Whilst the new Salafi Bookstore on Coventry Road opened almost immediately, the Salafi Mosque would take nearly nine months to be ready for use. By 2001, the building adjacent to and connecting to the Salafi Mosque on Wright Street was also being prepared to take over as the main primary school from that currently operating in nearby Muntz Street and was expanded to cater for children up to the age of eleven years. The growing infrastructure that came about as a response to the needs of Birmingham’s Salafi community was also increasing—and was reflected in the long waiting lists for children to enter the new faith-based school as people started to migrate from various parts of the country to take benefit for themselves and their families.
It was also 2001 onwards that a big influx of post-‘9/11’ migrants began to arrive in Birmingham from mainland Europe. Referred to as a petit hijra by those whose main intention was to escape the debilitating effects of rising Islamophobia after the West’s ‘War on Terror’, the migration was based upon a fatwa from Al-‘Allāmah Ash-Shaykh, ‘Ubaid Al-Jābiri (may Allah have mercy on him) who affirmed the permissibility of hijra to Birmingham. In specific, he advised those migrants who were unable to migrate to Muslim countries to seek out and stay close to Al-Maktabah As-Salafiyyah.[1]
[1] This migration is sometimes compared to the migration of the Companions from Makkah (where they were oppressed) to Abyssinia, where they could freely practise Islam.
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