A Suffolk village is braced for the arrival of up to 100,000 Muslim pilgrims at a festival organised by a fundamentalist mosque.

Residents of Barham, near Ipswich, have demanded the cancellation of the Islamic meeting at Shrubland Hall, a Georgian manor house, in July.

Muslims are expected to travel from around the world to attend the three-day “ijtema”, or gathering, which is being organised by an ultra-conservative Dewsbury mosque.

Two of the July 7 London bombers attended prayers at the Sunni place of worship, and it was home to a school that Ofsted reprimanded in 2021 after a book calling for gay people to be killed was found in its library.

Locals have now called for the festival to be cancelled, arguing the village of 1,600 people cannot host so many people and that nearby roads will be gridlocked.

Robert Stanper, 69, told The Telegraph: “I hope it doesn’t happen because they’re on my doorstep. The environment would suffer because of all the things people leave behind, intentionally or unintentionally.

“That amount of people on this road and infrastructure and with the potholes we’ve got would be catastrophic for some cars.”

Michael and Elaine Evans, 63 and 65, said the stately home and the village could not handle that many attendees.

“They can’t get 100,000 people in there,” Mr Evans said. “There’s two entrances – you’ve got a single track coming in and coming out. This place definitely cannot handle it. Everyone will tell you it can’t.”

Mrs Evans added: “For three days, this isn’t the sort of area that can really cope with something like that.”

At the Sorrel Horse Inn, opposite the hall’s main entrance, landlord Neil Jackson fears his trade will slump during the event between July 10 and 12.

“It’s an awful lot of people,” said Mr Jackson, 51. “If it blocks the roads, people won’t be able to come in and out. And if people can’t get to us, then our trade will be down.

“A lot of the big estates do things like Latitude Festival these days. It’s income for them, isn’t it? It’s usually just Indian weddings at the hall.

“It would impact trade because people couldn’t get here. But on the other hand, they might stop. They’re not going to drink, though, are they?”

Jim Garwood, 49, said locals were not opposed to the Islamic nature of the gathering, only its size.

“The traffic will be a nightmare,” he said. “It’s not the sort of place where there are many Muslims but we don’t reject them. We’re very open-minded people. I just think there’s a bit of shock about the amount of people that could be coming down.”

Event organisers have claimed in promotional material that more than 100,000 people could attend. However, they have since said 10,000 guests at most are expected.

Chris Chambers, who represents Barham on Suffolk county council, said: “It’s still a large number for where it is, so I don’t think that will help ease residents’ concerns by much at all.

“It’s still an awful lot of people to have in a small village over a very small period of time.”

The event, which will involve prayer, communal meals and religious lectures, is being organised by the Markazi Mosque in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, a Sunni place of worship that is the headquarters in Europe of the Tablighi Jamaat sect.

The sect has up to 80 million adherents worldwide, estimates claim, and is an ultra-conservative group.

Two of the 7/7 suicide bombers – Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer – visited the Dewsbury mosque for prayers, although the mosque has previously denied they were regular worshippers or that it played a role in their radicalisation.

The since-closed Islamic Institute of Education, a school based at the mosque, failed an Ofsted inspection in 2021 after inspectors found the book Islam on Homosexuality, which calls for gay people to be killed, in its library.

The book was removed from the library after the inspection and the school said at the time that Ofsted’s criticisms had been “rectified”.

Local authorities have been frustrated by event organisers because it was advertised without an “event management plan”, having been approved by the local “safety advisory group” – Suffolk Police, Suffolk county council, Mid Suffolk district council, the East of England Ambulance Service and Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service – which can rule that events are not safe to go ahead.

“There has been some initial contact but no actual formal details have been submitted by the organisers,” said David Penny, a local district councillor.

Locals have also witnessed lorries delivering marquees to the estate that are thought to be for the event.

The directors of the estate have said the event is “lawful”, “peaceful” and has been “responsibly organised”, adding that Shrubland Hall was chosen as its venue ahead of London’s Excel centre and the NEC in Birmingham.

“The event has been planned with careful attention to all relevant local authority requirements, including health and safety, security, traffic management, and regulatory compliance,” the directors said in a statement to the East Anglian Daily Times.

“Appropriate measures are in place to ensure the wellbeing of attendees and to minimise any impact on the surrounding area.”

A spokesman for the Markazi Mosque in Dewsbury said “one of our paramount priorities is to ensure a peaceful event,” and that “a large number of volunteers” would work to ensure the area “will not be affected” by the festival.

“We are a peaceful organisation with a very good reputation and one of our core aims is to promote peace and community harmony,” the spokesman said.

“The event itself will help all attending persons and specifically the youths in becoming not only good human beings and citizens, as our religion Islam teaches us, but also how they can help and support and integrate with all aspects of society in a positive and harmonious manner.”