A Growing Community

Chigwell is a town and civil parish in the Epping Forest District of Essex, England. It was a favourite place of Charles Dickens who described it as "the greatest place in the world.” It has also been associated with William Penn who attended Chigwell School, and later founded the state of Pennsylvania in USA. Sir Ian Holm Cuthbert - a famous English actor - was also educated at Chigwell School.  

The town has historically been dominated by the Christian community, with an inflow of Jewish community at the start of the twentieth century. Muslims started moving in towards the end of the second half of the twentieth century. Today, there is a thriving community of Muslims living in Chigwell.

While other communities have well-established places of worship in Chigwell, Muslims have yet to find a permanent place for a mosque. There are numerous churches in the town, a synagogue, a Hindu temple and also a Gurdawara for the Sikh community. Muslim community is at a disadvantage as they don’t find a place of worship for them to visit locally.

For last three years, Muslims in Chigwell have been holding Friday prayers at Victory Hall, a public facility owned and operated by Chigwell Parish Council. In Ramadan, the Chigwell Members Association organises the Taraweeh prayers there as well. However, a need has been felt to establish a permanent place of worship for the local Muslims.

While Muslim presence in Chigwell goes back to the last century, the modern history of Muslims must start with the Friday congregations at Victory Hall. 

The Muslim community in Chigwell comprises affluent families, and if a place could be identified to be developed into a local community hub with prayers facility, it is expected to be financed locally. In this respect, the role of Chigwell Members Association is assuming increasing importance. 

In a forthcoming issue of Chigwell Muslim News, we shall include a well-research article on the history of Muslims in Chigwell. For this article, it suffices to say that the history of Muslims in Chigwell is being written. 

We encourage all the local Muslims to come forward and extend cooperation to establish a modern community centre that may become a multi-faith facility similar to what we find at the London airports. 

The Chigwell Muslims are a peace-loving community, well-integrated with other other faith-based and other communities in the town. 

Chigwell Muslims are not ethnically diverse, as majority of them hail from the South Asian background. The Muslim families come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indian. However, the Chigwell Members Association aims to adopt an all-inclusive approach to develop a lifestyle that is distinctly British, imbued with the core Islamic values of integration yet with a distinct Muslim identity.

The promotion of Arabic language within the wider community - Muslims and non-Muslims alike - is a central pillar of our approach to community development. Given the strong historical ties of Britain with the Arab world, this approach is expected to bring huge economic benefits to wider Chigwell community. In the recent past, an increasing number of British families have experienced measurable benefits to living and working in the emerging Arab countries like the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Our aim is to build strong relations of Chigwell with these countries to bring back home the fruits of impressive economic growth in these countries.