Letter to the Editor South Wales Echo, UK

Cardiff council has once again utterly disappointed me. The planning application to build an Ahmadi mosque in Canton has been in and out of council corridors for more than two years and the council couldn’t distinguish between Ahmadi Muslims and non-Ahmadi Muslims or failed to establish the membership numbers that Ahmadis have in the area.

The recommendation to refuse the application by the officer is based solely on the vehicular traffic generated. Should the committee not have taken the time to visit the premises and make an informed decision?

During the committee proceedings Councillor Ali reportedly said he knows thousands of Muslims who would attend this mosque. May I ask who these thousands of Muslims are? I ask the councillor if he has ever set foot inside an Ahmadi mosque.

For those who call us heretics and refuse to say hello to us on the streets, for those who refuse to call our mosque a mosque, are they expected to overnight convert to Ahmadiyyat or put their faith in grave peril by entering a so called heretic place of worship? Did the committee genuinely believe the general population of Muslims would use our mosque amass. The committee failed to see the fundamental facts of the application.

I also ask why the recommendations of the officer were not put to question and the comments of one councillor not challenged by others on the panel. Have the committee members ever heard of Orthodox Catholics attending Sunday service at a Mormon church? Or would the numbers of Catholics in the area determine the vehicular traffic generation of a Mormon church? If not, then to me it seems the council officers and committee failed to discharge their responsibility.

In view of these concerns, I feel obliged to bring to light the following vital information regarding the application.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim community is a minority, reformist movement within Islam. The community rejects the concept of a violent jihad, emphasises the equality of mankind, endorses a separation of mosque and state. It champions the empowerment and education of women. Its members are among the most law-abiding, educated, and engaged Muslims in the world. These unique characteristics unsettled conventional Muslim thinking. Unfortunately, the community is persecuted in countries where fundamentalist attitudes within Islam are prevalent. Through our history of more than 100 years many Ahmadis have been injured, tortured and even killed only for their faith. The sad reality is that these fundamental values are spilling into UK society as well and the community is ostracised today on the streets of Cardiff too.

In this context, the Ahmadiyya community is not welcome in any other mosques in Cardiff. For the past 10 years, the community has been offering Friday prayers at St Thomas’s community hall on Pantbach Road. Hence the need to have a mosque of their own to worship and profess their beliefs in the freedom guaranteed to them as citizens of Wales.

The premises at Sanatorium Road have been in use by the community since the permission of “change of use” was granted in 2013. The usage has not generated any unusual traffic or caused any congestion in the area so far, so it seems far-fetched that building a minaret and
purpose-built prayers halls (instead of making do with the already existing office block) will somehow change the pattern of usage or number of worshipers.

Most of our members do not own a car. As our practice in Pantbach has demonstrated, most of our members use public transport, car pool or cycle to prayers. The traffic projection for the mosque is less than the previous business (Ian Williams Ltd) operating in the premises.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim community is a small community in Cardiff with limited membership. No one other than our own membership is expected to use the prayer halls so the idea of thousands of worshipers gathered around the mosque is completely baseless.

Saiha Maaz

SOURCE:   http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/south-wales-echo-letters-saturday-12766348#ICID=nsm