Location(s)

27 Oxford Street, Gorbals, Glasgow

Glasgow Central Mosque
1 Mosque Avenue
Glasgow
G5 9TA
United Kingdom

About

The Jamiat ul Muslimin, known as Jamiat Ittihad ul Muslimin from 1945 onwards, was founded in 1933 by Atta Mohammed Ashrif. Ashrif was a businessman who co-owned and ran a warehouse in Gorbals called Tanda & Ashrif Co. with Noor Mohammed Tanda, who migrated to Glasgow in 1916.

Ashrif was born in Ludhiana, Punjab on 2 January 1903 and migrated to Glasgow in 1926, where he became a pedlar and sold clothes across Lanarkshire. After spending time in Belfast, he moved to London in 1930, where he met Imdad Ali Qazi, a scholar and jurist who came to Britain to study at the London School of Economics and, later, the School of Oriental and African Studies, where he encountered other prominent Indian Muslims. Qazi founded the Jamiat ul Muslimin in London with a group that included Ashrif, who had spent his time in London supporting destitute Indian seamen. Qazi returned to Pakistan and became the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sindh in 1951, and Ashrif went back to Glasgow in 1933 to launch his business and the Jamiat ul Muslimin.

The Jamiat ul Muslimin’s mission included establishing mosques as part of its broader objective to meet the needs of Muslims in Glasgow. In 1944 the organization founded Glasgow’s first mosque, a converted space located at 27 Oxford Street, Gorbals. The ground floor was rented to the Seamen’s Club whilst the mosque was located on the first floor. Seven South Asian Muslims contributed £100 each to purchase the building. The mosque ran Urdu and Arabic classes for adults in the community, as well as religious classes. In 1945, the Jamiat Ittihad ul Muslimin was formed when two separate factions combined.

In 1958, a planning committee was organized by the Jamiat Ittihad ul Muslimin to build Scotland’s first purpose-built mosque. The committee included Bashir Maan and other community organizers. The goal of the mosque was to have a dedicated space for Muslims in the city, as well as a symbolic representation of their belonging in Scotland.

On 18 May 1984, and at a cost of £3 million, Glasgow Central Mosque opened at 1 Mosque Avenue. This involved decades of community fundraising, as well as national and international donations. For example, in 1977 Prince Fawaz bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia donated £40,000 towards construction of the mosque.  In 1980 Scottish Television produced a newsclip which documented the progress of the mosque’s construction. The building, which was designed by W. Copeland and Associates, has a main prayer room, a women’s prayer room and a connected community space. Bashir Maan, who was interviewed for the news piece, said the building was faithful to the principles of Islamic architecture, and was a place of congregation for roughly 15,000 local Muslims. In February 2025 the mosque was given the status of a Category A listed building by Historic Environment Scotland.

Central Mosque, ‘About’, https://centralmosque.co.uk/about/

Colourful Heritage, ‘The First Permanent Mosque Is Built in Glasgow’, https://www.colourfulheritage.com/timeline/the-first-permanent-mosque/

Historic Environment Scotland, 'Glasgow Central Mosque, including paved courtyard with garden, boundary walls and railings and excluding the early 21st century hall addition to the southwest, 1 Mosque Avenue, Gorbals, Glasgow' (11 February 2025)

‘Kazi Remembered’, Dawn (13 April 2016)

Maan, Bashir, ‘Ata Muhammad Ashraf’, Herald Scotland (30 January 1999)

Razzaq, Saqib, 'Meet the GlaswegAsians: Glasgow’s South Asian Heritage', Historic Environment Scotland (21 June 2019), https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2019/06/glasgows-south-asian-history/

Scott, Catherine, ‘Building a Future for "Little Lahore"’, Daily Mail (17 June 1965)

Cox, Jim, ‘It’s Far Worse for the Children’, Daily Record (2 March 1967)

GB243 TCH1/1/4, Bashir Maan Collection, Mitchell Library, Glasgow

‘Urdu in the Gallowgate’, Scotsman (9 October 1962)

Scan1small Jamiat Ittehad ul Muslimin

Jamiat Ittihad ul Muslimin Constitution. Courtesy of Colourful Heritage, the Bashir Maan Archive and the Ashrif Family.

Image credit

Glasgow Central Mosque, photo by Finlay McWalter via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Citation: ‘Glasgow Central Mosque and Jamiat Ittihad ul Muslimin’, South Asian Britain, https://southasianbritain-demo.rit.bris.ac.uk/organizations/glasgow-central-mosque-and-jamiat-ittihad-ul-muslimin/. Accessed: 5 July 2025.

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