HAVE you had a Muslim ijtema festival in your town? If you’re not sure, let me assure you that you haven’t. Oh, and it’s not something the 1,600 quiet-living (I assume) denizens of rural Barham in Suffolk are particularly keen on experiencing, it seems. But it’s a-coming! With knobs on!
I had my first experience of an ijtema over 30 years ago when my home town of Dewsbury’s then-population of 52,000 doubled, literally, overnight. Main roads were summarily blockaded by Muslim stewards. Ambulances were refused access, the police were nowhere to be seen and the town’s large sports fields were overnight encampments, broken up only by local (Muslim) GPs’ tables where they were scribbling out thousands of pounds worth of prescriptions for the worshippers as fast as they could. My newspaper exposed that racket.
We’ll come to what exactly an ijtema is shortly, but that one was introduced to Britain by the Markaji Masjid, the Dewsbury-based European headquarters of the evangelical Tablighi Jamaat Islamic sect. And guess who’s taking their holy mission on the road to rural Suffolk, where the Georgian manor house of Shrubland Hall can expect 100,000-plus worshippers for three days in July? Yup, the Markazi.
Ijtemas are large-scale Muslim faith celebrations that are staged around the Islamic world, holy occasions in every sense. I trotted along to Dewsbury’s last event a few years ago, which again shut down the southern end of town, but it had already clearly outgrown any available open spaces. Shrubland Hall was apparently selected over the Excel Centre in London and Birmingham’s NEC. The Markazi, which was in the process of doubling its 4,000-worshipper capacity when I last visited it a few months ago, is clearly cost-conscious. I take it the fields are spacious indeed. The local rent-a-loo company will do good business.
My first ijtema as a newly-appointed newspaper editor was marked by serious social discontent. Locals were furious because not a single word of notice was shared with the then-majority white British residents. Even the police were in the dark, but since the town centre riot of 1989 they’d been trying to hide inside their bobbies’ helmets anyway. Because my newspaper raised merry hell, I ended up facing a packed hall full of not-happy senior Muslims, accompanied only by the chief executive of Kirklees Council. Back then at least, if you stood your ground and argued your point, you earned respect. The evening ended with handshakes.
At the last ijtema I went to, not unlike the huge funeral of the Markazi’s founding Imam Hafeez Patel, I was a lone white, Christian face in a very devout large-scale gathering. Threatened, intimidated? Nope. A few curious looks, but overwhelmingly people were polite and respectful (which, by the way, Tablighi Jamaat insists it is), nodding their greetings. Despite two of the July 7 suicide bombers having prayed at its mosque, this particular Sunni sect does not have as radical a reputation as some.
Down in Barham all kinds of civilian fuss is being kicked up, but my advice to locals would be to save their breath and book a weekend away if they’re so discomfited. That is not to say that they should necessarily ignore the writing which is very clearly on the wall. On their wall, and more and more to come across the nation.
After the publication of my social history, The Islamic Republic of Dewsbury, I was invited to address a book club in the very exclusive village of Fulmer, just off the M40/M25 in Buckinghamshire. To describe my reception as ‘frosty’ would be an understatement. The clearly wealthy and self-righteous ladies were having none of this Third World, racist rubbish from a flat-vowelled Yorkshire oik. This wasn’t ‘their’ England in any fashion or form. The event did not last long and my host – a friend’s wife – was mortified.
Before I left I mildly inquired: ‘How far are we from Slough?’
Just five miles or so, I was informed. I couldn’t resist a broad smile (I could have wet myself).
‘Why?’ they asked.
‘Oh, you’ll find out soon enough!’ I said as enigmatically as possible.
A few weeks later I was uproarious upon reading a full-page tabloid story that renowned hate-preacher Sheikh Yasser al-Habib had bought a former church for £2million and turned it into a mosque and television station.
And it was where exactly? Yes indeedy, folks – Fulmer. The Islamist capture of our dying nation will not need to be achieved by bombs and bullets. It’s a numbers game, it’s a money game and it’s a waiting game.
