The Shia Muslim Community Gulam Musa

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In terms of population, The Gujarati community dominates in Gloucester. But it would be misleading to believe that there is only a Sunni Muslim community. There are other Muslim sects in the county. One tiny minority is the Shia Community.

Gulam Musa was the first known member of the Shia community to arrive in the city. He was famous as a cricketer with the Kenyan national team and arrived to study in 1961. His family joined him seven years later.

Gulam's father, Mr G.H. Musa is a central figure in the Shia community and has been instrumental in founding the only Shia mosque in Gloucester which is based in Quedgeley. There are fifty individual members today and the children are taught in Urdu and English at class on Sundays.

The President of the Shia community, Mr Jaffer, officially opened the doors on the 7th October 1990. Prior to this, Mr G.H. Musa's wife, Fatima, taught children the reading of the Koran and a Mr Najafi, assumed the post of Preacher. Mr G.H. Musa's son, Murtza, had set aside two rooms at his shop in Eastgate Street as a School and prayer room. Today it's a Chinese takeaway.

The first hurdle Mr Musa faced was to raise the money to buy the property to serve as a mosque at a cost of £95,000. The Shia Head Office in London contributed £20,000 and the rest Mr Musa raised from old Kenyan business friends. The full amount was collected in one week.

Mr Musa is currently chairman of Inter-Faith. As the name suggests, the organisation attempts to act as a bridge between faiths and to promote peaceful co-existence. He smiles amiably as he remembers his youth on the island of Zanzibar. The Sultan, a Kuwaiti royal, would invite the leaders of the Shia and Sunni communities to mark special Islamic holidays with a 21 gun tattoo.

Mr Musa is also the secretary of Gloucester Ethnic Minority Business Association (GEMBA) and Governor of Widden State School. He has distributed 200 English Korans to schools in Gloucester and even published Bosnian language Korans for recent Bosnian refugees. He reads two chapters of the Koran every day before work and attributes this to his vigour and continuing success.