In the 1960s a small room in a guest house at 7 Woodfall Road, London N4 was used as a prayer room and community centre for the handful of Bangladeshi Muslims then working and living in the district, and had become inadequate for the growing Muslim community by the time the building was compulsorily purchased by the local authority as part of a Housing Action Plan.

The community formed a Muslim Welfare Centre, and in 1975 purchased its own property at St. Thomas's Road, later also acquiring neighbouring plots.

[16][17] According to leaked US documents, Finsbury Park mosque previously served "as a haven" for Islamic extremists who subsequently fought against allied forces in Afghanistan.

[26] According to disclosures via WikiLeaks, several Guantanamo Bay detention camp detainees passed through the mosque prior to their subsequent activities.

[27][28] The mosque's role in facilitating terror operations during these years is often mentioned in the context of the Londonistan, which was widely used by the international espionage community to describe London, due to the liberty afforded to Muslim extremists by British authorities.

[29][30] In 2003, 150 anti-terrorist police officers conducted a nighttime raid on the building as part of the investigation into the alleged Wood Green ricin plot.

[35][8] Dr. Azzam Tamimi, a leading member of MAB, described the mosque takeover as "one of the very rare success stories where the Muslim community and others came together and decided to rescue the mosque", although a minority complained of lack of consultation, with Ashgar Bukhari of the campaign group Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK saying that the committee should have been elected.

[15] The Telegraph reported that Finsbury Park Mosque's transformation from "radical hotbed" to "model of community relations" has "since been widely regarded as a success story".

[49][50] In November 2015, following a mail threat, a man attempted to set fire to the mosque,[51] an attack that reportedly failed because of heavy rain.

[54][55] Shortly after midnight on 19 June 2017, several worshippers leaving the nearby Finsbury Park Mosque were struck by a hired van in a terrorist attack.

[61] The mosque is a member of the Islington Faith Forum, which received the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service in 2018,[62] and an affiliate of the Muslim Council of Britain.

It was the recipient of a Visible Quality Mark by the national body Community Matters in 2014,[63] the first time being awarded to a Muslim place of worship in the UK.

Since 2017, following the Finsbury Park terror attack where a worshipper was killed, and many were injured, the mosque has held an annual Street Iftar event during the month of Ramadan,[66] in which the local and wider community are invited to share a meal that coincides with the breaking of the fast.

This event has been attended by various faith and community leaders, local councillors and MPs including Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry.