Today, there are between 1,200 and 1,600 mosques in Britain – no definite figure exists. Yesterday, the Charity Commission sought to gloss over the malaise in them by publishing figures on attendance, but not inquiring into difficult areas. At Quilliam, Britain’s first counter-extremism think-tank, we commissioned a poll of more than 1,000 mosques in 2008, during Ramadan when mosques are busiest. Despite employing Urdu and Bengali-speaking researchers, we could poll only just over 500. Most British mosques don’t maintain a reception or service to answer questions, and not every one we did reach was willing to answer.<\/p>\n
Quilliam’s report, Mosques Made in Britain, reveals the true extent of the mess. We found that 97 per cent of imams, or leaders, were from overseas and 92 per cent were educated abroad, mostly in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Almost all mosques are controlled by first-generation immigrant men, leaving most British Muslims – women and young people – out of the management structure.<\/p>\n
This is not new. Quilliam has merely found evidence of a problem that has been known among Muslims for more than two decades.<\/p>\n