Plans for a super mosque close to the Olympic stadium reveal that it could hold almost 10,000 people. Architects’ drawings show that the vast mosque will be about the same size as Battersea Power Station. By comparison, Britain’s largest cathedral, in Liverpool, can hold 3,000 worshippers.

Newham Council in east London is due to decide whether it will grant planning permission for the structure next month.

Former councillor Alan Craig has launched a campaign to stop the project. He has produced 100,000 leaflets, which were being distributed throughout the borough yesterday. Mr Craig said: “The mega-mosque is proposed and planned by a particularly disturbing Islamic sect called Tablighi Jamaat.”

He said that Tablighi Jamaat had been promoting itself as open and socially integrated. However, progressive Muslims who support the campaign against the mosque view its beliefs as “narrow and divisive”. He said: “In my view we would be mad, barking mad, if we let the project go ahead.”

Sunday Express, 4 November 2012

This has prompted the usual ignorant and bigoted comments from readers:

“Why encourage the destabilization of society by pandering to the needs of Islamic sect’s which are funder mentally detrimental to the religious and political stability of the British Isles. An Islamic state is being created from within with the aid of the political correctness brigade and short sighted politicians.”

“… we WILL end up with a mosque on the CORNER of each street in the country because they are ALLOWED to do JUST as they wont. In some inner city areas there are several mosques within walking distant of each other, WHY do they need so many. US Christians NEED to start making our objection HEARD. NOW before its too late”

“You can put money on it that this will be a wahhabi mosque with most of the money for building and maintaining it coming from Saudi Arabia. It will be another centre like the Regent’s Park mosque (Channel 4 undercover mosques The Return) for preaching hatred against us and all we stand for. I have said and written many time before that the Wahhabi version of Islam should be banned as a dangerous brain washing sect that is a danger to our national security and should be banned from the UK.”

Meanwhile, further to the right, the Sunday Express report has provoked equally predictable calls for arson attacks on the mosque and those worshipping in it.