Inside the BBC’s first ever live Eid broadcast
The Eid al-Fitr service at Bradford Central Mosque is set to be streamed live as part of the BBC’s faith coverage
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Aaqil Ahmed is waiting impatiently for the sighting of the new moon. “That’s the thing that keeps me awake at night,” he says.
Ahmed, managing director of Amplify Consulting and former BBC head of religion and ethics, is one of the executive producers behind the corporation’s first ever live Eid broadcast.
The two-part programme will see Muslims perform morning prayers at Bradford Central Mosque before cultural figures come together for an evening of celebration. The broadcast will mark the first time a full service of Islamic worship has been televised live on a UK terrestrial channel.
But both shows Eid Live and Celebrity Eid won’t have a fixed airing date until Eid al-Fitr is announced.
“Scheduling is done weeks in advance so that’s obviously been a huge challenge, but also really brilliant. What an opportunity that BBC One has said, ‘Right, let’s work with you on this,’” says Daisy Scalchi, who has led the broadcaster’s religion and ethics team since 2022.
Everyone from production to scheduling, and of course, the mosque itself, has prepared to deliver the programme on either of the two expected dates — though it’s provisionally scheduled for 31 March. Bradford Central Mosque has agreed to keep its Eid service within a strict timeframe. Meanwhile, the technical crew will be situated in the city over the weekend, awaiting instruction.
“Nothing can be spontaneous, it has to be to time and subtitled. Us TV folk are used to that, and now our colleagues in the mosque are too,” says Ahmed, who has worked in TV for more than 30 years.
Pre-recorded segments will see presenter Dr Amir Khan breaking fast with his family, and a dispatch from Humaira Bham, one of three young presenters chosen in a BBC competition to report on Bradford’s City of Culture events, as people prepare for Eid celebrations.
Ahmed first had the idea to broadcast a service live from a mosque a few years ago, when Muslims like himself were unable to pray together during the pandemic. “Initially I wanted to mark the big open-air Eid prayers that were happening around the country before the weather made it difficult,” recalls Ahmed.
He then explored the idea of a show that would mark the significance of Eid in the Islamic calendar, while including non-Muslims in the experience “at a time when there is so much religious illiteracy and disinformation about Islam in particular”.
He approached Scalchi around 18 months ago and they set upon hosting a programme in Bradford, UK City of Culture 2025, which has one of the nation’s largest Muslim populations.
“It’s a place Aaqil knows very well and with the way he was suggesting we do it — by basing it at a mosque during the city of culture campaign — and the team that he was going to put together, it felt like the right project at the right time,” says Scalchi.
The show will sit in the BBC’s Faith and Hope season, which will also mark Easter and Passover. The first programme, Eid Live, will be broadcast at 10.50am from the Bradford mosque, hosted by Jason Mohammad, a presenter for BBC Wales and BBC One’s Final Score.
Viewers will join 1,500 worshippers for the Eid service, with the presenters offering theological context and insights into the prayers, sermons and celebrations.
Later in the day, at 10.40pm, Mohammad will be in City Park to host Celebrity Eid, bringing together public figures including chef Asma Khan, comedians Shazia Mirza and Fatiha El-Ghorri, actor Dúaa Karim and musician Harris J, sharing what Eid means to them.
“It’s at this point as a presenter that I’m thinking, are we going to squeeze all this into 40 minutes?” says Mohammad, with a sense of nervous excitement. He adds that the show is both a personal calling and a professional milestone for him.
The Welsh Pakistani broadcaster wasn’t always transparent about his faith at work, fearing discrimination by colleagues. He mostly worked across sport and radio before making a documentary about his first Umrah in 2009, which was positively received by viewers. When he was first approached by a senior producer to host the Eid programme, he was overjoyed.
“I saw the email, and I was like, ‘I’ll do anything I can to make sure this happens because this is an incredible moment. Not just for the BBC and for the Muslim community, but for me personally,’” says Mohammad. “This programme is really crucial to addressing some of the concerns that communities have around our country.”
The timing is especially pertinent given the heightened tension and increasing Islamophobia across the UK, particularly following the racist riots that swept across the country in summer 2024.
For Scalchi, the show offers a chance for the BBC to play a role in improving community relations in divisive times. “Any contribution broadcast media can make towards greater social cohesion via better understanding and anything we can do to stop othering is what we should be doing. It’s our responsibility,” she says.
Abbas Najib, chief executive of Better Communities Bradford, welcomed the news of the broadcast and described it as a “timely” opportunity to “reduce misconceptions and prejudices”.
“The people who are most vociferously against Muslims are usually the least informed about Islam,” says Najib, adding that he hopes this insight into Bradford’s diverse Muslim communities “will separate the cultural issues from what the scripture actually teaches”.
Still, the team’s members are aware a programme like this will provoke criticism.
“You will always attract those kinds of people who are negative. There’s nothing you can do about that,” says Ahmed. “I don’t think any of us are naive enough to think that this will be the panacea that will fix everything, but it’s part of the dialogue, a conversation that has to happen.”
“Inshallah, God willing, this can be a yearly thing,” Mohammad says. “How wonderful would that be if every year we took it around a UK city. That would be the dream, right?”
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