Behind a glass door inside Al Madina Mosque, Ashfaq Siddique stands at ramrod attention, his eyes darting. He is the mosque's guiding spirit.
He is also a former policeman with Scotland Yard. He is scanning live feeds from 36 closed-circuit cameras that monitor everything from the prayer hall to the ablutions room. He is searching for trouble.
None in the parking lot, where white nativists routinely throw nails over the walls to puncture the car tires of those praying inside. Nor in the main hall, where Islamic extremists have sometimes argued against democracy with mainstream imams.
This morning, the problem is overcrowding. So many Muslims now live in the working-class East London neighborhood of Barking that roughly 9,000 people attended the morning prayer sessions in early September to begin the holiday of Eid al-Adha.
"Upstairs is filling up start moving them to the upper hall of the community center!" Siddique, 50, shouts into a yellow walkie-talkie.
Few, if any, major Western cities have been more open to Muslims than London. More than 12 percent of Londoners are Muslim. Eighteen months ago, this became the first Western capital to elect a Muslim mayor, a milestone for residents proud of their multicultural ethos.
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'विद्यार्थी मित्र' जॉईन करा आणि मिळवा न्यूज, जॉब, माहिती अगदी विनामूल्य ते ही आपल्या व्हॉटस्अॅपवर. <नाव> <शहराचे नाव> <नोकरी>७७२०० २५९०० मेसेज व्हॉटस्अॅपवर पाठवा
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