Subscriptions
Read our Monthly Magazine
And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
Nelson has too many mosques. That may well read as a neo-Nazi rant, Reform Party slogan, or a GB News headline. Except it’s a comment now frequently heard among many in the Muslim communities that make up the East Lancashire town.
A 37 year-old teaching assistant, born, schooled and who now works and raises his family there, makes the comment in casual conversation. He is visibly Muslim, wearing a thobe, beard, and skull cap.
Sixteen mosques now serve Nelson’s people, with another at the planning stage. For a town which once boasted of having just 13 pubs – the lowest ratio per head of population in the country, a 1998 report noted – this is quite the transformation.
Waquas Ali, who runs an educational consultancy in Nelson, believes the number of mosques is “excessive”.
The 42-year-old told Byline Times: “Though it may sound idealistic, I believe that four to five high-quality institutions serving both Muslims and non-Muslims would better support the development of healthy individuals and communities.”
On the other side of Pendle Hill, lies the market town of Clitheroe, forming the parliamentary constituency now known as Pendle and Clitheroe.
The Politics of Farage and Reform is No Joke of a Matter – The Established Media Must Learn Its Lessons and Start Holding Them to Account
The normalisation of racism and dog-whistles will only get worse if the press continues to treat Farage as an entertaining figure representing the ‘real views’ of the British people – it must stop, writes Byline Times’ Editor
In Clitheroe, one mosque stands in an old disused church building, which the small Muslim community fought for 30 years to establish. Applications were met with cries of “go home P*ki” at council meetings where eight successive rejections were justified by reasons such as it would attract outsiders.
The authorities’ official reasoning for the rejections generally tended to be that a mosque would attract outsiders – “a veiled reference to Muslims”, a record of the meetings by non-profit educator, Facing History & Ourselves notes.
‘The Immigration Election’
Immigration has been a major election issue that has been further ignited by Nigel Farage assuming the leadership of the Reform Party and himself standing for Parliament.
Launching his party’s proposals last month, Farage suggested that this “should be the immigration election”, saying that Reform wants to “freeze” all non-essential immigration, which he blames for NHS waiting lists and the housing crisis.
While Labour is expected to secure a landslide victory, Farage has barely been out of the media spotlight. While the Conservatives have long been criticised for their Rwanda scheme, Labour Leader Keir Starmer has also faced a backlash this election after singling out the Bangladeshi community during a debate about immigration.
How Nigel Farage, Major Media Outlets and Ofcom ‘Normalised Islamophobia and Then Justified It’
Farage would be cancelled if he said the same things about Jews as he does Muslims – yet he gets endless airtime
But immigration is not simply the concern of white British voters or the pet project of the far-right, as it is often reported. In Nelson, immigration divides a community made up of immigrants.
‘Ineffective, Incompetent and Impotent Leadership’
The population of Nelson between the last two Census’ increased by 14.8%, double that of the wider Pendle constituency, and almost three times that of the wider north-west region. At the same time, on all indicators of safety and security and deprivation, as well as commercial vacancy rates, the town was trailing and, at times, significantly worse than English averages.
Census data shows how, in 2011, Nelson was 57.8% white and 40.4% Asian, almost all of whom were of Pakistani heritage. Ten years on, Nelson is a majority British-Pakistani Muslim town, with 43% of its population now identifying with a white ethnic group.
But, to suggest this is a tale of two communities, which the New Statesman did in categorising the towns folk as “fish-eaters and fasters” in May 2017, does not quite depict the reality on the ground today.
Ali Raza Ahmed, a 38-year-old freelance financial advisor who had a career in the City before returning to his place of birth, says the number of mosques in Nelson is an indication of the “lack of unity and tribal rivalry” within the Muslim community.