This particular mosque, Makkah Mosque was built in 2003, so we’ve been here five years but we wanted to have a mosque which can blend in with the local surroundings as well as, you know, retain that element of being Middle Eastern mosque and so we’ve got Persian influences, Arabic influences as well as, you know, just modern European.

Location wise it used to be a historic place of worship here so we’re quite pleased actually, rather than it being converted into flats or something else, that it’s still a place of worship and it was a place of worship for followers of Ibrahamic faith, and as Muslims here also follows Ibrahamic faith.

It was all funded by the local community, it cost around 2 million pounds and it was all locally funded, people, you know, the way we funded it, it’s like people, some people contributed as much as £25,000, others, you know, about £10, £5 etc and it was like just raising the community spirit so that everyone contributed to an extent and to get this mosque going. We just didn’t want it to be a traditional mosque in the sense that just having it open for leading prayers etc we wanted the mosque to be traditional, as well as progressive and liberal in the sense and therefore like we’ve organised Islamic exhibitions here or 'Connecting Cultures' event.

In terms of the colours, like for instance, just around we’ve got here blue and golden colour and the reason we chose these two colours was like the heavens as we know it are blue and what’s precious here on earth is gold. So we have a combination of like heavens and the earth and  that’s why you see like gold and blue carpet etc. and then inside the dome all the colours that have been used either outside or inside, have been used inside the dome and it was just like bringing the floral harmony combining the heavens and the earth. Except one colour, the lilac, the pink colour has not been used in any mosque in the UK it just gives a soft touch to that.

 

And nowhere else in the UK there’s so much calligraphy inside the dome as here and we’ve got combination of verses from the Koran, scriptures and also patterns because most names are not allowed to have images and pictures inside the mosque so they developed this art of arabesque which was like, you know, having patterns and flowers and leaves representing the floral harmony and bringing that nature aspect of it into it.

In, just in the last two circles, that’s chapter 55 of the Koran and it’s very unique chapter because it addresses the reader or reciter directly and also the theme inside the dome is mercy, and therefore this chapter is called the merciful, referring to God Almighty and it mentions all the, like, blessings that God has bestowed upon human beings and all the way it starts from the sun, the moon, the planet, the stars, the trees, the flowers, everything you know in terms of nature and then after mentioning each blessing it addresses the reader asking which of God’s blessings would you deny? So it’s like when you’re looking at it, it’s like, you know, the God is kind of communicating with you and you are communicating with God and it ends, the chapter ends on this words which says 'Isn’t your Lord's name beautiful?' and then it was like you look up all the way and say 'Yeah, wow isn’t my Lord's name beautiful!'