London Borough of Tower Hamlets Islamic centres, including the East London Mosque, Britain's biggest mosque. Brick Lane's restaurants, neighbouring street market and shops provide the largest range of Bengali cuisine, woodwork, carpets and clothes in Europe. A 2017 study by Trust for London and the New Policy Institute found that Tower Hamlets has the highest rate of poverty, child poverty, unemployment, and pay inequality of any London borough. It also found that it has the lowest GCSE attainment gap though, meaning that the gap in performance between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils is lower than in any other London Borough. The local authority is Tower Hamlets
Monica Ali as characters in an English novel had the force of a defining caricature ... [S]ome of the Sylhetis of Brick Lane did not recognise themselves. Bengali Muslims smart under an Islamic prejudice that they are irreligious and disorderly, the impure among the pure, and here was a proto-Bengali writer with a Muslim name, portraying them as all of that and more. Greer criticised Monica Ali's "lack of authenticity", as she had never spent much time in the Brick Lane community, and no longer spoke the Bengali language fluently. The writer Salman Rushdie criticised Greer for getting involved, saying that her