Towering above the corner of Fournier Street and Brick Lane, and topped with a bright crescent moon, the new minaret is 90ft tall, and is right in the heart of the Brick Lane area in every sense.
The Mosque itself is a converted former synagogue and Huguenot church, and as such is a symbol of how the area has changed. The Minaret is part of an £8.6m regeneration project which will also see new arches erected along Brick Lane, all paid for with money from the Bishops Square development near Liverpool Street Station.
For more, see the East London Advertiser.
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4 comments:
Wow how "vibrant" and "diverse". Frankly public money being paid on silly fairy tales (homophobic, sexist and violent fairy tales at that) is a disgrace. This country needs french secularism pronto. And no thanks a giant illumiated stick with a moon on the top looks like a tedious attraction :)
Interesting to hear your views Caerus. I am not at all religious but I think in this case that it's no different to any sort of new structure that is part of a community building.
I find the notion that we should have some sort of imposed secularism particularly worrying. Why shouldn't I be able to believe in what I want and build structures, if approved through the legal mechanisms which exist, to celebrate that belief? We have always tolerated every sort of people before, and Brick Lane has been home to immigrant communities for hundreds of years, who have all made small changes to the fabric of the area.
That's why it's so interesting.
Tom, this isn't a community building, it's a religious building, and the minaret is a religious icon. It is illegal, and in my opinion, immoral to spend public council money on religious buildings.
The minaret is beautiful, and I do like it a lot, but the building is a listed 1743 Huguenot church, which later became a Methodist chapel, and then a synagogue, and is now a mosque. The minaret only celebrates the current use of the building, not its history - it has only been a mosque since 1976.
It's topped by the crescent moon, which as far as I know, is a symbol of Islam. So it's not public art, it's a religious icon. I'm happy for the mosques to build minarets if they are popular enough to be able to afford them, but not the councils.
If the debate about this is to be resolved, it will not be on the pages of this website.
I like it, and I value the right of democratically elected councillors to decide how Section 106 funding which results from a nearby development is spent.
A considerable amount of money I pay in tax is spent on cathedrals hundreds of miles away each year. I don't mind, and I realise it isn't always practical to expect cathedrals to raise their own fund.
This money was a 'windfall' from a nearby development (the Spitalfields Market 'redevelopment') which has a direct impact on the lives of people who live there, so I think the right of their representatives to chose how it is spent is fair.
One final point I would make is that the minaret isn't actually built into the fabric of the building and could be removed at a later date so I think its impact on a historic building, which is now a well-used mosque is minimal.
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