Although by 1997-98 SalafiPubs had published its first books, namely, the Creed of Imam al Bukhāri; Mountains of Knowledge; and Usoolus-Sunnah of Imam Ahmad, Salafiyyah in the UK was still in its infancy and its callers were more focused on giving da‘wah and had not given much consideration to owning their own mosque or centre—especially since they already had access to Green Lane Mosque (GLM), Hartopp Road Mosque and Witton Road Mosque for their activities. This did not change once SalafiPubs was formed and GLM continued to allow their premises to be used as a place for SalafiPubs’s regular da‘wah activities, including winter conferences (summer conferences were held in other hired venues). This arrangement did not, however, last long, which illustrates the troubled relationship Salafism has had with other organisations and religious groups in Birmingham with its seemingly ‘uncompromising’ approach.
Thus, by 1997, GLM—better known back then as Markaz Jam’iat Ahl-e-Hadith, an offshoot of a South Asian movement—decided that they no longer wanted to host speakers from SalafiPubs, as they were starting to view the growing crowds of zealous students attracted to Abu Talhah’s and Abu Khadeejah’s weekly lessons and Salafi conferences as detracting from GLM’s own activites.[1] Most of all though, GLM disliked SalafiPubs’s exposition on, and refutation of deviated sects taking place on their turf. Shortly thereafter, a heated argument took place in the mosque between one of GLM’s members and a Salafi attendee; this gave GLM the excuse they needed to bar the SalafiPubs affiliated du‘āt and their students from using the mosque for classes indefinitely. SalafiPubs strongly suspected that the ousting had been pre-planned and was a message that GLM was not interested in making any future concessions or allowances for those on the Manhaj of Al-Albāni, Muqbil, Rabee’, et. al.
SalafiPubs’s Manhaj was proving to be incompatible with that of GLM—as latter’s ideas appeared to be heading towards a more political, parliamentary, and revolutionary (Mawdudi-Ikhwāni-Surūri) outlook. More than anything, GLM’s organisers did not like the fact that their methodologies were being challenged, and they began to label SalafiPubs as ‘extremists’ for their back-to-basics outlook on returning to orthodox Islam in all their affairs: belief, methodology, politics and worship.[2] The treatment that SalafiPubs and their congregation received at the hands of GLM was a bitter blow since they were left with nowhere to use as a base for da‘wah activities. However, in retrospect, it gave them the impetus to find a space of their own, and nearly a year later, in 1998, Abu Khadeejah signed the contract to rent a small building on Muntz Street in the Small Heath area of Birmingham. A dilapidated building, this new space which needed much structural repair took several months to complete before it was ready for use. With limited funds available to complete the work, many of the Salafi community’s members contributed to the project with tasks such as building, plastering, and plumbing etc. This newly renovated building would become the first SalafiPubs bookstore, also known as Al-Maktabah As-Salafiyyah.
[1] ‘I (author) recall one afternoon whilst staying in the home of my parents-in-law a knock on their front door and being handed a letter to pass on to my husband, Abu Khadeejah, who was not at home at the time. I later learned that it contained a message from the committee members of Green Lane that they were no longer prepared to facilitate activities from these Salafi du‘āt in their mosque because of an argument that had taken place between some of their mosque members and a Salafi attendee at the mosque’ (Source: author’s fieldwork diary).
[2] Ironically, some years on, GLM’s own increasingly anti-Western polemics reviling Christians and Jews and purported to ‘subvert democracy’ by preparing for jihad, were revealed in a 2007 Channel 4 documentary titled Undercover Mosque[2] for the series Dispatches, which resulted in GLM and those secretly filmed in this documentary as part of a Saudi-funded ‘Salafi’ mosque in Birmingham. Salafi Publications until this day challenges the narrative that Saudi Arabia should be blamed for the misdeeds, blunders, and mistakes of GLM.
It is worth noting that in reviewing this documentary in his book Young British and Muslim (2007), even though Lewis does not explicitly mention the mosque by name, his descriptive of ‘Salafi’ could easily mislead the reader to conclude that he was referring to The Salafi Mosque on Wright Street of SalafiPubs. Lewis may not be entirely to blame for this blunder, since in-fighting among GLM’s group members resulted in the mosque calling itself ‘Salafi’ instead of ‘Ahl-e-Hadith’ for a very short period. These days, they are better known as Green Lane Mosque and Community Centre (GLMCC) and have adopted a more congenial public image following the damage caused to them by Undercover Mosque.
Lewis’s (2007) study of the challenges that young British Muslims face growing up in British society is like several other works (Gove 2006; Heffelfinger 2011; Khan 2016; Leiken 2012; Lewis and Hamid 2018; 2016; Maher 2016; Wood 2018) that present the grossly erroneous view that Salafism is an ‘isolationist’ group that propagates a message synonymous with ‘Wahhabism’ which they argue is ‘projected world-wide through massive Saudi funding’ and is also largely responsible for influencing the ideology of groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (Lewis 2007:138,139).
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