Hamza Association
Our Mission
What the association is for, what we hold ourselves to, and what we are working on. Written down so anyone can hold us to it.
Our vision
A mosque the neighbourhood trusts and keeps coming back to: open every day, free to learn in, and the same door for everyone who walks up to it, whatever language they arrived speaking.
Our mission
To keep Hamza Mosque open every day for the people who live around it, and to put what happens inside it within reach of everyone else, in a language they understand: a place to pray, a school where the Quran is taught free of charge, and a table anyone is invited to.
We seek to
- Establish the five daily prayers and keep the doors open from fajr to isha, every day of the year.
- Teach the Quran, tajweed and memorisation free of charge to children, young people and adults, and arrange a sheikh for students who want to read through to ijaza.
- Stand by families through marriage, bereavement, and the ordinary difficulties people bring to a mosque.
- Give volunteers real work to do and the training to do it well.
- Put people of different languages and backgrounds in the same rows, and make sure each of them can follow what is being said.
- Publish every lecture, interpreted as it is spoken, so the congregation is not limited to the people who can reach Başakşehir.
Our values
What we hold ourselves to
- Sincerity
- We do this for Allah. Nothing here is run for a name, a fee, or a following.
- Authentic knowledge
- Quran and Sunnah, taught by qualified scholars who name their sources. When a question runs past what we know, we say so and find someone who does.
- Welcome
- Nobody is asked where they are from, what they already know, or what they can pay. There is one door and it is the same door for everyone.
- Community
- People pray together and then stay. The tea after the evening lectures is part of the programme, not an afterthought.
- Compassion
- People come to us at hard moments. They are met with mercy, and what they tell the imam stays with the imam.
- Service
- Nearly everything that happens here is carried by volunteers from the neighbourhood: the cooking in Ramadan, the teaching, the cameras, the chairs put back at the end of the night.
- Excellence and trust
- Money raised for the mosque is spent on the mosque, and every figure we publish is one the association can stand behind.
Our purpose
To meet the religious, educational and social needs of the people who live nearby, and of everyone following from further away, in one place where they can pray, learn, serve, and belong.
The entrance
The doors are open from fajr to isha every day of the year, with no fee and no membership.
Our priorities
What we are working on
Six areas of work. Everything the mosque runs sits under one of them.
Worship
Five daily prayers and Jumu'ah, taraweeh and i'tikaf through Ramadan, the first ten days of Dhul Hijjah, and Eid.
Islamic education
Quran, tajweed and memorisation for every age, five weekly lecture series, and a route to ijaza for students who want a chain of transmission.
Youth and family
Study circles timetabled around when children can actually come, in small groups so each of them gets read with directly.
Community support
Nikah and janazah, guidance from the imam with no appointment needed, support for new Muslims, and more than 2,000 iftar meals each Ramadan.
Volunteers
Finding and training the people who cook, teach, film and clear up, so the work does not rest on the same few shoulders.
Reaching further
Every lecture streamed live and kept online in full, interpreted as it is said through Baian.ai into Arabic, English and other languages.
Our commitment
We hold Hamza Mosque in trust: a house of worship, a school where the Quran is taught for nothing, and a neighbourhood institution meant to outlast the people currently running it.