![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/b892b85c-4bc4-11ed-8176-c5c5e560820a.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA decade ago my friend Paul and I stepped out of my battered blue Ford Focus in the town of Woking and instantly stopped talking. We stared in silence at the magnificent sight before us: a large, iridescent green onion-dome, evoking Mogul India, flanked by a quartet of elegant, snow-white, faux minarets, each with its own mini green onion-dome, topped with ornate gilded points shimmering in the early spring sunshine.<\/p>\n
Beneath them a dizzying array of vegetal patterns, also gold and green, decorated the mosque\u2019s arabesque arch above its majestic entrance. And in front a symmetrical garden of roses and neatly trimmed lawns was centred on a small fountain.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere the hell are we?\u201d Paul eventually blurted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the \u2018Orient\u2019 . . . just in Surrey!\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n
In a way we literally were: the Shah Jahan Mosque\u2019s address is 149 Oriental Road.<\/p>\n
For the remainder of our time, Paul kept asking why neither of us knew anything about such a spectacular place on our doorsteps. It was criminal, he said \u2014 and he was right. The first purpose-built mosque in the UK and northern Europe had been sitting in the town of Woking, just southwest of London, for nearly 130 years.<\/p>\n
This is why my latest work for the travel publisher Lonely Planet, a chapter called Hidden Muslim Britain in the new book Experience Great Britain, is so significant. While the chapter \u2014 the first for a mainstream guidebook \u2014 offers readers the opportunity to get out and explore Britain\u2019s fascinating and long Muslim heritage, it raises the question: why hasn\u2019t it happened before?<\/p>\n
So, to whet your appetite here are five British-Muslim sites you might have been missing out on.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Peace Garden, Surrey<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
1. Shah Jahan Mosque and Peace Garden, Surrey<\/p>\n
Completed in 1889, this white Woking mosque was initiated by the Hungarian-Jewish academic Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner as part of a grand oriental institute and then nearly demolished ten years later upon his death. Luckily, an Indian lawyer named Khwaja Kamal ud-Din, aided by influential converted British nobles, reinvigorated it to become a flourishing centre of Islamic activity. The neo-Mughal style structure still functions as a mosque today, and is also open to all visitors (free; tours by arrangement; shahjahanmosque.org.uk). The nearby Woking Muslim Military Cemetery, where some Muslims who died fighting for the British Empire during both world wars were laid to rest, is now a serene landscaped Islamic garden known as the Peace Garden (woking.gov.uk).<\/p>\n
![\"Royal](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/48e2925c-4bc4-11ed-8176-c5c5e560820a.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Royal Pavilion Brighton<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
2. Royal Pavilion Brighton<\/p>\n
There are two reasons to visit the jaw-dropping Royal Pavilion, with its Indian-inspired domes and minarets, in Brighton. Firstly, it was here that Sake Dean Mahomed, a pioneering 19th-century Bengali-Muslim, would arrive to serve as the royal shampooist of King George IV and King William IV. Later, this was where the Empire\u2019s Muslim, Hindu and Sikh soldiers injured in World War I were treated. The Indian Hospital Gallery inside tells that story, and of how this space was used to help in their treatment by the Raj. It also reveals that there were two other hospitals nearby where Indian patients endured more harrowing experiences (\u00a317, including gardens; brightonmuseums.org.uk).<\/p>\n
\u25cf Best boutique hotels in Brighton<\/b><\/a> The Arab Room, Cardiff<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n 3. The Arab Room, Cardiff <\/p>\n Part of Cardiff Castle, the Arab Room exemplifies the British aristocracy\u2019s longstanding love for Islamic art and architecture. It dates to 1881, and its ceiling is covered in the classical Islamic architectural design known as muqarnas, commonly seen on Ottoman-era mehrabs (prayer niches) or minarets. This dizzying example is covered in 22-carat gold leaf and integrates Islamic geometric motifs as well as stained glass, beneath which are large mashrabiya-style windows. The room\u2019s marriage of classical Islamic designs with northern European iconography evokes the mudejar aesthetic once adopted by Christians and Jews in post-Muslim Iberia (\u00a314.50pp; cardiffcastle.com)<\/p>\n Abdullah Quilliam Mosque, Liverpool<\/p>\n 4. Abdullah Quilliam Mosque, Liverpool<\/p>\n Founded in 1887 as the Liverpool Muslim Institute, this was the UK\u2019s first mosque, where our earliest organised community of almost exclusively local, white, converted Muslims came to pray. It is named after the founder, Abdullah Quilliam, also a local convert and Britain\u2019s inaugural Sheikh-ul-Islam.<\/p>\n Anyone is welcome to visit what\u2019s now a heritage centre that\u2019s being renovated to resemble that late 19th-century mosque. Do so to hear the story of Britain\u2019s white Victorian Muslims, plus see replicas of items once kept in the mosque, including a press like the one used to print Britain\u2019s first two Islamic journals, The Crescent and The Islamic World (phone in advance for free tours; abdullahquilliam.org).<\/p>\n 5. Muslim Burial Plot 1, Surrey<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s oldest Muslim cemetery was founded in 1884, also by Leitner. Originally called the Muhammadan Cemetery, it\u2019s now the Muslim Burial Plot 1 or simply M1, as Muhammadan is considered an offensive word. Leitner established the site just west of Woking, close to his college at the time, in order to bury any Muslim students who passed away there. Shortly after, it became the final resting place of several high-profile Muslims, including Britain\u2019s greatest Quran translator Marmaduke Pickthall, the royal Muslim convert Sir Archibald Hamilton and even a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad \u2014 all of whom you can find on the Muslim Cemetery Walk, using a free walking map available at the cemetery offices (free; brookwoodcemetery.com).<\/p>\n The Gold Dinar of King Offa<\/p>\n THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM<\/p>\n And an honourable mention… <\/p>\n . . . for one tiny object on display in the British Museum: the Gold Dinar of King Offa. It\u2019s Britain\u2019s earliest indigenous Islamic artefact. Minted in about 774AD for King Offa of Mercia, this Anglo Saxon gold coin displays part of the shahadah (Islamic declaration of faith) and an Arabic homage to the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, one of the builders of Baghdad, alongside the Latin inscription Offa Rex (free; britishmuseum.org).<\/p>\n Experience Great Britain (\u00a316.99; Lonely Planet) is available now, as is Tharik Hussain\u2019s book Minarets in the Mountains: a Journey into Muslim Europe (\u00a39.99; Bradt)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A decade ago my friend Paul and I stepped out of my battered blue Ford Focus in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-309026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114953103954481464","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u25cf 21 fun things to do in Brighton<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/a8d506f4-4bc4-11ed-8176-c5c5e560820a.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Abdullah](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/96e7af0a-4bc4-11ed-8176-c5c5e560820a.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Gold](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/81ddc5c2-4bc4-11ed-8176-c5c5e560820a.jpg\")
<\/p>\n