The Burgess Hill Muslim Community recently held an interview with BBC Sussex Radio to talk about the history of the Muslim community, the journey of purchasing the Mosque, our official public open day and our vision for the future.

Here is an extract of the interview that was held.

What does it mean to have this dedicated building for the Muslim Community? Will it make things easier?

• To have the first Mosque in Burgess Hill, is truly a dream come true.
• We never imagined that over 40 years ago, when only a few Muslims started praying in Burgess Hill that we would now have a Mosque.
• When we first seriously talked about the possibility of creating a Mosque in August 2016, we did not realise that it would happen so quickly.
• This only happened as a result of the vast support we received from the people in Burgess Hill, Hassocks, Brighton, Seaford and from all around the United Kingdom, who made time and gathered support so quickly to make this possible.
• The journey to make this possible was truly amazing.

Will it make things easier?

• I believe that having a Mosque will make a lot of things much easier not only in Burgess Hill but for people in our surrounding communities of Hassocks, Hurstpierpoint and Wivesflield to come to the Mosque.
• For many years, we struggled to find a suitable place to pray for our growing community especially during Eid which is a very important day for Muslims
• This meant that often we could not find a suitable place and sometimes we had to pray on the grass, which made it very difficult for the elderly members of our community.
• Now we have a Mosque, we have a place to accommodate Muslims to conduct their daily prayers furthermore, we now have an opportunity to now fully participate in our community.

Tell me about the open day you had recently – why was it important to welcome friends, local neighbours and other community representatives to your new place?

• Our vision is to make our Mosque open to everyone from all different faiths, backgrounds and walks of life and to make a valuable contribution to our town for many years ahead.
• We were all delighted that the open day was a huge success, we were overwhelmed by the numbers of people who made time to come to our special day.
• We wanted to welcome everyone, friends, local neighbours and community representatives whom we have known for many years because they all supported us from the beginning to make all this possible.
• Although we have not finished the work needed for our Mosque, we wanted to do an open day as soon as possible to welcome everyone, and personally thank each of them for all their encouragement and messages of support.
• I hope this is the start of many community events to come in the future and all of us are very much looking forward to working together on several community projects to help many people in our town.

We’re talking about good dialogue and relations between different faith groups in the local communities later on the programme – I may also ask you about the role you think the Muslim community plays in the wider Burgess Hill community and whether it’s good to spend time getting to know people from different faith backgrounds etc.
 
• In our faith from the outset, a Mosque is a multi-purpose community centre, which welcomes everyone from all different faiths, walks of life to help build a better community and an even better society.
• We have seen in the last 40 years Burgess Hill has grown as a town and becoming a multi-cultural place for people to live together happily in peace and harmony. I believe this is something we should be very proud of.
• I believe that as Muslim living in Burgess Hill, I can say that our community has very much enjoyed living in this area and felt that this is very much our home. We have all raised families and brought up children to engage and become friends with people from all backgrounds.
• However, the only problem we had is that we did not have a community building to participate in large community projects.
• As the Mosque has come so quickly, I believe this is an exciting opportunity to start to fully engage with people across different religious groups and faiths such as the Church to work on many community projects together, which I believe will help people who are less fortunate than us.
• I believe this is very much the start of a new and exciting chapter in our society and I am very much looking forward to the future.