Why white British kids are pledging their lives to Allah
Eyes shining with pleasure, the nine-year-old English boy in a darkish Parka jacket holds up a certificates exhibiting he has simply transformed to Islam.
‘You’re a Muslim, Rudi!’ cheers the imam as he hugs the kid, whose hand he has held all through a brief ceremony at a Lancashire mosque.
In his piping voice, the teenager has simply recited the phrases of the Shahada, a strict Islamic creed pledging that there’s ‘nothing worthy of worship but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger’.
The mantra means he should now wash earlier than praying 5 instances a day, by no means eat pork and — when he’s grown up — shun Western habits together with consuming alcohol or intercourse, besides together with his personal equally religious Muslim spouse.
We learn about Rudi, and that his mom, charity volunteer Claire, willingly agreed to his conversion, as a result of we now have seen a video of the occasion in January 2021.
Sign of the instances: A Muslim cleric pictured with a younger convert to Islam. Their identities have been obscured for authorized causes
The Mail has found that baby and teenage Islamic conversions have grow to be commonplace on the UK’s 1,500 mosques throughout the previous 5 years. Identities have been obscured for authorized causes
It was posted on-line by the mosque and has been plastered over quite a few Islamic TV channels in addition to social media websites together with Facebook, TikTook and YouTube, ever since.
During the video, Imam Muhammad Bilal can he heard asking Rudi if he has made his resolution to grow to be a Muslim of his free will and with none strain from anybody. The boy solutions sure, nodding his tiny, mopped head enthusiastically.
At that second, Rudi grew to become one of many youngest UK converts to Islam, in accordance with the Greengate mosque within the former cotton city of Oldham.
But he’s certainly one of many tons of of British kids whose ancestors had been largely Christians who’re changing to the creed.
Type ‘Islam convert’ into an web search engine and you will note scores of clips of British children embracing the faith. Many have been posted by mosques to showcase the ‘phenomenon’ of mass conversions by disenchanted younger Christians and non-believers, some nonetheless at major faculty.
But the Mail has found the scene was set lengthy earlier than the October 7 atrocities. We have discovered that baby and teenage Islamic conversions have grow to be commonplace on the UK’s 1,500 mosques throughout the previous 5 years.
Even within the cathedral metropolis seat of the Church of England’s Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, a mosque has posted a movie on-line entitled Two English Brothers Accept Islam.
It exhibits the boys, maybe aged 14 and 15, repeating the Shahada watched by teams of younger Muslim males, some sitting on the ground, and almost all recording the occasion on cell phones. At the tip, the bearded and gowned imam, waving a bottle of water and a microphone, smiles because the brothers hug one another after which embrace a few of the watching worshippers.
In one other astonishing video, a minuscule ten-year-old English baby referred to as George in a black and white headdress says the Shahada as he converts to Islam on a pavement beneath the shadow of Big Ben throughout an enormous pro-Palestine protest in London final December.
The cherubic-looking baby is instructed by the Islamic cleric with a powerful South London accent (who isn’t proven on display): ‘Our main aim is paradise, [as Muslims] we will never die.’
The baby is standing by his unnamed and straight-talking father in a flat cap, holding a Palestinian flag. He tells the digicam that he as soon as transformed to Islam ‘25 years ago’ however has since strayed from the religion, even visiting Anglican church buildings to hope.
The father insists that he’s encouraging his son to transform. The boy himself pipes up that he’s anti-Islamophobia and desires to have a brand new life throughout what seems to be an impromptu ceremony.
The variety of converts — or ‘reverts’ as they’re additionally recognized in Islam religion, which decrees that each particular person is born a Muslim — has grown right into a tidal wave because the horrific bloodbath of Israelis by terror group Hamas final yr
‘This is amazing, you’re a believer. Go to the mosque and study Arabic,’ instructs the imam as he finishes the Shahada with the kid grinning in delight.
Behind him as a backdrop to this extraordinary scene are flag-waving protesters, the statue of Winston Churchill and pink London buses. This video of George has now gone viral the world over, together with these of different British girls and boys changing into Muslims.
One mosque welcoming the kid converts with alacrity is Lewisham Islamic Centre in South-East London.
Its outspoken chief imam Shakeel Begg, 44, is a persuasive and voluble speaker who, because the Mail revealed final December, instructed his worshippers at Friday prayers after the October 7 Hamas assault: ‘Grant victory to the people of Palestine, the people of Gaza, support them over their enemy, your enemy. Punish the oppressors (Israel) … destroy them, tear them apart.’
He went on to assert that, regardless of filmed proof on the contrary, the West and Israel had been mendacity by saying Muslims ‘had killed innocent children in Israel’.
Begg is a controversial determine. He as soon as launched an unsuccessful libel case towards the BBC for calling him an extremist. The choose warned him that he was within the good place to ‘plant the seeds of extremism in a young mind’.
Yet now he boasts of his rising following, notably amongst school-aged kids and college students, from inside his personal disadvantaged borough and throughout London.
On Islamic channels, the imam explains that he has welcomed 30,000 new Muslims to his mosque over 20 years, two of the recruits solely eight years previous.
‘People are looking for the truth… spiritual guidance and not finding that in the materialistic world that we are living in,’ he claimed. ‘So they are getting the answers and solutions in Islam.’
In a movie, Meet The Imam Converting Tens of Thousands Of Brits To Islam, printed not too long ago on the 5Pillars information website, he continues: ‘Islam is being normalised. It is… cool to be a Muslim. Because you find footballers, boxers, rappers, celebrities, so it is OK with the general public.’
In one other latest podcast he’s interviewed with a fellow Muslim, Fatima Barkatulla, for a present entitled Londoners Converting To Islam. It was broadcast on the social media website UMMAH (‘community’ in Arabic) TALK, which has a rising UK following.
In the Barkatulla podcast, Begg says his mosque is giving out 30 to 40 copies of the Koran each week to passers-by who are available in and ask for them. Many are non-Muslims.
He provides particulars of the 2 not too long ago transformed eight-year-old English kids.
‘The girl was with her father, a Muslim who had taken the Shahada before. The primary-school boy came with his friends who attended the mosque,’ he says. ‘In the last three or four years, a lot of people are becoming Muslims from the white community.’
When requested by Ms Barkatulla (pictured behind a blue veil) how he sees the longer term in 100 years’ time, the imam says that each family within the UK can have somebody in it who’s a Muslim, ‘a daughter, son, a cousin, or an aunt’.
He expects in Lewisham, if Allah is keen, that the majority the inhabitants can have joined Islam by then.
Dig a little bit deeper into occasions at Lewisham Islamic Institute and you discover on social media the brief movie of a pale-skinned English baby — maybe the eight-year-old woman he mentions — taking the Shahada there.
She appears extremely younger and has actually not reached puberty. Her head, shoulders and skinny chest are shrouded in a brown hijab, the modest Islamic masking for ladies, as she repeats her guarantees solemnly in a quiet voice to a cleric.
‘You are now a Muslim, Sister Layla,’ the person tells the kid as he congratulates her warmly.
Although we’re instructed on the mosque footage that she known as Layla, that’s the identify many new Muslim girls and women undertake after the ceremony as a result of they shed their earlier, usually Christian, persona.
It holds a particular that means in Islam as a result of it’s shared by a feminine modern of the Prophet Muhammad’s who was married to certainly one of his most profitable generals. The video of Layla might simply be seen as a publicity blurb fuelling the mosque’s uptick in conversions.
Begg would inform you that she — and her household — agreed to her being filmed throughout the momentous resolution to dedicate her life to Islam at such an early age.
And this surge in British children changing to Islam exhibits no signal of slowing. Many mosques make it clear they’re keen to welcome non-believing recruits sporting ‘tattoos, braided uncovered hair, or even immodest clothing’, with out criticism or judgement.
One of those keen ahead scouts is one other imam on the Lewisham Islamic Institute.
He is Ashraf Dabous who not too long ago appeared on the Thinking Muslim podcast to speak of the ‘phenomenon’ of youth conversions. He mentioned {that a} actually dramatic rise of 60 or 70 children, some simply 13 and 14 years previous, took Shahada there throughout Ramadan, the month of holy fasting, throughout spring final yr.
The imam mentioned most of the converts had watched their associates and fellow Muslim pupils praying 5 instances a day at college, being pleasant, disciplined in behaviour, and preferred what they noticed — so needed to repeat them.
‘There are a new generation [of young people] in our society who live Islam confidently. They say they are British, yes, but they are Muslim first,’ he defined throughout the interview.
He added: ‘Our doors [at the mosque] are always open.’
He advised that controversies round gender and LGBT points have pushed a wedge via society, serving to to encourage the avalanche of male converts to Islam. ‘It is difficult for young men to find their way in a society that is feminising and erasing them. We as Muslims are very black and white on these issues . . . a man is a man and a woman is a woman.’
This is confirmed by the Leicestershire-based Convert Muslim Foundation the place a ‘leading light’ who wished to withhold her identify instructed us this week that children are being impressed by Islam amid turbulent world occasions.
‘They, and others of all ages, are worried about the moral bankruptcy of modern society,’ mentioned the spokeswoman to the Mail, revealing that she herself had transformed from Roman Catholicism.
More converts had come ahead since October 7 after what she claimed, in a rare outburst, was the ‘genocide’ Israel was inflicting on Palestine in its ongoing navy motion.
Other movies seen by the Mail reveal English teenage males turning to Islam. Lancashire’s Masjid as-Sunnah institution in Accrington has posted certainly one of Mitch, 17, solemnly saying the Shahada as he sits on the ground subsequent to an imam final yr. He stands up afterwards and, smiling, is hugged by members of the congregation.
In close by Nelson, teenager Dylan, in a gray hoodie, is filmed accepting the Shahada in a neighborhood mosque in 2022.
A message posted beneath the web movie written by him and signed in his full identify a yr later says: ‘It’s me on this video . . . It remains to be the very best resolution of my life and all of the blessings that include Islam.’
This weekend Rudi — now 12 — doesn’t remorse his resolution. After he transformed, he modified his identify to ‘Muhammed Muzammil’, referenced within the Koran as that means an individual enwrapped within the Islamic religion.
In images and movie taken on the mosque and distributed on social media, he’s portrayed wearing Islamic regalia praying subsequent to grownup male worshippers. His mom, Claire, 45, might be seen hugging her son on the mosque after his conversion. An outpouring of messages congratulate them each for his or her resolution.
‘This is really beautiful,’ says one. ‘Nine-year-old Rudi has accepted Islam, the youngest person to take Shahada with the [Imam] Muhammad Bilal.’
The message praised his mom Claire for ‘beautifully saying she is happy with whatever decision her young son makes’. ‘May Allah honour Imam Bilal, bless Rudi, and allow this entire country to accept to Islam [sic],’ added the enthusiastic message.
This week the household of Rudi confirmed that he — they usually — haven’t any regrets about his conversion three years in the past at such an early age. Rudi nonetheless attends a few of the weekly Friday ceremonies on the mosque half an hour’s bus journey away from his terraced home the place he lives together with his mom, sister and brother.
The recent devotion of Rudi, and so many different British girls and boys, to Islam exhibits no signal of waning. And it needs to be mentioned those that lead our mosques appear very happy about the way in which this spiritual revolution is popping out.
