Abdullah Quilliam Mosque:
After decades of neglect, some Muslims in Britain are seeking to revive
the oldest mosque in the country.
With the celebration of Liverpool as the cultural capital of Britain in 2008,
its municipality highlighted the dilapidated building of a mosque where prayer was held
for the first time in 1886.
The mosque is the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque
Its location is 8 Broome Terrace Street in the city,
which the municipality is currently renovating.
A charitable foundation calling itself the “Abdullah Quilliam Society
” had launched a few years ago a campaign to collect donations
from Muslims in Britain and throughout the Islamic world to restore the mosque.
And the Liverpool municipality gave its support to the association that wants to restore
the mosque to its former glory and occupy the place it deems it deserves
in British and Islamic history.
The Liverpool City Council sees the mosque as an important landmark, not only in the city,
but in Britain, and perhaps in Europe as a whole.
The story of the place:
In this place more than 120 years ago,
Sheikh Abdullah Quilliam – or William Henry Quilliam as his name
was before his conversion to Islam – stepped into the hall
of this building on Christmas Eve in 1886 to inaugurate
what later became the oldest mosque in Britain,
and establish a heritage that faded Due to time and the accumulation
of events, at a time when Britain did not know much about Islam and Muslims.
The building was sold to the municipality in 1889, and years accumulated on its facade,
as well as dirt inside it.
House No. 8 in Brougham Terrace on West Derby Street in Liverpool, England, is an old,
half-dilapidated house, with an unclean facade, painted doors, nests
of pigeons on the roof, and much worse inside than outside.
This “forgotten” house, which has been devoured and drunk, is not an ordinary house,
but rather a house that bears unusual historical and social connotations;
It is one of the houses of God, and not only that,
but it is the first mosque ever built in Britain,
known by several names, such as “8 Brogham Terraces”,
“Quilliam” and “Little Liverpool Mosque”, which dates back to 1889.
The man’s tale:
William Henry Quilliam was born in 1856 to a wealthy father working in the watch industry,
and he was fond of science and culture and graduated as a lawyer from
the Higher Institute of Liverpool.
And the story of this mosque does not stop at the limits of its walls only,
but extends to the other “forgotten”, Abdullah Quilliam, “the hero of Islam in Britain”
who opened the mosque on December 25, 1889,
and preferred, instead of holding celebrations and decorations on this occasion, to feed 130 poor children from Liverpool .
Sheikh “Abdullah Quilliam” or “William Quilliam” was born in Liverpool in 1856 to wealthy Christian parents,
and studied law and practiced law and became one of the most famous lawyers in the country.
But the course of his life completely changed in 1882 when he traveled to the south
of France for recreation on the shores of the Mediterranean,
and while he there he suddenly decided to cross to the other side of the sea,
Admired Islam and its teachings.
where Morocco and Algeria and there he admired Islam and its teachings.
When he was 31 years old, Quilliam decided to convert to Islam and insisted
on his position despite the hostility he faced from his country’s Christian citizens.
And the man not satisfied with that, but he succeeded in convincing
about 150 Britons to enter Islam, and he made all his efforts to spread Islam
by establishing this mosque.
His role not limited to this point, but:
1- Published two Islamic newspapers.
2- Established an orphanage.
3- An Islamic college holds weekly discussions on the Islamic religion with the aim of persuading the British to convert to Islam.
4- He also wrote a book on Islamic supplications in English.
5- Another important book entitled “The Islamic Creed” published in 1899 and translated into
13 different languages, and it is said that the Queen of Britain at the time, Queen Victoria, read it.
suffering:
Quilliam faced many difficulties because of his conversion to Islam,
the first of which was his expulsion from his home; Because the property owner hates him because of his Islam.
Quilliam’s work as a lawyer put his nerves on his nerves, and he advised to go
for hospitalization in Spain or France, to which he traveled to find relief.
Then he decided to cross the Mediterranean Sea towards the south and reached Morocco,
and there his love for Islam and its heritage began.
At the age of thirty-one, William converted to Islam, and called himself Abdullah,
to begin a long journey of pride and pride in his new religion,
and to spread the call in Britain, his country.
Quilliam became famous in Britain and his mosque turned into a Qibla
for Muslims and scholars,
to extend his influence later to the sides of the British Empire.
A drawing of the mosque building from the outside:
It also conveys the image of the man who loved kittens, music,
poetry and children of different faiths,
stripes and origins, not only his children or years later his grandchildren.
Patricia, at her home in East Sussex, southern Britain,
told of her longing for her grandfather and her childhood eagerness to spend
the holiday at his home in Liverpool, and her nostalgia for those days
when she was over ninety years old.
Her ninety years that didn’t allow me to take a picture of her,
because of the pain these years left in her eyes
Corona’s impact on online education:
Since the start of the Corona pandemic, and the world has become in complete isolation,
and as Corona has affected health and public education, and public education
has become in complete isolation, students have become dependent on receiving
lessons via the Internet, and therefore Corona affected it positively and not negatively,
so after I closed schools And universities all over the world have started for online education,
and online education has become of great importance in the world, where everyone, old and young, began to teach online,
where learning the Holy Qur’an online and the Arabic language and intonation
also online has become very important and no one can dispense
with it and it has not become a means The media is only for entertainment,
but it has become very useful and this field has become
