UK: Man plans to use his own garage as town's mosque

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - A MUSLIM man who has been trying to build a mosque in West Bridgford for the past five years has found a new location – his garage.

Mohammed Malik, 68, of Loughborough Road, has applied for planning permission to turn his garage into a mosque.

Mr Malik says Muslims in West Bridgford have nowhere to pray without travelling into the city.

He said: "I have tried everything to try and find a suitable piece of land where the council will let us have a mosque, but have been consistently blocked.

"Now I'm hoping to get permission to allow my home to become a place of worship for people. There is a prayer room for men and a separate room for women.

"The community of West Bridgford is big enough now to deserve its own mosque.

"St Ann's, The Meadows, Forest Fields, Sneinton have all got one – why hasn't West Bridgford?"

Mr Malik, who lives in a semi-detached house, says people have been using his garage – nicknamed the Madrasah Taleem-ul-Quaran – as a place of worship for the past ten years.

In 2008, Mr Malik applied to build a mosque on land owned by Rushcliffe Borough Council off Collington Way, West Bridgford, but his plans were rejected by the council. He appealed against the decision and won, in 2009, but he was unable to buy the land from the council.

A borough council spokesman said: "We never told Mr Malik that we would sell him the land."

Since then Mr Malik, a former secretary of the Islamic Centre in St Ann's, has looked into obtaining other areas of land in West Bridgford but to no avail.

Earlier this year a man admitted racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage, and also causing racially or religiously aggravated alarm, harassment or distress by words or writing, after spraying the words 'No mosque here EDL Notts' on the pavement in Collington Way, West Bridgford.

Three other men pleaded guilty to racially or religiously aggravated harassment after a pig's head was put on a pole nearby.

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