They waved placards declaring: ‘Camberley Says No’, ‘Hands Off Our Heritage’ and ‘We Want Justice.’ When the result was announced, just before 11pm, there were jubilant roars inside the public meeting – and from the crowds outside.

Protesters claimed the plan for the mosque in the heart of Camberley was an inflammatory act of provocation by the Muslim community, intended to show their cultural superiority.

In return, the mosque’s supporters accused them of being racist and hostile to the Islamic way of life.

Here was an extraordinary clash between Christians and Muslims in the heart of the Surrey commuter belt.

The mosque plan had been devised by a radical Islamic group which supports polygamy, the amputation of thieves’ hands, the veiling of women, and the killing of non-Muslims if they refuse to convert to Islam.

During a planning battle lasting months, 6,000 people signed a petition objecting to the new mosque, which was to be built on the site of a listed former church primary school where many locals had been educated.

Local Church leaders weighed in, saying the building would create antagonism for many years in a part of the country where only 2 per cent of the population are Muslim.

One vicar declared that the mosque proposal was a ‘supremacist’ act; another warned it was a ‘political statement’ rather than a religious one by the Islamic community.

Of course, this was denied by local Muslims, but the battle soon spread.

The plans to build a giant mosque is causing criticism from local residents

Former Labour councillor Melanie Longden, who led the protesters, added: ‘Islam is a fundamentalist religion that removes the rights of women that have been fought for since the time of Emily Pankhurst.’

She was supported by a leading Islamic cleric, Oxford imam Dr Taj Hargey, who at Wednesday’s council meeting declared his opposition by saying: ‘This new mosque will not be in the interests of all Muslims, as it will allocate less than a fifth of the space to female worshippers. There is nothing in Islamic theology that legitimises a misogynist apartheid in the house of God.’

And in a pointed reference to Sandhurst, he added: ‘Places of worship vary greatly throughout the world of Islam, from Timbuktu to East Timor. There is no Islamic injunction that minarets are intrinsic to mosques. In fact, the first minarets were only constructed decades after the death of the

‘Their main purpose was to make possible the broadcast of the prayer call from an elevated spire. Today, modern sound technology has rendered this function superfluous. That’s why building twin minaret towers, so close to a renowned military college, is a provocation.’

The Camberley mosque was the idea of the town’s Bengali Welfare Association, which has run a mosque, the al-Kharafi Islamic Centre, in the disused Victorian school building since 1996.

Every Friday, 350 worshippers go there to pray. The centre is also used for lessons on the Koran for children, as well as talks on the Islamic faith.

The association’s leaders said the new mosque was a necessity, as the old school’s roof leaked and the building was so draughty that some parents refused to let their children attend.

But locals didn’t see it that way. They questioned why the mosque had to be so big, with minarets higher than the spire of the town’s parish church and taller than neighbouring Army buildings. They said the mosque and its huge dome would alter the skyline of Camberley and pose a security threat to the military academy, just 360ft away.

Local residents (left to right) Jenny Murry, Melenie Longden, and Sally Garland are furious with the proposed plans

Others argued that it was a provocative move to proclaim Islam’s supremacy over Britain’s military.

The Army was initially – on security grounds – against its construction – although the Ministry of Defence agreed to withdraw its objections last month after mosque leaders said the minarets would be accessed only twice a year for maintenance.

However, Major-General Tim Cross, who lives in the area, said that the minarets and the mosque’s dome still posed a ‘significant security threat’, particularly given that visitors to Sandhurst include the Royal Family.

The Queen regularly takes the passing out parade of young officers trained at the Academy, and Princes Harry and William both trained there.

Major-General Cross, who was second in command in the operation to rebuild Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, said: ‘Visitors self-evidently provide significant potential targets around the college building and elsewhere.’

Another local resident, Gill Mathews, an animal welfare officer, said she had been accused by Muslims of being a racist. ‘I don’t hate Muslims,’ she said. ‘I have no objection to a new mosque in Camberley, but not on this site or on such a huge scale.’

The locals’ anger grew in January when the council’s planning committee approved the mosque, despite a highly critical report from their own environment officers.

Princes William and Harry both trained at Sandhurst

The report said the building was ‘dominant and incongruous’, involved the demolition of a locally significant listed Victorian school, and was out of keeping with the parkland setting of the conservation area.

In the council chamber, members of the Bengali Welfare Association threw their papers in the air and clasped hands with eight councillors who supported the planning application. Within days, the controversial decision was rescinded by Surrey Heath Borough Council on the grounds that the issue should have been considered only by the full council.

Meanwhile, close links between the Bengali Welfare Association and more extreme Islamic views have been uncovered by protesters.

A report in 2007 by the Policy Exchange, a Right-leaning think-tank on social affairs, found disturbing literature at the existing mosque in the old school. Books found there advocated Sharia law, polygamy and the repression of women.

Another book, entitled The Special Problems Of Females, published by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Islamic Affairs, added of women: ‘It is incumbent on her that she keeps herself as much covered as possible; and, as ordained, she is to remain fearful of shamelessness so that she keeps her eyes down. . . she is not supposed to exploit her eyes.’

The Bengali Welfare Association website also makes it clear that it has links to other radical mosques and organisations which embrace Tablighi Jama’at, a conservative and dogmatic Islamic philosophy. Lecturers advocating this brand of Islam have visited the Camberley mosque and given talks to the worshippers.

Tablighi mosques across Europe are accused of being a springboard for terrorist activities and of advocating hostility towards other non-Islamic faiths. The biggest Tablighi mosque in Europe is in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, where the 7/7 bombers are known to have worshipped.

A plan by the Islamic group to build a mega-mosque near the Olympic Stadium in East London was only recently abandoned after thousands of local people protested about such a huge religious edifice in their area.

Meanwhile, the mosque in Camberley has been put on hold – for the time being. The Bengali Association says it may well appeal the decision.

As the celebrations continued last night, one local man said: ‘The idea of such a huge mosque has been totally counter-productive, in that it has frightened the very locals who were previously utterly relaxed about the mosque in the old school.’

Additional reporting: PAUL BENTLEY/LUCY BALLINGER