London Markaz
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

When Americans come to London for the 2012 Olympic Games, the building that will make the biggest impression will not be the Olympic stadium, but another, far grander edifice only a few yards away: the London Markaz. Described as the “Muslim quarter” for the Games, it will include a three-story mosque with space for 40,000 worshippers, making it the largest in Europe, plus a library, school, and hostel. In all, the complex will accommodate 70,000 people – only 10,000 fewer than the Olympic stadium. The cost will be under $200 million, a fraction of the cost of the Games, to be borne largely by donations from other Islamic states.
To give some idea of the scale of this state-of-the-art design, which the architects intend to evoke a tent city in the Arabian desert, it should be borne in mind that the largest Christian place of worship in Britain, Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, has a capacity of 3,000. The London Markaz will dwarf every cathedral, synagogue, and temple in the land.
The symbolism of religious architecture matters. On December 28, Westminster Abbey will celebrate the anniversary of its consecration in the year 1065. Founded by St. Edward the Confessor, the only King of England to be canonized, it has been the national shrine of the English for nearly a millennium. Bishops, kings, writers, artists, scientists, and men and women of eminence in every field lie buried there. The world watched Princess Diana’s funeral there and will watch the next coronation there too.
Yet Westminster Abbey, for all its majestic past, will be eclipsed by the vast new mosque in the heart of London’s East End. In a society which despises history and adores novelty, which treats all culture and morality as equally valid, and which has been infected with the megalomania of post-modernity, the London Markaz will become a British Mecca.
We still know very little about the politics of Tablighi Jamaat, the people behind the London Markaz. It would be the U.K. headquarters of this global missionary organization, which was founded in India under the British and which claims to have an exclusively humanitarian agenda.
Tablighi Jamaat is, however, regarded by Western security agencies with some suspicion. Two years ago, a senior FBI official claimed it was a recruiting ground for Al Qaeda; Bavarian police expelled three of its members last August, while the leader of the London suicide bombers, Mohammad Siddique Khan, had links with the group’s present headquarters in Yorkshire.
Even if Tablighi Jamaat is indeed a purely charitable organization, the London Markaz would inevitably become a focus for Islamist infiltration and agitation. Recently, I discussed this problem in the case of universities with Zaki Badawi, the head of London’s Muslim College and the leading spokesman for moderate Islam in Britain.
Mr. Badawi concedes that British campuses are heavily infiltrated by extremist Muslim groups, above all Hizb ut-Tahrir. They work by bullying first Muslim students, then non-Muslims, into obeying their strict dress codes and other practices. They demand prayer rooms on campuses and then insist on sole use of them. They hold discussion groups from which non-Islamists are excluded. They are secretive and ruthless, ignoring the pleas for moderation from older Muslim leaders.
A striking example of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s modus operandi was provided this week at the trial of the brother and sister of Britain’s first Islamist suicide bomber. Omar Sharif, together with another terrorist, killed three and wounded 65 Israelis at Mike’s Place, a Tel Aviv restaurant, two years ago. In an important test case for a new offense of “failure to disclose” terrorist acts, Parveen and Zahid Sharif were acquitted after one jury had failed to reach a verdict.
The “not guilty” verdict must of course be respected. But the jury did not hear evidence that Parveen Sharif, a school teacher, had told her students after September 11, 2001, that she was “on bin Laden’s team” and that the attacks had been a “good job.” The judge ruled this evidence inadmissible because Parveen Sharif denied making these remarks and no contemporaneous notes had been taken.
What is not disputed, however, is that Hizb ut-Tahrir literature was found in the homes of both Parveen and Zahid Sharif. Nor is it disputed that before the two terrorists set off on their suicide mission to Israel, Parveen sent an e-mail to Omar and his wife telling her that this was no time to be “weak and emotional,” apparently encouraging him to go through with it. The wife was also acquitted in an earlier trial.
The case demonstrates two things: first, how difficult it still is (despite five Terrorism Acts in as many years) to secure a conviction of those who may know a terrorist attack is planned, but do not tell the authorities; second, how followers of the extremist but still legal organization Hizb ut-Tahrir have penetrated British society, especially our schools.
In his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon, describing the advance of the Saracen armies into Europe in the 8th century, reminded his readers that “the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.”
That prophecy is now coming true before our eyes – and, as Gibbon predicted, without serious resistance. There will be no need for the Islamicization of Westminster Abbey, on the model of Hagia Sophia after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The future Islamic Republic of Great Britain will already have its own, far grander mosques, ready to supplant the empty churches and synagogues of a godless nation.