They don’t just come to the Glasgow Central Mosque to pray. They come to eat too.
Glasgow’s biggest single place of worship - of any faith - has always heaved on Fridays.
Fully 10,000 people, after all, can pass through its doors every week. But over the last few months there has been a real change in who comes to the Clydeside complex - and what they do when they get there.
“We are not monks, we don’t just pray,’ explains the Mosque’s still new general secretary, Nabeel Shaikh, as he dabs nan in to a takeaway container of chicken curry. “Our faith is so much more than that.”
Story: Charity watchdogs slam old regime at Glasgow Mosque
Mr Shaikh has helped preside over a quiet revolution at Scotland’s signature centre of Islam. But Friday lunches - his curry is just £2.50 with sweet rice and raisins for desert another £1 - probably symbolises the change best. The 39-year-old sits with his father and brothers, all of Pakistani origin, as he chats with a blonde community organiser about using mosque rooms for exercise classes for women.
At neighbouring tables there are black Africans, white Scots, Arabs, men and women. This is the whole Muslim congregation of Scotland - and more, guests too.
The message sent out by the new lunches: the mosque isn’t just for Pakistani men any more.
Not everybody likes this message, not least the Pakistani-born conservatives, some of ultra-orthodox views, who effectively ran the Mosque until Mr Shaikh and his generation gradually wrested control of it over the last 18 months.
There are growing demands for women to have greater access to the Mosque - and potentially a place on its ruling committee. This comes years after so-called "Islamic Suffragettes first tried to join.
And, in another symbol of welcome for non-Pakistanis, this weekend a foodbank was launched, as well as another lunch for newly arrived Arabic-speaking refugees from the war in Syria.
The Old Guard, however, is understood to be uncomfortable with such engagement. But their former rule is now under unprecedented scrutiny. They have been subject to numerous complaints to Scotland's charities watchdog.
Concerns relate to the way the mosque had been run for much of the three decades since its golden dome and modest minaret rose above the banks of the Clyde in the Gorbals in 1984.
OSCR, the charities regulator, has criticised governance arrangements. Trustees of the formal Mosque charity are appointed by trustees of the property, the physical buildings.
OSCR officials, in correspondence seen by The Herald, came to the conclusion that property trustees, most firmly in the camp of elderly Pakistani conservatives, had been improperly interfering in the work of the charity trustees.
In blistering criticism, OSCR investigators said some property trustees and some charity trustees they had appointed had behaved in a way that was "not of the standard" expected of somebody involved in a charity.
Mr Shaikh is not one of those they were referring to.
The power struggle is not yet over. The property trustees retain the right to select the charity trustee and the mosque committee, including Mr Shaikh, every two years. Mr Shaikh’s term is up this spring.
The future of Islam in Scotland may depend on whether he and his allies are re-selected. Will the Mosque be run by those who engage with the community. Or those that don't? The Herald asked to speak to the spokesman for the property trustees, Hafiz Sadiq. He did not respond.
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