I'm going to jump in.

I'm going to relate a little story of mine. It was my sophomore year in college (2004) and I was taking a course called 'Religion and Resistance'. It was team-taught by a Professor of Islamic Studies and a Professor of Christian Studies, and it was a brilliant course. Great reading. Snagged an actual copy of Jalal al-e Ahmad's Gharbzadegi. Anyway, a debate was raging about religion and politics, as usual, and one student uttered, "Well, take the politics out of Islam." 'B', the Iranian Professor of Islamic Studies, looked up and said, "You can't. Islam is politics. Religion is politics." Everyone shut up and thought about that for a bit.

So, to run with that train of thought: If Islam is politics, and the heartbeat of Islam is where the faithful converge, then the mosque is politics also. Granted some mosques take on that role more so than others, but nevertheless, it is a political place. It's just as political as a church, temple or synagog.

Also, as a scholar of Islamic Studies, I'm a bit curious as to what you're all referring to when you say a "mosque's established role?"