It is Jummah and it is Ramadan. To say the streets and dirty alleyways of Banglatown are busy is an understatement.

During the last ten days of the holy month, Muslims seek and observe what is known as the "Night of Power." Worldwide the menfolk in particular spend these last nights in solid devotion, retreating to the masjid to read the Qur'an during the period known as i'tikaf, reciting special supplications (du'a), and reflecting on the meaning of Allah's message to us all.

Personally, I still feel one of the seven hells is being prepared for me. Plenty of people around here have told me so.

Najeeb will soon be performing i’tikaf, of course, fasting and living in the cavernous East London Mosque. As will Rasul, the ex-dealer. Mo, his companion and former pimp, ruefully and in a low voice admits he is not. Of the women, I don't know: I sometimes wonder where they fit into this picture of harmony I'm constantly sold.

But there is a hum about the place. For sure. An energy sits on the streets of the abyss. Excitement even. Najeeb is at Mosque Towers, dressed in a pullover, jacket and his skullcap. He is busy with builders. There is a Moroccan and an another guy, plus an old Bengali fellow cooking up a large stew or curry in the small kitchen of the communal flat in Najeeb’s hall. No-one speaks English. There is the sound of chatter, the smell of spices and cooking oil, the cramp of the flat as we twist past one another. Najeeb bustles around, fussing over their shoulders, never entirely entrusting another to a matter as important as food. He tries insisting I should try the curry – goat, mutton and rice, with delicate saffron and the fiercesome chillis he so loves – but it’s too early. The old Bengali gives me the quizzical, inscrutable look of the peasant. Two of Najeeb's youngest kids, a boy and girl, run between us and tug at his robes.

Once down through the building, past the shy old timers Najeeb looks after in this home, we're out through the doors and into the crowds flooding the pitted roads. We take our shoes off at the massive masjid, arriving early. As the dirty-green carpeted entrance fills, we head downstairs to the wudu or ablution area.

It is my first time here.

At first glance, it's a bit like a rugby or football changing room. It is white. Tiled. Warm. There is a smell of body odours. Swarthy men, mostly old or with that aged look of a tough life, walk down a central strip-style plastic walkway; to one side are the toilet cubicles. Long gowns with tweed jackets seem popular, or leathers for the eastern Europeans and North Africans.

There is the sound of hawking and spitting, of phlegm gurgling from Asian pre-winter chests forced into a Nordic climate. Many of the porcelain bowls are broken, have tops missing or don’t flush. All have plastic watering jugs by them. Ill-fitting odd plastic flip flops and sandals are laid down for use.

Ben, my companion, is in a daze. His drug use is crossing over into day-life. He's going through a marriage breakup, too. He seems to have a propensity for seeking out trouble: I watched in mild amusement as he was chased by thugs outside a Stepney park, after peppering his sentences with ‘respect’, ‘safe’, ‘into the grime’ and so on. I just greet the street soldiers in Arabic or, better still, their own Syhletti dialect. It seems to work wonders. Fiddling, he puts on a pair of sandals – but I’m sure they belong to someone else. He shuffles off at speed, nearly bowling over several Bengalis as he does so. I feel their eyes, staring.

We stand awkwardly in line. People chat away to each other – probably about news or gossip, maybe politics or family. I await my turn in the cubicle, squeeze my feet into a pair of tiny, shit-brown plastic sandals and shuffle off to do my business. Which I do as quickly as possible, wanting to get back out upstairs as quickly as I can. Then I head back off to the central area, eyes following me, as Ben moves over to the wudu troughs and starts having what looks like a thorough wash, as I clench my teeth and groan inwardly. Other eyes follow him as he proceeds to clean out his crevices, then finally puts back his shoes before heading off. Doesn’t help that he has a huge “press’ badge glinting around his neck. It’s from Magnum and he’s inordinately proud to be wearing it, like a child with a toy. Trouble is you don’t really blend in with that thing hanging like bling. As if to get the clenching going further, he loudly proclaims he is fasting as “it’s the thing to do,” implying of course rather too loudly that I am not. The man is clearly in a world of his own.

The booming azan – the call to prayer – starts sounding out, sonorous for the next few minutes. "God is great, there is no God but God ..."

Upstairs is really filling out. The faces are mostly Bengali, some Somali, some Arab, some North African. Even one or two white reverts. I think of Najeeb, Rasul and the hundreds of other all coming here for i’tifaf, all prostating and purifying souls tarnished by the hell in which they're forced to live.

The imams begin calling out the ritual once more. And I remembered the words of the young Islamists I had met, the jihadis and the converts:

Tawheed: to be one with God.

There are rows and rows of men now, lining up, set at an angle, towards Mecca. They centre and shift themselves slowly, like a termite colony. Here, unlike no other, is where men are equal. Pauper next to millionaire. Neighbours greet each other; ushers guide people in; others push and shove a little, glare perhaps, but most make way for their fellow worshippers.

Soon the building is bursting at its concrete seams. Many have Qu’rans open in front of them, into which they are intently focusing and poring over. You feel an intruder, a viewer on another world. I suddenly think of Chris Ondaatje and his Victorian hero Sir Richard Burton, who once stole into Mecca and Medina in disguise.

There is something here. Something exotic. Primaeval. Almost welcoming. But I cannot succumb. It disturbed me that I couldn't do as these men had done: Submit.

The call to prayer rings out melodious once more, and the LED sign flickers over and above the mosque reception, a constant reminder to God in this digital, 21st century age.

We are shifted through various areas of the building as it fills, even the upstairs landings. Prostrate until now, I stand up: people look askance. Some old men gesture, without English, to ask when I'm going to start praying.

Najeeb rescues us and takes us through the adjoining corridor between the two buildings and into the London Muslim Centre. The Jerusalem stone floors vibrate to a thunderous column of feet, as we move to the side stairs, which are shaking and vibrating as thousands of the faithful climb ever higher. The stream seems never ending. The very foundations seem to sway, as faces lock upwards, bodies filling out into the side rooms, spilling like liquid as the stone seems to burst outwards with the Promised.

It is a truly amazing sight. I’m speechless for a while, letting Ben go off, wandering like a dangerous lost soul after the worshippers.

The azan sounds and sings...

In the stream and flow, a face zooms past and turns to look at me, eyes wide amidst the brown flow. It is Mo. The gangster. Seven years inside, early release. He looks surprised to see me. To date, he never replies to my text messages. It is not the happiest expression.

“Are you ca’in upstairs...to pray?” he adds, clinging like a drowning man to the railings, the tide pressing onwards. It’s tentative. It’s like there’s no other reason for me to be there. (Maybe he’s right). I shake his hand and watch him carried away back into the stream, his ghetto-friend Rufi with the glinting silver teeth alongside.

There is remarkable silence in the eager faces. The general prayer has now started. People begin to rush, the stragglers leaping the stairs two or more at a go, hurriedly snapping shut mobile phones, shuffling in between the others, the upstairs rooms also full now. People end up in the whitewashed corridors outside the halls, then in the halls themselves, shoes stacked, quick and quiet, practised shuffles getting them and neighbours into place.

I can hear the rattled, low Arabic of the sermon. Then lilting back into prayer again. After all this time, I still seem to be on the outside, leaning up against a bannister and watching Ben with that vague sinking feeling.

Hassled Out...

After the prayers end, during what seems an interminable time, the crowd reverses the flow. Downwards and downwards it comes, this time a roaring, smiling, joking throng. It seems as much social gathering as spiritual, people renewing acquaintances etc. I stand near a white convert, academic-looking sort of guy, early 40s, greying beard and hair, bespectacled, shaking a bucket for money for the mosque funds (the London Muslim Centre still owes huge amounts to its builders). As I am there, I hear a sound of a raised voice – angry, threatening, tipping over the edge.

“Call security, call security!” The lanky and awkward frame of Ben the photographer reappears, being dragged by an intense, angry-looking North African in a brown leather jacket. He hauls Ben up before the other white guy, the photographer still in a complete daze, his eyes in another universe. The North African keeps calling for security, so I step in and try and mollify things.

“We’re friends of Dr Bari [the mosque chairman],” I explain, with my helpful face. “Salaam Aleikoum...ismi Nick Ryan,” I offer politely, holding out my hand, which he ignores (“Ismi – my name is...” repeats the white revert, looking vaguely embarassed and wishing this wasn’t happening in front of him).

Unfortunately, it only makes things worse.

“Where are your papers? Where are your papers?” demands the Algerian or Morroccan over and over again, foam collecting on his lips, spittle flying towards my face. I stumble backwards. I try my luck with the white guy, but he seems unsure and mumbles, "well you should have official clearance... "

I offer to show my press card. The North African stares me right in the eyes, as though he hates me, looks at the card, holds it, takes it, then ignorning Ben (who is still wandering around in his daze) starts shoving me down the stairs, forcefully in the back. It is a shock after the hospitality of getting to know Najeeb and all the others, even Rasul and the drug dealers. None of the Bengalis have been this paranoid. I am shoved all the way down and outside, his hands roughly pushing into the small of my back. He seems personally affronted: I almost feel like slapping Ben myself.

“Come on, come on!” the North African cries. He is shouting at the top of his voice. He’s suddenly like a man possessed. Things could turn ugly. I can hardly hit the guy or resist, given the hundreds of other Muslims swarming around us. It is extremely unpleasant and for the first time I feel fear.

On the pavement, where people collect and a few are staring, I try to explain that Najeeb invited me, he is connected to the mosque, that I know Dr Bari etc. I talk of Islam. These names seem to mean nothing to him. He goes on and on about papers, authentication, blah blah. By now I am angry too, as I know the guy is being paranoid. Later, when I speak with other Muslims about this, they say that people are very sensitive at the moment: the war on Iraq, press headlines against Muslims, and also a recent BBC Panorama documentary in which even the Muslim Council of Britain is portrayed as being riddled with extremism and anti-semitism (to be fair, there is a small amount in there and many Muslims have a complex relationship to the Jews and to the rest of us, whom they often privately still dismiss as ‘kufr’).

In a chilling moment, as we stand there in the cold air and in the centre of what is Europe’s most powerful, modern city, the African stops dead still and says: “We’ll get you."

"If you're not telling the truth, we'll get you," he repeats.

I hand him my card, he still stares at me, eyes not leaving my face. The face of a fanatic. “We’ll get you,” he repeats, as he turns without an apology and stalks off into the crowd.

***

Notes from forthcoming book ©2009