I’ve been to Brick Lane and admittedly it’s not the Banglatown it’s made out to be. There are a lot of Indian restaurants, admittedly, but the real Muslim life of east London is further south and east, around the Whitechapel and Commercial roads (and continuing a long way east). There, you will find plenty of hijabis and niqabis.

maybe they didn’t include the names because the people wanted to remain anonymous.

frustrating.

This blog very justifiably expresses annoyance whenever there’s a book or film or tv special that’s supposed to be about Islam or Muslims or Muslim women and has the word ‘veil’ in the title. I say justifiably because it’s a cliche. And its divisive because many people would agree that the arch-typical ‘sign’ of Islam is not the hijab, and its certainly not the sign of Brick Lane. I’ve lived very close to Brick Lane — i don’t think I ever remember seeing a whole lot of hijabis. Don’t you think it’s just a wee bit silly? Don’t you think the western media’s obsession with the hijab is being internalized a little?

And who even decided on this structure? Was there a vote? Or did some councilman decide on it because he thought that was the clearest sign of Islam?

I’m just saying that if you want to move the symbolic representation of Muslims above and beyond the veil (which I do), you have to be critical of this architecture as well.

Rochelle – So now the hijab is a divisive cliche? As a hijabi, I find that statement to be rather offensive.

I’m starting to feel that people are missing the point of this post. I wish people would look beyond the structure itself and analyse what the media is actually saying. The media discourse around this issue has been deeply troubling and downright racist.

I understand there are many issues around the use of hijab as an Islamic symbol, but please don’t be fooled into seeing that as the main issue here.

I don’t like the structure for a variety of other reasons: it’s exclusive, alienating, homogenizing and downright weird. The hijab is not a ‘cultural’ symbol — it’s a NORMATIVE symbol. They could have picked something less cliche, less divisive.

Emily “Chinese Buddhism is religiously inert”?

Really? You honestly feel you can neatly summarise the religious beliefs of such a vast and diverse population as “inert”?

As for the U.K being secular, try again. The head of State, the Queen, also has the title of “Defender of The Faith”, that faith being the Church of England, which receives privileged treament from the state as a consequence. You can make all the sweeping generalistions you wish, but the actual facts must feature somewhere.

As for dimissing Islam as an ideology and thus ok to criticise without being accussed of prejudice. To those who are not Muslim, Islam may indeed by just a theory, but to those who are, it is far more deeply held then that. The fact is that Muslims are discriminated against for believing in Islam, attacks on Islam don’t just occur as floating statements, they are frequently transferred into harm visited upon Muslims. An imam was recently blinded in a acid attack as he left his mosque. Do you not see the link between the two?

Finally why is nationalist territory marking acceptable but religious symbols aren’t? Nationalism surely can be just as oppressive and offensive.

The planned area for this design is called Banglatown, it is a Bangladeshi area. I get the awful feeling that underneath the bleating about multi-cultural history is the actual message that Bengali people aren’t entitled to that ownership, they can have their nice restaurants for white people to enjoy, but how dare they feel that they have any right over the area.

Face it, people don’t say anything about “Multi-cultural heritage” when development in the style of white mainstream society is planned.

This, coupled with the recent showing of a Channel 4 documentary which tried to paint the increase in Bengali political participation as creeping Islamisation, all leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

Even if there were religious symbols in Chinatown, Chinese Buddhism and animism hark back to bygone eras, and are now mostly religiously inert, whereas the hijab represents a flourishing and expanding religion (the fastest-growing of all of them), one which is still practiced with deep sincerity by many. Calling the Chinese symbols “religious” is like calling Christmas symbols religious: maybe they are to some, but for the mostly secular lives of the majority who celebrate Christmas they represent a bygone era, becoming devoid of sincere religious sentiment long ago. Perhaps the current potent ideology of China is communism, and I don’t think many people would be happy if the council wanted to use public funds to construct communism-inspired public art.

One more thing: when you say “OTHER ethnicities” are you implying Islam is an ethnicity? I think this is obviously not the case: Islam is a religion, not an ethnicity. We can all change our religion tomorrow, but no-one can change their ethnicity.

My two cents: the proposed design is ugly. And I think it IS alienating to the other ethnicities that live and have made a history there. If you want to celebrate a culture or all cultures, don’t choose the most loaded symbol from one of them–incorporate cultural elements from them all. Murals and cultural museums contribute better to the beautification of an area.