We're a little late with this but yesterday's intervention by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones on the Tablighi Jamaat proposal for a 40,000-worshipper mega-mosque for East London is worthy of note. Paul Waugh covered it in yesterday's London Evening Standard:
"Ministers should review plans to build a "mega-mosque" in the East End in the wake of the airline bomb plot trial, the Tories urged today. Shadow security minister Dame Pauline Neville-Jones said the case had shown that the group behind the mosque may have given cover to extremist activity. Tablighi Jamaat, which describes itself an Islamic missionary organisation, is pushing for the mosque to be built next to the 2012 Olympics site in Stratford. But the group was revealed in court as having links to some of the terror suspects, with several having passed through other mosques run by the group."
This is also an issue that Paul Goodman MP has rightly raised before.
Homeland security and community integration are emerging as two of the Conservative Party's most impressive (and very related) policy areas. David Cameron's speech in March to the Community Security Trust set out the strength of the party's thinking.
If the muslims want to build one and can afford it then why not let them?
Instead of lots of little cells that are hard to track and also work themselves up into extremists, there can be a large group which can contain enough sane muslims as 'control rods' and the problem sorts itself out.
Athough they would have to watch that it's not built where it would alienate the locals and not become a muslim ghetto where they may start to unionise to petition for crazy political ends... although I suppose unionise is better than terrorise.
Maybe put a big catholic centre next door to keep them in one place too.
Posted by: Norm Brainer | September 10, 2008 at 15:47
Just down the road from me is a huge religious centre of a minority group that regularly holds thousands of people who have been trying to take over our schools and exert undue pressure on our elected politicians.
Recently they held a global convention which was boycotted by some of their members because they were hard enough on the gays and were prepared to sanction the break up of marriages.
It's called "St Paul's Cathedral" - how can i get it shut down? The cult of so-called "Anglicanism" has been on decline for years - there are far more Catholics.
Posted by: David, let me have your babies | September 10, 2008 at 15:58
Is there a spook (other than PNJ) who doesn't wish Finsbury Park was still up and running? If our friends can afford to build Al-Honey Trap beside El Elephanto Blanque, more fool them, and all the better for everyone else. Sometimes there are smarter ways to deal with your enemies just than by denouncing them. On the other hand, doing that latter thing will make you feel a lot better about yourself, which does seem to be what half the Right thinks counter-terror policy ought to amount to: therapy for angry, self-righteous folk.
Posted by: ACT | September 10, 2008 at 16:06
Just as long as she doesn't want to stop the takeover of Manchester City F.C. by the Abu Dhabi royal family (I write as a long-suffering City fan). Perhaps, like most young British men, they could be encouraged to divert their passionate commitment from religion to soccer ?
Posted by: johnC | September 10, 2008 at 17:11
Really hope this 'mega mosque' project gets stopped.
Posted by: Dave B | September 10, 2008 at 17:39
Tim
You're talking rubbish on this one, and comments from others on this thread seem to agree with me.
What's wrong with Muslims building their own mosque?
If you honestly believe the crap about there being a link between the terrorists and this Muslim organisation, then perhaps we should shut down all Catholic and Protestant churches.
After all, Irish terrorists on both sides of the debate attended their own church before blowing people up mindlessly.
What I want to know is what do Muslims in the country think when a supposedly sensible Conservative politician says "don't let them build a mosque".
And what does Conservative MEP Syed Kamall think?
And what do people like Cllr Arif Hussein, the Chairman of Conservative Muslim Forum councillors think?
Posted by: Richard Grainger | September 10, 2008 at 18:10
I am reminded that the day after we had won the Olympics the bombers struck.
Posted by: Walthamstow cleansed | September 10, 2008 at 18:56
Should it be as big as the Anglican Church in Jeddah?
Posted by: automated robot | September 10, 2008 at 19:06
Automated robot: "Should it be as big as the Anglican Church in Jeddah?" I'm not sure how many times this needs to be said, or indeed, how it can be said any more forcefully than it already has been, but, we're better than them. Our morals, manner and religion, all better, our wine, woman and song, our gardens, our warriors, our lovers, our liars, our fancies and our pleasures, all, every single one of them, better than theirs. Who any more can argue about that? Yet that's the thing, Robot - why alone do you *not* think still one more metric of our superiority is our tolerance for sodding great mosques, as compared to their feeble insecurity about humble little churches? Rejoice in it, and stop being frightened of them.
Posted by: ACT | September 10, 2008 at 19:50
Thank you "David, let me have your babies," ACT and others for kicking this Stalinist policy where it deserves to kicked.
Posted by: Passing Leftie | September 10, 2008 at 22:59
COMMENT OVERWRITTEN. [IRONIC OR NOT].
Posted by: Lord Snooty | September 10, 2008 at 23:20
Shame that so many on CH are in complete woolly minded liberal denial about the onward march of Islamic imperialism and the very real danger that a small minority of Muslims in Britain, tacitly supported by considerably more than a small minority, present.
Oh and if it is right and proper to keep politics out of sport, and especially the Olympics, then why is it ok to allow religion, any religion not just Islam, in?
Posted by: An Uncomfortable Truth | September 11, 2008 at 00:05
Lord Snooty, are you a Zionist or an anarchist? Raze or raise?
Posted by: snegchui | September 11, 2008 at 00:32
Lord Snooty: Ironic or not. It is irresponsible for you to post a remark that may be taken out of context and quoted by Gordy in parliament.
Tim, the post should be deleted so that this website does not fall into disrepute.
Posted by: RMA | September 11, 2008 at 06:49
So the problem is that they may have a link, however tenuous to the terrorists...is the intelligence credible? From the looks of the article above, it doesnt really seem like good cause to stop a mosque. I know what she means, but I disagree with her final view.
Posted by: James Maskell | September 11, 2008 at 08:55
Given my ironic comment has now been overwritten, then I ought to say that I unreservedly apologise for any offence I gave to gay people, Jewish people, Muslim people and, just as importantly, poor people.
However, what I am most concerned about is the offence this comment FROM AN LEADING CONSERVATIVE PERSON is giving to the Muslim population.
There are three quarters of a million Muslims in London. Nearly half of them were born here.
Doing the numbers must mean many of them VOTE CONSERVATIVE, or at least they did until Dame PNJ came and insulted them the other day.
Many of them will be active Conservatives, or at least they would have been active Conservatives until Dame PNJ said "no more mosques".
If Conservative Home wants to ostracize Muslims from the Conservative Party, then it is going the right way about it.
The argument that Dame PNJ puts (and which you say three cheers to) is similar to the argument that the majority of rapists have attended Church in their life, so clearly the answer to dealing with rapists is to not to allow any more Churches to be built.
RMA: If Gordy quoted my comment in parliament, then he would be even more of a joke than he is now.
Posted by: Not Lord Snooty this time | September 11, 2008 at 10:27
It's really simply. Do we believe in the rule of law? Do we believe in freedom of religion?
Banning things because they "may have given cover to extremist activity" is not a reason to do anything. Let the spooks watch them if they think they are trouble. It's about time they employed a few more muslims.
Posted by: passing leftie | September 11, 2008 at 10:28
For years Alan Craig has been raising the issue Tablighi Jamaat because of his role as a local councillor. Not only did he get a death threat from a TJ supporter, but he also got censored by the BBC, publicly criticised from all political sides, even on conservative home I read some pretty negative stuff.
Good to see a few Tories are being to look at the issue a bit more objectively.
But I think "passing leftie" makes some valid points that shouldn't be ignored:
"Do we believe in the rule of law? Do we believe in freedom of religion?" The answer to both must be yes. I'm more libertarian than most, and I'm sceptical about banning any group. The way to defeat this kind of extremism is in the battle of ideas not though silencing.
But to turn down planning permission for something which would undoubted cause problems makes sense and doesn't curtail their freedoms.
Posted by: Eric Risebero | September 11, 2008 at 11:57
Eric Riseboro
For someone who calls himself more libertarian than most, your end comment "let's not give them planning consent cos they are probably horrid people and that won't take away any of their freedoms" is remarkably authoritarian.
Is this the only mosque you don't want to give consent to? Or is it every mosque? Or shall we just not give consent to half the mosques, just in case they might be a little bit horrid?
[By the way, Alan Craig got votes from 1.62% of the electorate for his Mayoral contest - behind even the BNP (although the BNP support him in his one-man campaign against the mosque).]
Posted by: Not Alan Craig | September 11, 2008 at 16:02