DISGRACEFUL!!!!!

When Abu Izzadeen, the firebrand Islamist militant, berated John Reid last week for "daring" to visit a Muslim area, the Home Secretary bridled, as did many others, at his suggestion that part of London was off limits for a British minister of the Crown.

There was nowhere in this country from which anyone should be excluded, Mr Reid said; nowhere that could be called exclusively Muslim. He was speaking just a couple of Tube stops from West Ham, close to the site for the 2012 Olympic stadium, where a huge row is about to erupt over plans to construct a mosque. However, this is not any old mosque built to serve the local community. It will be the largest place of worship in Europe, a gigantic three-storey Islamic centre, with schools and other facilities, able to hold at least 40,000 worshippers and up to 70,000 if necessary.

It will be called the London Markaz and it is intended to be a significant Islamic landmark whose prominence and stature will be enhanced by its proximity to the Olympic site. When television viewers around the world see aerial views of the stadium during the opening ceremony in six years' time, the most prominent religious building in the camera shot will not be one of the city's iconic churches that have shaped the nation's history, such as St Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, but the mega-mosque.

Its arrival in London will be a significant coup for Islam and a major event for the country as a whole. It will also make Abu Izzadeen's depiction of that part of east London as "a Muslim area" seem remarkably prescient.

For those of us who have no objections to people building places of worship in which to practise their faith, this is a difficult subject. Why should there not be, in a multi-faith society, ashrams, temples and synagogues alongside mosques and churches? Indeed, unlike some Muslim countries, we welcome an eclectic mix of religions.

The first mosque was opened in Britain more than 80 years ago and there are now well over 1,000 – many converted from Anglican churches. London now has more mosques than any other western city. The biggest in western Europe is just a couple of miles from where I live in south London, on a five-acre site. It

can hold up to 5,000 worshippers and, while hardly a Timurid masterpiece, its dome and minarets do not detract from what is a rather gloomy bit of suburban Surrey. Funded entirely by voluntary donations from its congregation, it was erected by the Ahmadi Muslims, who also contructed the first London mosque in Putney in 1924. The Ahmadis, who have lived harmoniously in this country for many years, condemn any form of extremism. Tellingly, perhaps, the Ahmadis are considered heretics by the rest of the Islamic world.

Now consider the east London mosque. Its backers are the Tablighi Jamaat, a missionary organisation that says it is non-political and peaceful. Yet a senior FBI anti-terrorism official has called it a recruiting ground for al-Qa'eda, and the French secret services described it as "an antechamber for fundamentalism". Its current European headquarters are in Dewsbury, home town of Mohammed Siddique Khan, leader of the July 7 suicide bombers, who attended the local mosque. Much of the funding for the Markaz, which will cost about £100 million, is expected to come from Saudi Arabia.

Alan Craig, who lives about a mile from the 16-acre site on which it is to be built, is a Newham councillor representing the Christian People's Alliance. Notwithstanding his own faith, he does not object to mosques or any other place of worship. But he raises some important questions about this particular proposal.

"I am concerned about the community and security impact of the mosque," he said. "Although permission has not yet been given, Muslims are moving into the area in preparation. The Savile Town area of Dewsbury where Tablighi Jamaat is currently based is now more than 90 per cent Muslim. This part of London has always been a very diverse community and that is how it should be kept. We can't have one group taking over."

Mr Craig, who has inevitably been castigated as "anti-Muslim" by those who want to shut down any discussion, said he believed the local community would be denied a say. "They [the council] have not consulted local people at all but when the mosque master-plan is submitted, they intend to give it their formal approval. It is an undemocratic stitch-up."

It is suggested that the Markaz complex will become the "Muslim quarter" for the Olympics, acting as a hub for Islamic competitors and spectators, something that is surely contrary to the spirit of the Games, which are meant to bring people together, not keep them apart. Futhermore, in an irony not lost on Mr Craig, just a mile or so from where the mosque is due to go up, the Kingsway International Christian Centre, the biggest evangelical church in Europe with 12,000 worshippers on a Sunday, is coming down to make way for the Olympic stadium.

Mr Craig wants an independent inquiry into the mosque, something that Newham council has not exactly fallen over itself to endorse. Somewhere along the way, there will be a role for Ken Livingstone, the mayor, whose London Development Agency has already signalled that he thinks it is a good thing for London to have an Islamic landmark.

Eventually, the plans may end up on the desk of Ruth Kelly at the Department for Communities and Local Government. She recently called for a "new and honest" debate on diversity and announced the formation of a "Commission on Integration and Cohesion" which is to tour the country, before reporting next summer, looking at social or economic divisions between different ethnic groups.

If this really means anything then its first port of call should be Newham, where it can ask some searching questions about the proposed Markaz and its potential impact on the local community there. The sceptical among you might suspect that this commission is just a gimmick. If it fails to take this issue seriously, then you will know it for certain.

Lets not forget the 'President Saddam Hussein Mosque' in Sparkbook Birmingham.


Ever been to Istanbul? If you do then take a look at the Hagia Sofia, its enormous.

It doesn't matter that we're not muslim, the place is hugely impressive.

Fookin' 'ell here we go again.........

No we don't. Or if we do I'm not getting involved. Besides I've done a bit of learning over the past couple of weeks.

This is the place - the Hagia Sofia.

Well I think that it's a good idea to have nearly 100,000 of them all in one place with no shoes on while every loony in the country knows where they are...

One of the funniest things I ever saw was at the Great Mosque in Kuala Lumpur.
In the take-your-shoes-off area, among a shitload of other footwear, was a pair of sandals padlocked together.

killer bee's?????

where?!!

A contender for the worst album I ever bought...

lets form a lynch mob!

Or let's kneecap them.

gnats, midges, mosquitos, and fleas are BARSTARDS!!!

Would man jizz stick a wasps wings together grounding it and therefore rendering it practically harmless to an adult human?

i got stung in the eye by a bee too, but i was 8....
:cry:

I would be careful of grounded wasps. I once got stung on the palm by what I though was a dead wasp, when I brushed it with my hand off a windowledge into a bin. It had been there all day doing nowt, but it still had enough energy in its expiring body to sting me. Really yukked, and I couldn't grip anything for a few days. Good job I'm not left handed.

You'd have to be a pretty good shot to get a direct hit on one from your yoghurt pump. I'd get plenty of practice in if I were you.

It doesn't have to be alive to sting you.

Nor does a bee.

Same as if a dead guy has rigamortis set in below the belt he can still be ridden senseless by a randy female undertaker.

I heard on Radio 4 last week that the common ladybird is losing habit to an 'invader' that has been known to bite humans resulting in anaphylactic shock and death!

Kill all insects I say!

oooh, i know a nasty story........

It always descends to this ...so what happened?

it really isnt very nice, involving shagging corpses at a crem near us/you.
so i'd better not really repeat it

when we were being told the tale, i was watching as a lynch mob formed.

very unpleasant

I stood on a wasp yesterday and it stung me. You don't expect that as you plod around the house in your bare feet.

You see that's exactly where I can get with Saddam Hussein and Kaiser Wilhelm the 2nd.

I positively enjoy engaging in chemical warfare with the little buggers whenever they enter my home and laughing as their little nervous system goes completely barmy in their last few desperate minutes of life.

Buzz buzz fkin buzz.

Well not in my house anymore you little fkers.

Is shagging vampires an acceptable form of necrophilia?
What about if it's done in a mosque?

Do female vampires get Pre Vampiral Tension and get a strop on...?

GREAT SPORT..... WD40 IS EVEN MORE EFFECTIVE...but I dunno why, do their little wings get super lubricated and just get fatigue and snap off with the higher revs...?

If you pull one wing off one side and three legs off the other side of a daddy longlegs, they'll sweep your kitchen floor trying to take off.

Then a hedgehog or a cat comes and eats them.

our dog's eaten quite a few in the last two or three weeks

..is it true it now has 8 ft legs ...?

During the summer I discovered a fantastic new method of killing insects - a blowtorch. Not a great big brassy tart of a blowtorch but the sort that you screw a can of gas underneath.

Not particularly humane but damned effective!

Were the insects on the dago's head when you discovered this new method?

Ermmm no. I think that would have been met with some protest.

It might have been a brief protest had you persevered.