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Gulam
Musa was the first known member of the Shia community to arrive
in the city. He was famous as a cricketer with the Kenya national
team and arrived to study in 1961. His family joined him seven years
later.
Gulam's
father, Mr G H Musa is a central figure in the Shia community and
has been instrumental in founding the only Shia mosque in Gloucester
which is based in Quedgeley.
Taught
in Urdu and English
There
are 50 individual members today and the children are taught in Urdu
and English at class on Sundays.
The
President of the Shia community, Mr Jaffer, officially opened the
doors on the 7th October 1990. Prior to this, Mr G H Musa's wife,
Fatima, taught children the reading of the Koran and a Mr Najafi
assumed the post of preacher.
» 
Mr
G H Musa's son, Murtza, had set aside two rooms at his shop in Eastgate
Street as a school and prayer room. Today it is a Chinese takeaway.
The
first hurdle Mr Musa faced was to raise the money to buy the property
to serve as a mosque at a cost of £95,000. The Shia Head Office
in London contributed £20,000 and the rest Mr Musa raised from old
Kenyan business friends. The full amount was collected in one week.
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Karbala
in Iraq is an important place of pilgrimage for Shia Muslims
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Mr
Musa is currently chairman of Inter-Faith. As the name suggests,
the organisation attempts to act as a bridge between faiths and
to promote peaceful co-existence.
He
smiles amiably as he remembers his youth on the island of Zanzibar.
The Sultan, a Kuwaiti royal, would invite the leaders of the Shia
and Sunni communities to mark special Islamic holidays with a 21-gun
tattoo.
Mr
Musa is also the secretary of Gloucester Ethnic Minority Business
Association (GEMBA) and governor of Widden School. He has distributed
200 English Korans to schools in Gloucester and even published Bosnian
language Korans for recent Bosnian refugees.
He
reads two chapters of the Koran every day before work and attributes
this to his vigour and continuing success.
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