first time the idea of establishing
something in Birmingham occurred to be in 1985 I remember I was in Stanmore and Mulla Saheb gave a lecture and conducted a class with us at madrasa Sayed Al-Khoei and then he said why don't you write down what you
would want to do after your studies and I wrote down that I would like to come back to Birmingham
and make a massive Islamic library and offer some form of Islamic education for our community here
when I came to the UK Mulla Saheb invited me to S
tanmore and Shaykh Zafar Abbas to the place where I
had studied Madrasa Sayed Al-Khoei now Ayatollah Amini had come he knew I was there so he had come to visit me whenever
I used to come back to the UK I would study from him and I asked him to do a istikhara didn't tell him
my intention and he said the istikhara is not good then I did another intention I said do another istikhara
and he said it's very very good then I told him the first istikhara was to take on the position of
a principal fo
r madrasa Sayed Al-Khoei and the the second one was to go to Birmingham and establish a religious
institution and he said go and establish it and whatever you need I will be there to help
you we had a mutual friend his name was marhom Ayatollah Hussein Amini who also used to be Ayatollah Uzma Sistani
class fellow and he used to support Shaykh Arif and he used to come to Birmingham of into our house
and always used to tell me to support the hawza it was his vision that hawza should expand into
big
bigger premises and it should be supported and he had lot of confidence in Shaykh Arif because
he used to teach him bahath kharij and also he used to teach Mulla Asghar marhom bahath kharij so he was a very important personality and that is why I started supporting hawza more and more because of Ayatollah Amini's input came to Birmingham
discussed the idea with Shaykh Mubashir and my brother-in-law Ahmed Mominzadah and they said they
were willing to be a part of this initiative so of co
urse at that point it was just an idea we
didn't have any resources we didn't know what to do so we sat in my sitting room and we said
well what should we name it and at the same time all three of us we said Al-Mahdi Institute but at
that point it was Al-Mahdi institution which was shortened down to Institute the next day I went
to my father's house was discussing the idea with my sister and my sister's friend Neelam Bhai who was
like an older sister to us she was there and she said well I
have a flat of Stratford Road which
I'm not using you can have it for as long as you want This is where it started from I remember we
used to have a classroom right at the end in the last room and our dear sister Neelam Bhai voluntarily
gave us this flat the night on which we decided to inaugurate an Islamic school here and we thought
wow that's wonderful things are happening went to the mosque after prayers I remember facing the
rear window and looking out and I was lost in my thoughts and
a person walked up to me Hassnain Kanani
and he said I have religious funds and I want to give them to you I called a and I said look
I have this figure of £10,000 he said well let us give half to the orphans and the widows and
the needy and the other half why don't you spend on the institute that you want to establish so
immediately we went and got the desks the chairs the furnitures the whiteboards and we kitted up
the flat overnight we had 25 students majority of them were reverts and t
hat was the birth of
the Al-Mahdi Institute from a moderate sized room the three of us who initiated this
project Shaykh Mubashir Ali Ahmed Mominzadah my brother-in-law and myself obviously we could
never have envisaged that the Al-Mahdi Institute would grow to the extent to which it has grown and
looking at this place all I can see was that pure youthful energy and the zeal couldn't see beyond
the tip of my nose and we were going by the day didn't know what the next day would bring or wou
ld
there be enough funds for zeal or enthusiasm or students after spending a few months in the
sister Neelam's flat The Institute was growing in terms of student numbers and the books
and we realized we had to relocate and we had some money in the pot and at that point
I knew a person a very dear friend and he had this house so he offered his house and we
immediately obiously took the offer we stayed there for just over 6 months for as long as the
money lasted in the pot when we finished p
aying the the last payment of rent now obviously we
knew we had no source of income and of course the teachers were all teaching voluntarily at
this point Sayed Mudhafar Abbas said to me that he has the flat above his freight and travel business
on Stretford Road vacant and I said I have no money he said well just come and start teaching
from here whenever you have money then pay it back this place brings back a lot of fun
memories this is the third location for the Al- Mahdi Institute it u
sed to be owned by a very
very dear friend who adopted me as his son Sayed Mudhafar Abbas may Allah bless his soul again here we
started acquiring books and we completely outgrew the capacity of the flat and there were a lot
of students coming in residential students and part-timers I think the fondest memories I have
are really the students and when I arrived Shaykh Muhammad Amin Evans was also here and he played a
key role in recruiting International students and I think the diversity was
something remarkable
it enriched the student experience and also the intellectual culture we now had students from
East Africa for example Kenya Tanzania we had from other parts of the world we stayed here for
a number of years 3 to four years before we totally outgrew this place the amount of students
and the amount of books by this time the Al-Mahdi was becoming quite popular and we started full
residential course so people from the UK from Bradford Peterborough and other areas and also
people
from Birmingham would come here and study and of course we also had part-time courses soon as
they came Shaykh Arif told me okay you are here you've got the hawza background so you can help us I so okay whatever
you ask so that's a mutual benefit I benefit from your student youit from my you know experience
I started to teach I think at that time Arabic and other subject it was my it was there last
couple of month in Stratford Road we'd run out of money we couldn't pay the rent no wa
ges were paid the
grants weren't paid we used to get a grant of about I think it was £10 a month we used to live
somehow we were packing all the books up to go into storage myself Shaykh Mubashir we were saying we
commit ourselves to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and that will'll carry on studying even if it's
just two or three of us sitting with a book in a room at which point Shafik Haji who' just
become the president of the Clifton Road Mosque burst through the door and shouted stop packing
the books I've got somewhere for you to move to in 1996 my term was coming to an end and I
knew every time I visited Shaykh Arif I knew that the rooms were small the space was small they
were growing at Straford Road they were looking for new premises and the jamat had retail shops on
Mosley Road and properties one of the properties above the retail shop Moseley Store I think it was
the property was empty and I thought this would be an ideal opportunity for the hawza to have
bigger place p
robably three or four times the size what they were in on Stratford Road and I
think negotiations start with them said would you be interested and I remember just as my term
ended which was in April of 1996 I think we were negotiating and we came to the negotiate that
we would give them A-Mahdi Institute assigned to say along lease so they could be positioned
there and that's how Al-Mahdi Institute came about on Mosley Road Shafik himself raised the
money a large sum of it was donated by Mu
lla Saheb and the World Federation and the rest of it from the
wellwishers of our Birmingham Community [Music] and truly Al-Mahdi Institute actually took off from
this place on the one side there's a barber shop on the other side there's a grocery shop and you
would never imagine what was between the two but as people walked up the stairs and they saw the
Institute they would be filled with wonder as to the beauty and the serenity of the place with
massive libraries many many classrooms off
ices it was truly growing in that phase the person
who actually renovated the whole building fisabilillah was brother Zulfikar Merali and he made it into an
impeccable building looking at it from outside you just think it's a door but as soon as you
walked inside the warmth and the ambience of that place would just carry you through it's
like going into Aladdin's cave it was beautiful books everywhere Wonder wonderful colours carpets
decorated Dr AK Howard was also a part of this place and
instructor here so was Dr Fatimi Dr Fanaei
Dr Amir Akrami and our very first produce Dr Ali-Reza Bhojani Dr Hashim Dr Wahid Riaz Walji Imran Panjwani all these
now alhamdulillah big names and and the up and coming sort of scholars were a result of this
place all credit has to go to Shaykh Arif first for creating a space where you could see visibly the
diversity that existed you had a black scholar like myself I would not have been anywhere else
in any other Institute of this nature that woul
d not employ someone who looks like me so I was
here and you also had students who were also black students you had white students you had
Arab students and you had South Asian students you had all these and Jamaican African Caribbean
students you all had you had all these students studying together eating together and sharing
knowledge and experiences I think the credit has to go to him for that imagination and I know
that when you create such a place people are not always willing to step
forward to support it
because it doesn't look like the kind of places they want to see which are often monolithic or
monocultural places but the blessings were there in the diversity was there and I hope that will
continue to be the case so in the early days when I had joined the Institute it was the month of
Ramadan Shaykh was the resident Alim at Clifton Road and as was the norm the maulana often frequently
gets invitations to come to people's house iftar so invitation was for him but as
was his habit you
know he would not want to leave us alone knowing these people are single they are hungry what are
they going to do so he would take us with him and the invitation that was for one ended up being
for five six people needless to say slowly slowly the invitations stopped this was a landmark moment
for the Institute all the connections that we have right now and the wellwishers all came through
this phase of the Al-Mahdi Institute and it began to become recognized as a real es
tablishment
also we saw ourselves not as curators of the past like people working in a museum simply curating
the past but people who had to give life to that intellectual Heritage so that it had a meaning for
the people here and now not something that simply existed in the dusty corner somewhere in a library
but something that people could relate to in their daily lives and that also is Shaykh Arif's vision and
I'm sure people who know him know that this is how he approached scholarship th
at scholarship is
not something that is dead in the past but it is it should be something that is alive and that our
role as Scholars is to continuously give it life and also so we pass that on to our students and
our students should not be passive transmitters of knowledge but active participants in producing
knew knowledge while relying on the past Moseley Road was a beautiful place in the sense that it was
connected well connected to the community it was behind the mosque and hussania ca
mpass so there
was a somehow Al- Mahdi was supporting the mosque for giving them lecturers speakers during the
all the you know all the events it was quite good because it was complimentary they used to
send their students to the mosque to lead namaz (prayers) sometimes their students used to give lectures
in the mosque it was complimentary to each other they were quite excellent in dealing with
non-Muslims as well so whenever the inquiries came about conversion and we used to send them to
AMI and that way it was working very well and I was very interested in in Al-Mahdi Institute cuz I
thought it was something that could benefit the community youngsters could ask questions to
someone who was younger instead of the normal traditional maulanas that we had and because they
spoke fluent English and they could ask I thought it would be an asset and so that's how I tried to
grow the relationship I ended up working 18 hours a day studying lecturing in the Masjid anywhere
people wo
uld listen to me and doing homework and six years had gone by and I didn't know
who was in the government I'd been locked into my studies the funny incident which happened
regularly was the Shaykh Arif who was in charge at that point 20 years ago he was quite a heavy
smoker and he was trying to kick the habit and he wasn't able to do that so he used to go to his
room at the top of the old building and have a quick smoke and you know we respect each other
we trust each other so I used to pop
in there and sometimes share a cigarette with him and I've
never told anybody that before so we started teaching from the Zainabia building but the students
from all over the world started flocking in and I remember we had to hire Saifi Bhai flat upstairs
the full lock stock and barrel we took it over the flat from the mosque to accommodate the students the
Zainabia rooms this building I think the maximum amount of residential students that we had was
in this phase of the Al-Mahdi Institut
e the whole of life was centred in that family and it really
was a family because we did get a free meal every day that was paid for by Shaykh Arif's family
and cooked by his sister Hassina it's a bond that cannot and should not be broken that his family
became our family and that maintains to this day pleasurable moments of this place for that
we would have our graduation and about between 100 and 150 people from the mosque would attend
Mulla Asghar would always come to give certificates M
arhom Shaykh Almi would be here all the scholars that are
well known to the Shia Community would attend here Shaykh Arafi would also come and visit Araki
would visit marhom Zeeshan Haider Jawadi would visit and a host of other renowned scholars more
than anything else if you walk out of these doors every everybody recognizes you you can go to the
restaurants and eat there it was a very familiar sort of a feeling everybody in the area was warm
to this place and to the students and had a lot
of good will from the people of the Birmingham
jamaat alhamdulillah every moment was a joy and even the hard times there were also
many hard times you know when trying to pretend that everything was going smoothly but even the
had times when you experience those our time you always knew there was someone in the Institute who
would step forward and support you in whatever you know you were struggling with whether it was
personal whether it was academic whatever it was you know we had student
s who experiencing many
difficulties and the support was always there even with limited resources and we also had staff
members you know lecturers who were experiencing various problems and The Institute was always
there to stand with them and that's one thing Institute was loyal to everyone inside and the
people were also loyal to the Institute as a child I had a dream that I would rise out of my bed and
fly towards the east across great black forests and then I descend into a tower like a
rea and
I'd stand with all these strange men in cloaks and after a long conversation they would point
back to the West and I'd fly home it was only when I was with a group of ulema and tulab that
we were all standing there in our cloaks that the significance of the Dream came about and my own
commitment to the Al-Mahdi was pretty well unshakable as the hawza began to grow and formulate its own
identity and its own path so there were immense challenges in many different ways I'm certain
the
re were many challenges but Shaykh Arif created a shield around the people in The Institute so that
they didn't experience those challenges I'm sure he experienced many of them maybe only discussed
it with a few people I am certain there were many challenges and we were aware of course of some
of the challenges the resources we wished we had you know more resources at that time and we
also know that he was working very hard to try to acquire you know a bigger place and so
there were so many
challenges there was simply no money we lived by the day I remember at Moseley
Road I had to let my staff go because there was nothing to pay them and I would teach the students
8 hours a day I was the only teacher they would lecture and forward the money towards the rent
I was at Hajj and I went to the Kabbah touched the wall and I said to Allah I initiated this whole
venture believing that it's your work I still believe it's your work but I'm struggling and I
should not be struggling so
I said I've decided as soon as I go back to Birmingham I will shut the
place down Nasim Walji was on that trip with me and he said Arif I've heard you have a Islamic school
in Birmingham I said yes and I'm shutting it down he said why I said well there are no funds he
said well I'll fund you and he continued to fund us for 5 years and The Institute survived
in terms of the physical accommodation we had outgrown we did not have spaces for the books the
books were on the floor the books were
in storage we could not house the students properly and
alhamdulillah by God's grace we eventually found this place we had certain other other places of
interest at that time but we were not successful in attaining them it is as if you know maybe this
place was meant for us and we were being steered here and one of the things we would always discuss
over cup cups of coffee or kebabs and students and lecture was the need for a bigger place it it was
a topic that always came up that if only w
e had a bigger place than the small room you know more
building we had we do amazing things and of course now The Institute has acquired this impressive
campass it is now you know one of the large it's not the largest institution of its nature in the
country or in Europe so the facilities are there so it has grown and I think this is really
through the vision of Shaykh Arif and those around him the people he chose to surround himself
with most most of them were students really so the young
imagination pushed him to do things
that otherwise he would not have done to acquire this it was a very brave move acquiring such
a massive institution of all these facilities not knowing what the future holds and it's been I
don't know how many years now since the place is only growing at this point now a friendship was
growing between myself and very very dear brother and a mentor of mine Sajjad Ebrahim and he
called me over to Canada with our team to explain what the vision of The Al-Mah
di Institute was he
back in 1980 had written his own thoughts as to what an Islamic institution ought to be like and
what its goals ought to be and they were totally in sync with what Al-Mahdi was doing so he was
obviously on board immediately and he got a few others on board and he started funding together
with others and of course the well wishes from Birmingham and around the world started to fund
Al-Mahdi Institute we come to 2010 when we said we really do need to move into a bigger bui
lding
so we saw a building on Moseley Road it was very nice then Shazim saw this building the current
location of Al-Mahdi Institute and he said Arif I'll show you a building so we came here it was the
College of the Ascension and he said let's get in touch with them and see if they will sell the
building to us they were asking £5 million pounds after a few years the credit crunch happened or
during that time and the building was just sitting there and becoming dilapidated so we made an off
er
of £2 million and they accepted it straight away every time somebody would come to meet me I would
bring them here stand outside the gate and I would say pray that this building comes to us so I think
we put a curse on this building because everyone who came to buy it their deals would fall
through from the time they move here you can see a big change in the quality of the service the
managerial achievements they have thanks to many good people who were working here and you can't
ignore
their you know contribution when we came here was obviously empty for some time before
we occupied it and had become quite dilapidated so there were a lot of challenges redoing it of
course there were immense financial challenges how we could undertake such a huge commitment and of
course people were very very skeptical it's such a big building and what will you do and even my team
at that point my young team they didn't know what will happen and they were lost and they were very
comfortab
le at Moesley Road where they could manage everything this is a vast building unending the
people who paid initially they also helped us to raise the money for the renovation very very
slow at a very staggered pace and of course the building annual repayments they were also chipping
in now there are so many people that have shown such good will and belief and have given through
the goodness of their hearts that I'm indebted and of course who am I to be indebted you know
they've done it for
their love for God and The Prophet (s) and and The Prophet (s) himself will reward
them and I hope he accepts a little bit from me as well there's no comparison from a little room
to what it is today the caliber of the work that it is producing the confidence that it has the
way it's leading the Shia world into a new phase and it's who could have guessed this Allah subhana watala
does what he wishes profound ability they have the students and the staff to be part of modern
Britain and yet to
retain their own autonomy Independence their capacity for compassion and
to be part of the daily life of this country and what I would like like to do in the future is to
work with Al-Mahdi in Westminster because I've got a very good system set up now with a small group of
mostly British Muslim young researchers here at SOAS and we have an all party parliamentary group
we run sessions in Westminster in the House of Lords showing very clearly that Shia Islam is a
force to be reckoned with a
s a strong force for good and for mercy and for working within Society
but also on the University campus to improve other students understanding of Islam modern Islam and
also helping students to understand that there are many charitable and compassionate organizations
which Shia students in particular work with work to support I think that's something that Al-Mahdi
can be proud of because they've contributed to that obviously I'm in London now at SOAS rather
than being in Birmingham but I
know that there are resonances between the work done in Birmingham
and the work we're doing here at SOAS I was a trustee for 20 years with I made the Institute
and I've seen it grow from where it was to where it is today and I do feel it is an asset to our
community to see such a wonderful Institute and to see where it was in Moesley Road when they
moved in that every month we used to struggle in getting funds to pay for lecturers for staff
heating electricity alhamdulillah the monies came
it was always a struggle but the struggle
was so sweet because we knew what we were doing was a writing and Shaykh knew what he did was that
there would be this light at the end of the tunnel and today we can see the light here and
inshAllah I hope for it to grow even more so for lots of people to embrace it for a lot of people
it may seem that it's bit out there Al-Mahdi Institute in my opinion is here to make you think acquiring
an impressive building like this doesn't really make an inst
itution it is the people inside the
Institute I remember was a small building and I've found memories of it and if that spirit is
retained then it can only go and I'm sure it is what it is today in terms of the building because
it started with the right attitude to knowledge that you have to invest in the people and you
have to make sure that the people you work with are happy and that the students are happy and
that the curricular the curriculum or all the other programs are imaginative an
d you don't
become prisoner of parameters that we have to teach only this but you become creative in terms
of how you look at society and then ask what can we offer Society in terms of knowledge equally
I'm so blessed to have such a wonderful team that has actually made this place a success but
each one of them that we have had here have been fundamental to the growth survival and evolution
of this place and these are the sort of people who you know they believe in what they are doing and
I think that is the key to success and the other thing is this that when the times are tough they
stand their ground when they've seen that there's no nothing left in the account they're still there
with their hearts and their souls Allah subhana watala sees that ultimately and keeps it going at
this point in time the Institute is in a very very good place if Allah Wills the next 5 years will be
the most progressive phase of the Al-Mahdi Institute and I would like to think that in the same w
ay
that I ended up in the Institute every student or for that matter every staff have a unique
story behind them and undoubtly that the hand of God is behind each and every person who begins
or who decides to tread the this path I must also acknowledge the oldies that I have with me still
Sayed Fatimi my dearest brother and Shaykh Amin who I would like to call my brother but I think he
sees himself as my elder and I concede he's my elder the future of the Al-Mahdi Institute is in the hands
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala where
it always was and where inshAllah it will always will be [Music]
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