UK’s largest Muslim event goes ahead with added security as hate crime rises

The 2025 Jalsa Salana festival in Alton, Hampshire. Photograph: Ahmadiyya Muslim Community/PA View image in fullscreen The 2025 Jalsa Salana festival in Alton, Hampshire. Photograph: Ahmadiyya Muslim Community/PA UK’s largest Muslim event goes ahead with added security as hate crime rises Jalsa Salana in Hampshire has had enhanced support from police, emergency services and local authorities Security has been increased ’s largest Muslim convention, Jalsa Salana, alongside enhanced coordination with police, emergency services and local authorities, against a backdrop of growing anti-Muslim sentiment. Last month, another big Islamic gathering was forced to close early after 12 people were arrested, including three on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, over a suspected far-right threat. Did Jalsa Salana’s organisers think twice about going ahead? “Not once. Not for a second,” said Rafiq Hayat, the head of the UK chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which organises the festival. View image in fullscreen Rafiq Hayat, head of the UK chapter of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Photograph: Andy Hall/The GuardianNow in its 60th year, Jalsa Salana is expected to draw about 50,000 people from more than 100 countries to a temporary site in Hampshire this weekend. The convention opened on Friday with prayers, speeches – including an address from the community’s global leader, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad – and the raising of a union jack at the centre of the 208-acre site. MPs, bishops and other public figures are expected to attend. Hayat says the community has weathered hostility before. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has been in Britain for more than a century, having established itself in 1913, and built one of London’s first purpose-built mosques in 1926. “I personally have been in London since 1967, so I have been through all of the various rightwing movements: from skinheads, to the ‘rivers of blood’ speech . We have seen it all,” Hayat said. During the construction of the movement’s mosque in Morden in the 1990s, hundreds of British National party supporters protested outside planning meetings, he added. But rather than withdrawing, Hayat said, the community deliberately invested in relationships with its neighbours. “We created a liaison group,” Hayat said. “We invited people from the church and from various local groups, from the local authority to the police. And we said we would hold a meeting every month at our mosque, and appointed a local councillor as the chair of the meeting.” He added that the first two meetings were “very heated”.