what was the East London Mosque like in 1972?
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Answer:
in London had begun decades before, in 1910, when the London Mosque Fund (LMF) was inaugurated by leading Indian Muslims, including member of the Privy Council, Syed Ameer Ali, and the Aga Khan at a public meeting held at the Ritz Hotel. The fund received donations of £1,000 each from the Ottoman Sultan and the Shah of Persia and, although the LMF had grown to a sizeable amount by 1926, it was still not nearly enough for the construction of a mosque seen as fitting in the eyes of its funders.
During the 1930s, as the community of more permanently settled Muslims grew in the East End of London, the need for a local religious space was brought into increasingly sharper focus. The minds of the trustees of the LMF were further concentrated by the demand of the newly founded Jamiat-ul-Muslim, a local community organisation, for the building of a mosque. The LMF funders first agreed to support the costs of ‘a Muslim Preacher and Prayer Room’ in rented premises and then released sufficient money to purchase suitable property. It was, however, only in the 1940s, when a significant population of Muslim migrants, in particular from South Asia, were arriving and settling in this part of London, that a mosque was finally set up. These wartime migrants from South Asia and other parts of the British Empire were pioneers for the later, larger movements and settlement of Muslims in the East End that took place from the early 1960s onwards.