ve collected from the community,” Mr Hussein says.
But despite the limitations they are eager to keep the dialogue open. “What we’ve been doing lately is trying to build bridges with the community. The community is reaching out for us and we are also reaching out for them. So we’re having two open days this month. [The next one is] on 29 September for people to come and have a look and see what we do, how we pray and what this place is like.
“It’s a chance for people to ask questions. Once the mystery has gone, people then have an idea of what we do. It’s just a place of worship like any other place of worship. The community was fantastic and stood by us after the riots. Now, we might be a victim of our own success because so many people want to come!”
Another example of the unity demonstrated by the Southport community is in the reopening of the Hart Space, where the girls were stabbed. After police handed the centre’s keys back to their owner, Jenie Scholes, she invited faith leaders to bless the space last Tuesday (10 September). “We had a rabbi, a priest and myself,” Mr Hussein says. “It was a small gathering.”
He continues: “I’m very hopeful. A lot of people have come in and said, ‘Tell me about Islam’ or ‘What’s going on here? What’s happening?’ One person even accepted Islam last week.
“I hope it shows that we are involved with the community: the immediate community or with other faith leaders around it all. It also shows that we are not closed in on ourselves, that we don’t talk to anybody or don’t mix with anybody or that we don’t accept anybody. We don’t want to push Islam down anybody’s throat. We don’t want to say that you are wrong and we are right.
“We accept everybody, regardless of their belief. Obviously, we have our own way of doing things. And we respect other people’s way of doing things and we expect them to respect our way too, and many people do. That’s all that we’re hoping for.”
