A community hub visited by "generation after generation" is hoping for transformation.
Now housed in a former church on Earle Road in Wavertree, the Al-Ghazali Centre started life in 1992 running activities for Muslim teens in various community centres, taking them swimming or to play football, and teaching them Arabic so they can read the Quran.
Leyla Mashjari, the centre's assistant executive manager, told the ECHO: "I was one of those little kids who were joining the sessions. I loved what was happening and I wanted to give back, so I started to volunteer. Eventually I got a job and I've never moved, because there's a satisfaction to doing community work that makes you feel really good."
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Muslims have a relatively long history in Liverpool, partly thanks to the exchange of cultures in its thriving port. Abdullah Quilliam, a solicitor raised as a Methodist, converted to Islam and opened the UK's earliest recorded mosque in a terraced house on Brougham Terrace, Everton in 1889.
Fatima Elizabeth Cates, believed to be the first woman in England to convert to Islam, played a leading role in the mosque. She was buried in an unmarked grave in Anfield cemetery for 122 years until members of the Muslim community installed a headstone last year.
And the city's main mosque, Al-Rahma on Hatherley Street was the third purpose-built mosque in the UK when it was constructed in the multicultural community of Toxteth in 1965. But even now, Liverpool's Muslim community is small compared to other major cities like Birmingham, Manchester and London.
Leyla said: "We only had one mosque, the Al-Rahma mosque, and that didn't even have the extension yet, but it was still enough for everyone. With it being a small community, it was quite tight-knit. Everybody supported each other."
By the 2001 Census, the first since 1851 to include a question on religion, there were just under 6,000 Muslims recorded in Liverpool. In 2021, there were nearly 26,000, more than four times as many, making up 5.3% of the population in that year's census.
Muslims communities have developed in places like Picton, and in Everton, where another converted church on Breck Road houses the Bait ul Lateef Ahmadiyya Mosque and a community who fled religious persecution.
"I remember we used to live in Dingle, the white part of L8, and that was rough stuff", Leyla said, almost in a whisper, "we had a shop and then we move just down the road off Lawrence Road. There were two Pakistani families - they were mixed, half white, half Pakistani, and then there was also an another Yemeni family.
"When my my brothers went to Lawrence Road primary school, it was predominantly white, but the changes that have taken place since the 90s, wow."
Soon the project was outgrowing its lack of a permanent home. Leyla said: "We didn't have one building that belonged to us, so we were all over the place. We were in the Yemeni Community Centre on Lodge Lane before that moved to the top of Beaumont Street.
"Then we were at Dove Street, the former Tiber Street building, and Al-Rahma Mosque. Then we were driving past one day and this building was up for sale. It was local to everyone, so we put a bid in.
"I think out of 30 organisations who actually put a bid in for it, they chose our organisation because they felt that the community spirit of the church would continue - it wasn't going to go to some developer who'd turn it into accommodation or something like that."
With community donations and a loan from a charity, they bought the church. Its wall still has a notice advertising Sunday services, barely visible through the rust-tinted cover. Local volunteers stopped by after work to help transform the church hall, which had an organ up to the first floor, into a mixed use space for the community, now attended by more than 600 people each week.
In six classrooms on the ground floor, they teach Arabic to 200 kids, and English and IT skills to adults. The centre runs afterschool reading clubs for primary school kids, study sessions GCSE students, and health workshops aimed Muslim, Black and other ethnic minority women.
Upstairs is a karate club, which has produced World and European champions in recent years - their trophies sit on by the staircase. The Al-Ghazali Centre also supports parents with school applications, runs Islam awareness programmes in schools, and takes kids go-karting.
Leyla lists the activities off the top of her head. She said: "I have a million hats on, doing this and doing that. Whatever we can do for the benefit of the community, we'll try and do that. This is a multicultural centre, this is open for everyone."
There's a notice board in the corridor lined with flags representing the 35 countries people who come here have cultural ties to. It reflects the diversity of the area, and the belief of its namesake Mohammed al-Ghazali, an Islamic scholar who believed Islam can "fit in any community in any society and get on well with everyone".
The community they serve is growing. "Grassroots organisations learn to stretch budgets massively", Leyla said, and "it always seems to work", but the Al-Ghazali centre is growing beyond capacity.
It's asking for donations and applying for grants to fund a planned £1.2m refurbishment. They hope to expand the basement to create a gym with changing rooms, along with catering space and and multi-functional rooms for more fitness, education and cultural events. "There's so much more you can do", Leyla said.
She told the ECHO: "If I were to ask people in Liverpool, especially in the Muslim community, 'Is there anybody who hasn't had some kind of contact with the Al-Ghazali Centre?', I don't think there's any family that can say no. I mean, we've had generations and generations.
"I started my voluntary work at a very young age, I was 16, so I've seen generation after generation. Sometimes the people I've worked with are only a couple of years older than me, but now they've got kids and I think, 'Oh, I'm really old'.
"I think we're the biggest Muslim-led community organisation in Liverpool, and I think for us not to exist would have a terrible impact on the community. They rely on us for a lot of things, especially the things we do with children."
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