Hafiz Patel
Hafiz Mohammed Patel (1926 – 18 February 2016) was a British Asian Muslim religious leader known for his role in establishing the Tablighi Jamaat movement in the United Kingdom and for founding the Dewsbury Markaz mosque, the headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat in Europe. Biography. Patel was born in Gujarat in 1926 and moved to Karachi following the partition of India in 1947. In his youth, he undertook the Hajj to Mecca, where he met Muhammad Yusuf Kandhlawi, the leader of Tablighi Jamaat, a Deobandi missionary organisation. Kandhlawi was reportedly so impressed with Patel's faith that he prayed in  front of the Kaaba to ask Allah to make Patel "the instrument for winning the whole of Britain to Islam". Patel subsequently emigrated to England, working in factories in the North and Midlands, until the Gujarati Muslim community in the West Yorkshire town of Dewsbury invited Patel to serve as their imam. He founded the Markazi Masjid in Dewsbury, one of the largest mosques in Europe and the European headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat, as well as its adjacent school, one of the two main Islamic seminaries in Britain. At the same time he worked to establish Tablighi Jamaat nationally and  maintain its links between the British and international movement, travelling frequently and leaving a legacy of a "nationwide institutional infrastructure that allowed the faith to root itself decisively in British soil". Patel died on 18 February 2016. His funeral was attended by more than 20,000 people. One of his sons, Saeed Patel, was the ex-principal of the seminary he founded in Dewsbury. Saeed Patel was forced out of the Dewsbury seminary following the global schism in the Tablighi Jamaat movement just after Hafiz Patel's death, as well as due to the egregious conflict of interest Saeed Patel had  after having set up a rival seminary in Bradford a few years prior.