DAR AL HARB - U.K.: "SUPER MOSQUE" OF BRITAIN

Behold the super-mosque
Why does London's mayor want to build an arena-sized headquarters for some of the city's most radical Muslims?
IRFAN AL-ALAWI AND STEPHEN SCHWARTZ,
The SpectatorPublished: Wednesday, January 17, 2007

In 2007, Britain will almost certainly be the chief testing ground of the attempt by radical Muslims to gain more power and influence in Western society.

The United States, too, is threatened by militant Islam -- not least by the prospect of terrorist attacks on its own territory -- but the problem in the United Kingdom is much greater. In America, radical Islamists have used civil rights legislation and the habits of multicultural courtesy to gain advantages that might not be available to them in Europe. At any rate there has been no debate there about niqab or face-covering. Britain, however, gives the impression of a society approaching a fork in its historical road: either toward more "Islamization" of the broader society or toward a powerful backlash as Britons grow increasingly troubled by the apparent forcible dilution of the majority culture.

The fork in the road could be reached later this year if the go-ahead is given for the building of the massive, intrusive -- and bizarre -- Sunni mosque complex to sit alongside the 2012 London Olympics centre. All the indications are that the go-ahead will be given.

The mosque is designed to be the largest religious structure in Britain. It will accommodate 70,000 people, of whom 40,000 can pray at any given time. According to the latest estimates, it will cost as much as $700-million to build. The complex will be known as the Markaz mosque, markaz being the Arabic word for "centre."

Among non-Muslims, the erection of so large a mosque will arouse resentment. But it is provoking unease among Muslims, too.

The mosque will have no minarets -- Sunni fundamentalists hate minarets -- but, rather, a system of wind turbines that will make it look like the set of a science- fiction film. More controversially, however, the project has the backing of the Islamic separatist movement known as Tabligh-i-Jamaat -- or Call of the Community.

Tabligh is a missionary Sunni sect that came under serious scrutiny after the atrocities of 9/11. It is not mainstream in its interpretation of Islam. Rather, it is, according to its own claims, "reformist" -- like the Saudi-financed Wahabi movement, the extremist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Jamaatis in Pakistan.

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P.S. Stephen Schwartz, a.k.a. Suleyman Ahmad

Pertinent Links:

1) Behold the super-mosque