Muslim Burial Ground, Horsell Common

The Muslim Burial Ground, Horsell Common was the original resting place of two dozen Muslim soldiers who died during World War I and World War II. It measures about 30 m by 30 metres and is located at in the southeast corner of Horsell Common about 100 metres off Monument Road. It is a Grade II listed building.

Large numbers of men from the Indian subcontinent fought on the Western Front during World War I. Some of those who were injured were moved to hospitals on the English south coast including Brighton. Of those, nineteen Muslims died and were buried here. The site was chosen for its proximity to the Shah Jahan Mosque, at the time, the only mosque in England. A further five men who died during World War II were buried here.

In the 1960s the site was becoming subject to vandalism so in 1968 the bodies were transferred to the Military Cemetery at Brookwood. The monument was restored in the 1990s as a result of financial support from Woking local, Paul Weller.

One of the men buried here was Yusuf Mohammed Ali who had been a merchant seaman and had come to England in the 1920s. He married an English woman named Ethel Emma Wallace and was enlisted at the start of the war. He served with the British Air Forces of Occupation in Germany, Belgium and France and it was from France that he was brought back to the RAF Halton Hospital where he died aged 42 on the 12th May 1947. His family made regular visits to the Shah Jahan Mosque Military Cemetery, and in the late 1960s when his grave was vandalised the War Graves Commission undertook the task to re-site all the graves in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Brookwood. The section was chosen so that the Muslim graves faced the East.