The British Muslim Heritage Centre is a national centre that is designed to serve as a focus for Muslim heritage and identity in Britain. The BMHC will focus on Islamic heritage by encouraging balanced social integration, peaceful co-existence and promoting community development. These elements constitute a significant challenge to Muslims in the West, particularly in Britain, and it is the aim of the BMHC to help British Muslims rise to this challenge.

In addition, the Centre will provide a national and International interface for understanding, integration and harmonious relations with British society at large.

The Centre is envisaged as fulfilling a variety of social and economic functions, assisting and encouraging the Muslim community to play an active role in mainstream British and European institutions. It will be a centre of advice, guidance, counseling, training, engagement and on-site services.

The British Muslim Heritage Centre is dedicated to serving the British Muslim Community and the wider community and providing a focus for Muslim heritage, championing balanced integration and working for lasting peaceful co-existence.

Vision

Manchester is the second largest city in the UK. Enriched with cultures from Asia, Far East, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Mediterranean countries, it is the ideal location for the British Muslim Heritage Centre, a National Centre designed to facilitate access to Muslim Heritage.

The British Muslim Heritage Centre (BMHC) will help bring people together and shape a cohesive British society through providing services and facilities for the community regardless of their ethnicity, origin and background. The BMHC is a place that will inspire, attract and act as a positive force for change within the British society.

The BMHC aims to adopt a holistic approach in supporting community development and combating racism, intolerance and lack of understanding of other cultures.

Through the provision of support in social, cultural, economic and educational areas, the BMHC aims to reach out and act as a resource for the Muslim communities, to empower and enable Muslims from all backgrounds to reach their potential and thereby play an active and positive role within the British Society.

The centre will give people of all races and religions an opportunity to integrate and understand each other's culture in a friendly and relaxed environment, facilitating the move towards social integration, peaceful co-existence and community development.

Mission

To create a centre of excellence, celebrating Islam's rich and varied heritage, inspiring all communities to embrace diversity and to be instrumental in the shaping of a cohesive British society.

Aims & Objectives

The Centre is concerned with bringing about integration, co-existence and community development in the UK. The main objectives of BMHC are:

• To promote integration through providing a multi purpose centre for practical advice, training, development and recreation for all people regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, language or background.
• To encourage the Muslim community to engage in the mainstream British Institutions.
• To promote understanding between different faith groups.
• To empower and support the Muslim Community.
• To empower and support Muslim women.
• To enrich the wider community through facilitating access to Muslim heritage.

History

The ideas that underpin the BMHC had been conceived of and discussed for quite some time before the BMHC eventuated. About seven years ago group of members of the Muslim community met to draw up some guiding aims and objectives and to look into how to bring about such an organisation.

The synopsis is that the Muslim community in the UK has been rather slow in bringing about major institutions that will harness their heritage and provide a platform for fuller participation in national life. Mosques and small community organisations have proliferated to serve many of the needs of the Muslim community. But many of these are based on and are largely accessible by particular sections of the Muslim community.

Larger and more prominent regional and national organisations are required to bring about cohesion, national presence, sense of identity, and encourage balanced integration and peaceful co-existence with the rest of society at large.

Events that happened since 1998, particularly the event of September 11th, 2001, which coloured the Muslim image, portraying Islam in a bad light and further marginalising the Muslim contingent in the UK, confirms the organisers in their belief that the need for major regional and national organisations is imperative and urgent.

The inaugurating members conceived that the Islamic cultural heritage which reflects the contribution of all Muslim societies provides an excellent vehicle to enhance Muslim identity and encourage the Muslim community to face up to the challenge of balanced integration and peaceful co-existence with all the communities that make up the United Kingdom.

Those involved recognised the importance of what they were embarking upon and realised that a significant site had to be acquired to begin to implement the objectives laid out.

The organisation was given a regional focus and named The Manchester Muslim Heritage Centre (MMHC). Those involved set about giving the organisation a legal status by registering it as a company limited by guarantee and later as a UK charity.

However its aims and objectives have a clear national dimension. Thus the organisation was renamed British Muslim Heritage Centre (BMHC) and the organisers set about the achievement of its first major key objective i.e. the acquisition of a suitable and reputable site to house the organisation and give it a national profile.