The study, The Future of The Church, said that there will be nearly twice as many Muslims at prayer in mosques on Friday as Christians attending Sunday services, reported the Telegraph on Sunday, September 4.

British government and academic sources said in 2004 that some 930,000 Muslims go to the mosque at least once a week against 916,000 regular worshipers in the Church of England, the mother church of the Anglican communion.

Mosques in Britain range from the splendor of Regents Park Mosque, and the big central mosques in Birmingham and Manchester , to more modest structures, often converted from other buildings, according to the BBC.

The first mosque in Britain is likely to have been one recorded in 1860 in Cardiff .

Another early British mosque was established in 1887 in Mount Vernon Street in Liverpool , and moved to Brougham Terrace in 1889, where the building, which is now a Registry Office, continued to be used as a mosque until 1908.

Britain 's first purpose-built mosque was built at Woking in Surrey in 1894 with money from the ruler of Bhopal , Shah Jehan.

In 1940 the British government allocated a sum of up to �100,000 to buy a site for a mosque in London .

In 1944 the Islamic Centre was opened in London on 2.3 acres of land at Hanover Gate in Regent's Park given by King George VI to the UK Muslim minority.

In 1977 the Central Mosque, usually referred to as the Regent's Park Mosque, was opened on the same site.

There is no official estimate of the number of mosques in Britain , home to around 2.5 million Muslims.

Plummet

The study said that the number of Christians attending Sunday service will fall by two thirds over the next three decades.

It expected the total membership of all the denominations to fall from 9.4 per cent of the population to under only five per cent by 2040.

The study also anticipates that the poor attendance will force some 18,000 churches to close.

"I hope that these findings concentrate minds in what is becoming a real crisis," said Peter Brierley, the executive director of Christian Research.

Brierley, who has been collating Church figures for 40 years, said the study should act as a "wake-up call" to Church leaders.

Long-time Decline

Figures show that the main denominations, from the Church of England, the Roman Catholics to the Methodist and United Reformed Churches, are suffering from long-term decline of worshipers.

"The truth is stark," said Bishop of Manchester, Rev Nigel McCulloch, who has been involved in previous Christian Research reports.

"What these statistics need to do is to galvanize the Church into realizing that it must communicate the gospel where people are or we will not deserve to have a Church."

Brierley said the churches had begun taking initiatives to tackle the falling numbers of church goers.

La Ilaha Illa ALLAH, Muhammadan Rasulullah.