Finsbury Park Mosque 4.23

The Finsbury Park Mosque, also known as the North London Central Mosque, is a 5-storey mosque located next to Finsbury Park station close to Arsenal Football Club's Emirates Stadium, in the London Borough of Islington. Finsbury Park Mosque is registered as a charity in the UK, serving the local community in Islington and the surrounding Boroughs of North London.The mosque gained notability when Abu Hamza al-Masri, a radical preacher, became its imam in 1997. In 2003, the mosque was closed by its trustees following an anti-terrorist police raid, and re-opened in 2005 under new leadership.History1988–1997: OpeningIn the 1960s a small room in a guest house at 7 Woodfall Road, London N4 was used as a Prayer Room and community centre for the handful of Bangladeshi Muslims then working and living in the district, and had become inadequate for the growing Muslim community by the time the building was compulsorily purchased by the local authority as part of a Housing Action Plan. The community formed a Muslim Welfare Centre, and in 1975 purchased its own property at St. Thomas’s Road, later also acquiring neighbouring plots. A mosque first came into use on the site in 1988, when it was one of the largest mosques in the UK. In 1994 a new 5-storey mosque building was officially opened in a ceremony attended by Prince Charles and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia who had contributed funds for the building.