Mosque to be built in Docklands

 

Yachtsmen attempting to sail up the River Thames have the breeze denied them by many structures, the London Boat Show’s ExCel centre included, now there is a new building planned: a giant £100 million mosque is to blossom at Canary Wharf.

It has caused a furore and an online petition can be signed by those who wish to have it stopped.

But we may have to face the fact that the most pious among us these days are not those who worship at the shrines of Christianity. In my experience St Paul’s Cathedral is always bursting, but only with secular tourists with a list of cathedrals to do.

Westminster Cathedral actually locks people out – especially at Christmas time – unless they can prove they are genuinely there for the service and not the ‘experience’. My problem with the proposed mosque is more to do with the Bengalis who live around it: do THEY actually want it? Or would they rather benefit from more hospitals and schools? In other words is this another politically correct monolith, (this time Ken Livingstone’s turn) on the opposite bank of the Thames to the Millennium Dome?