by Danny Lockwood, TCW
HAVE you had a Muslim ijtema festival in your town? If you’re not sure, let me assure you that you haven’t. Oh, and it’s not something the 1,600 quiet-living (I assume) denizens of rural Barham in Suffolk are particularly keen on experiencing, it seems. But it’s a-coming! With knobs on!
I had my first experience of an ijtema over 30 years ago when my home town of Dewsbury’s then-population of 52,000 doubled, literally, overnight. Main roads were summarily blockaded by Muslim stewards. Ambulances were refused access, the police were nowhere to be seen and the town’s large sports fields were overnight encampments, broken up only by local (Muslim) GPs’ tables where they were scribbling out thousands of pounds worth of prescriptions for the worshippers as fast as they could. My newspaper exposed that racket.
We’ll come to what exactly an ijtema is shortly, but that one was introduced to Britain by the Markaji Masjid, the Dewsbury-based European headquarters of the evangelical Tablighi Jamaat Islamic sect. And guess who’s taking their holy mission on the road to rural Suffolk, where the Georgian manor house of Shrubland Hall can expect 100,000-plus worshippers for three days in July? Yup, the Markazi.
Ijtemas are large-scale Muslim faith celebrations that are staged around the Islamic world, holy occasions in every sense. I trotted along to Dewsbury’s last event a few years ago, which again shut down the southern end of town, but it had already clearly outgrown any available open spaces. Shrubland Hall was apparently selected over the Excel Centre in London and Birmingham’s NEC. The Markazi, which was in the process of doubling its 4,000-worshipper capacity when I last visited it a few months ago, is clearly cost-conscious. I take it the fields are spacious indeed. The local rent-a-loo company will do good business.