Critics of the London mosque, led by a local councillor from a Christian group, argue a large mosque with room for 12,000 worshipers will turn the integrated neighbourhood into a "one-faith zone" driving out followers of other faiths.
They also charge that Tablighi Jamaat
In Cologne, DITIB's plan for a modern Ottoman-style mosque has met charges it will be too big for a city housing one of the most imposing Gothic cathedrals in the Christian world.
"I have a queasy feeling," Catholic Cardinal Joachim Meisner said. "A mosque would give the city a different panorama. Given our history, there is a shock that Muslim immigration has brought a cultural rupture in our German and European culture."
A mosque project in Pankow, an eastern Berlin area with few Muslims, sparked violent clashes last month between supporters and opponents. Neo-Nazi groups have joined the protests and a truck was torched at the construction site in March.
"EVERYONE HAS A RIGHT..."
France, whose five million-strong Muslim minority is Europe's largest, has a longer history of mosques in its cities and many mayors provide land at low cost for them.
A far-right political party, the National Republican Movement
Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin of Marseille was so set on seeing a "cathedral mosque" built after decades of debate that he quickly got approval for a new contract at slightly higher rates.
"Everyone has a right to a significant house of worship," he told the city council. Most Marseille Muslims now pray in neighbourhood mosques too small for their congregations.
In Switzerland, two right-wing parties have launched a petition for a referendum to ban minarets on mosques there.
Italy's anti-immigration Northern League called last month for all mosques there to be closed for security checks. In December 2006, protesters left a severed pig's head outside a mosque being built in the Tuscan town of Colle di Val d'Elsa.
Concern about Islam has deep roots in some countries. In Greece, which lived for four centuries under Ottoman Turkish rule, Muslims only got their first purpose-built mosque in Athens in June. Plans for a larger one are still on hold.
In Spain, a bastion of Islamic culture for eight centuries until 1492, Catholic leaders nervously turned down a request from Muslims to pray in Cordoba Cathedral, originally a mosque.
A local Muslim group wants to build a half-scale replica of the mosque for its own use, but has not yet submitted its plan.
