ON June 24 I attended a hustings at St John’s Church where five party candidates standing for election in Hereford and South Herefordshire were questioned by an eager audience.

The audience quickly got to know each candidate as a range of questions were fired at them spanning plans for social care to taxation.

The most striking question came from a Muslim woman who questioned why after over 10 years of campaigning, no plans have been approved by Herefordshire Council to build a mosque.

Whilst the power to build a mosque resides in the hands of the council, this woman demonstrated how pressing the issue is and that she and her community have not been listened to, and thus brought it to the hustings as a constituent in need of her potential MP’s support.

The Kindle Centre in Hereford has offered Friday prayers for over 10 years as a space to worship but as the Muslim community has grown in Hereford, this space is no longer sufficient.

Hereford Islamic Society had plans for a community centre off Canal Road which were rejected earlier this year, stunting optimism and progression for the prospect of a mosque.

I am struck repeatedly by the poisonous attitudes that dissuade the possibility of a mosque being built.

In 2022 ethnic minority staff made up 49.9 per cent of hospital and community health services (HCHS) doctors in the NHS, of which a large proportion will be Muslim.

Whilst the NHS can barely stand on its own two feet, the very people who are holding it together are those who we polarise by not granting them access to a place of worship.

Fear mongering in the face of positive change will collectively calcify the heart of Herefordshire community, and I am appalled that so little has been done to support a community to which we owe so much.

If this stagnant attitude prevails, we can only expect our humanity to recluse further into a state of decay and abandonment.

LOLA COOK

HEREFORDSHIRE STUDENT