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
Islam in London have been the residence of the Khalifatul Masih caliphs and therefore, the international headquarters of the Community. One of the first large mosques was on Brick Lane, in a listed building which started life as a church in the 18th century and was converted into a synagogue in the 19th, reflecting the changing waves of immigration, from Huguenots to Eastern European Jews to Bengalis. Soon after the Brick Lane Mosque opened, two large mosques were built, the East London Mosque (with the adjoining London Muslim Centre and Maryam Centre) on Whitechapel Road not far from Spitalfields, and the London Central