Jack Clarke has a conversation with Afzal Khan on photographing piety, play, and the generational rhythms of Muslim masculinity. All images supplied by the artists
I first came across Afzal Khan’s work at the Bound Art Book Fair in Manchester. You know the kind of rain slick pavements, tote bags everywhere, someone handing you a risograph zine about Romanian folklore while you sip bad filter coffee.
But then, tucked between all that was this project that stopped me in my tracks: The Masjid Uncles of the Front Row. A glossy zine cover with an uncle sprawled on his phone like a desi Botticelli, and inside photos that felt devotional without being reverent, funny without being mocking, and deeply, unmistakably familiar.
We got talking, and what started as casual praise turned into an urge to understand more. Because this wasn’t just aesthetic, it was social archaeology. A tender, tongue-in-cheek love letter to a whole generation of Muslim men who’ve become fixtures in masjids across the world.
Now, with the exhibition evolving across Bury Art Museum and Longsight Community Art Space, I sat down with Afzal to talk about humour, legacy, working-class spirituality and how photographing a group often seen but rarely looked at turned out to be more spiritual than expected.
You described the idea of photographing masjid uncles as initially feeling ‘absurd’. What changed your perspective, and what was the moment you knew this project had to happen?
It felt absurd at first, but after the experience of photographing uncles in various mosques, Saif (Studio Teski) and I started to delve into the sociology of the Masjid Uncle. After trips to Palestine, Paris and Malta, we found the multilayered and varied Muslim experience in those spaces, often to do with politics, migration and displacement. It then became something more than a project of showcasing the Masjid Uncle in our local mosques and acknowledging the nuanced experiences of Muslims across the world.
This project was borne out of a desire to capture something I found to be so pure and reminiscent of home wherever I travelled. It was the experience of walking into a mosque somewhere in a foreign land and feeling a kind of sacred familiarity, as I would ask for where the space for ablution is and be treated with love and hospitality that I have grown to appreciate more and more.
We wanted to capture a Muslimness that was real and raw and demystify the mosque space. I go to Didsbury mosque a lot and see people from around the area craning their necks trying to get a glimpse of what’s happening in the mosque. I have the urge to just ask them to come in and see for themselves. It’s just a carpeted room where a bunch of old dudes are hanging around.
In the post-9/11 era, mosques have become politicised spaces, and we wanted to showcase the inhabitants of these spaces to demystify them.
The front row of the masjid is a coveted place of worship. Beyond its spiritual significance, do you think it holds a broader social meaning—perhaps a metaphor for leadership, perseverance, or even generational continuity within the Muslim community?
To me, the front row is a symbol of devotion. A saying of the Prophet Muhammad states that there is a particular virtue in competing to pray in the first row and the next row, and so on, behind the Imam.
The devotion of the uncles to spend time in the front row is a testament to the immigrant experience of carving out spaces in often odd spaces, and to occupy those spaces with devotion to God.
The migration of Muslim communities and establishing places of worship in the UK is an entire story of struggle and perseverance in itself. That very first generation were fundamental in creating social hubs for Muslims and offering spaces for spiritual development in an often tumultuous time of western modernity.
Islam, like many religious traditions, has revolutionary and transformative elements. Do you see the masjid, and particularly the uncles who inhabit its front row, as political figures in any way? How do they resist, or reinforce, the socio-political structures around them?
In my hometown of Bradford, the masjid has been a means of creating societal change for the Muslim community—through education, Halal food, etc.—that have offered various forms of support.
When we travelled to Paris and Palestine, it was inevitable to us that the mosque is a politicised space. Masjid Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem is a deeply complex space with so much happening. It was the most highly securitised mosque I had ever visited, with IOF soldiers at every one of the many gates that lead into the space. The uncles there had a sense of resilience and a desire to overcome external pressures whatever the cost may be.
Paris has its own form of issues, with the French government’s demonisation of Muslims. It was only recently that a French-Malian man, Aboubakar Cisse, was stabbed 50 times in a mosque in the south of France as he prostrated in prayer. Islamophobia is alive and well in the West, and it is only getting worse.
Photography is often seen as a form of storytelling, but could it also be considered an act of devotion? Did creating The Masjid Uncles of the Front Row feel like a spiritual process for you?
For both Saif and I, approaching strangers in mosques, asking to photograph them was the most awkward thing we’d ever done. It just felt wrong. In the age of PREVENT and questionable government policy that has unfairly targeted the Muslim community, we had a lingering fear we would be seen as undercover police or in some ways out to cause trouble—but this was never the case. We were met with the same level of respect and love we were so used to.
Uncles would often sit us down and talk about the centrality of the mosque in their lives, and to see their devotion was deeply inspiring. These are often men who have lived through war, displacement and forced migration and have a wealth of knowledge and experience that we learnt so much from.
Creating this zine and the exhibition alongside it was a profound artistic and spiritual experience for both Saif and I. I can safely say that we grew spiritually alongside this project and felt nearer to God as a result of it.
