Jakia Masjid Naqsbandia Aslamia & Community Centre

Standing on a residential street in Acocks Green, Birmingham, Jakia Masjid serves the British Bangladeshi and wider Muslim community of the south east of the city. The mosque takes its spiritual lineage from the path of Khwaja Baha ud Din Naqshband of Bukhara, the fourteenth century scholar whose teaching on silent remembrance of God shaped Muslim devotional life from Central Asia to Anatolia and on to the Indian subcontinent. Aslamia refers to an Islamic learning heritage that threads through South Asian madrasas, and the British congregation here keeps alive practices of collective dhikr, study of the Mathnawi of Rumi in translation and careful memorisation of the Quran, all of which arrived with migrants from Sylhet and Dhaka over the past half century.

Acocks Green itself grew during the nineteenth century as a streetcar suburb of Birmingham, and its post war prosperity attracted waves of new residents from across the Commonwealth. The masjid occupies a former commercial building converted sympathetically, with a discreet green signboard above the entrance and carefully maintained flower boxes at the windowsills. Inside, the ground floor prayer hall is carpeted in deep emerald and lit by modest pendant lamps, while the first floor hosts a women's prayer area, classrooms for weekend Islamic studies and a small library of books in English, Arabic and Bengali.

The community centre attached to the mosque runs a full weekly programme. Children's Quran and Arabic classes take place every weekday evening, and a hifz scheme for older students trains aspiring young huffaz under the supervision of the resident imam. Women's halaqat in Bengali meet on Wednesday afternoons, and a youth group organises football tournaments, anti knife campaigns and charity runs for flood victims in Bangladesh and for local Birmingham food banks. The centre hosts interfaith visits from neighbouring churches and schools, offering tea, samosas and gentle conversation about Islamic belief.

Friday attendance fills both floors and spills into the lobby, with sermons delivered in English followed by a short reminder in Bengali for the older uncles. Ramadan brings nightly tarawih and communal iftar cooked in the downstairs kitchen by volunteer aunties. Visitors from across Birmingham and further afield are always welcomed, invited to join any talk or meal and encouraged to meet the neighbours who make this quiet corner of Acocks Green a home for faith and friendship.