Transcript for: From the first mosque on George Street to several within Huddersfield
Interviewee: Asghar Ali
Subject: Mosques
When I was young, there was only one Mosque, and that was in Upper George Street and everybody used to go there to pray. A mosque was bought on Halifax Road in the mid-eighties. In the nineties another one was bought which was on Blacker Road, so now we've got three mosques in this area now. Because the community has expanded you've got mosques in every area. You'd go to the mosque to say the Friday prayer, and to read the Eid etc, or if guests came over the weekend you'd go when you had time, basically it was sending the kids to learn the Quran. Even when we were young we used to go. In those days it was difficult because we lived in Lockwood, and in order to learn the Quran there was some classes after school, which was in upper George's Mosque and my brother and I had to catch the bus in the evening, I remember the bus fare was something like 2p to get from Lockwood to town. We had trolly buses in those days as well. That was quite a trek because we used to go by ourselves because our dad was at work, and then we used to come back at around 7 or 8 in the evening, by ourselves on the bus as well; which during the winter used to be quite frightening, because it got dark early, it wasn't always a nice journey. We used to have quite long breaks, like when we stated going to the mosque and then when the weather wasn't nice we didn't used to go. He would take that to work, and he used to work in Oldham, which was quite far and so he couldn't come and give us a lift.