OXFORD’S Muslim community has come together in an ‘amazing’ display of generosity to help provide desperately-needed food for Syrian refugees.

Thousands of bags of rice and flour have been donated to the Muslim Hands Big Aid Convoy over a nine-day period at the Central Oxford Mosque in Manzil Way.

After collecting the donations on Monday, the Muslim Hands charity is now transporting the food to refugee camps in Turkey ahead of the religious holiday Eid which marks the end of Ramadan at the end of this week.

Imam Ahsan Amin said: “I’m very proud of this community; of the worshippers.

“Supporting the needy is one of the five pillars of Islam.

“We’re all fasting during Ramadan and when we fast we are showing consideration towards the needy - they are starving they have nothing to eat and we put ourselves in their shoes.

“But we still know at the end of the fast we are going to have food in front of us, it’s not the same for the refugees who are fleeing war-torn countries.”

The Mosque, which has around 500 worshippers, was asked by the charity to host the large container as a collection point where Muslims from across the county came to offer their help to displaced Syrians.

However it quickly became clear that the container would be full within a few days and extra storage was needed.

The Imam added: “I’m very, very happy.

“It’s amazing, it only took a few days to fill this massive container.

“We still had members of the community coming with food donations and so we had two more vans that we managed to fill.”

The Big Aid Convoy, now in its second year, will see a total of 25 containers from the UK transported to Syrian refugee camps.

As well as offering food, it was members of the community who also offered their vehicles to help to store the additional donations.

Mazhar Dogar was one who provided his van for the cause.

He said it was natural to want to help those less fortunate than himself, particularly during Ramadan.

He said: “It’s been a real community effort.

“It’s not a single effort it’s the whole community. Everyone should be very proud of this, people coming together to help the less fortunate.”

Mosque committee member Fasal Aziz said the recently been appointed committee had a desire to promote cohesion across the wider community evidenced in the number of non-Muslims also offering donations.

He added: “It’s amazing the amount that has been donated, people from all religions, colour and creeds have come down.”

An estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of civil war in March 2011.