MOSCOW, Oct 30, (AFP) - It is a typical Friday scene -- worshippers kneeling in the rain outside Moscow's biggest mosque, forced to use their shoes to anchor their prayer rugs to keep them from blowing away in the autumn winds.
The scramble for a place inside is a weekly headache for Muslims in the Russian capital, a city with one of the biggest percentage of Muslims in Europe but with only four mosques.
And their plea for more space to worship is stirring tension with Russia's resurgent nationalists.
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| Muslim men crowd outside a mosque in Moscow as they offer their weekly Friday prayers. |
"When I can get here early, I can find a place inside. Otherwise I need to stay outside," said Abdyl Ashim Ibraimov, 30, a regular at the Sobornaya mosque, Moscow's largest.
Thousands of faithful descend upon the site each Friday for the Islamic day of prayer, but the green building topped with gold crescents -- wedged between blocks of apartments and an immense stadium in central Moscow -- can only hold up to 800 people.
Once full, worshippers filter into its nearby administrative offices, then the interior courtyard and finally spill onto neighbouring sidewalks. "Friday prayers are very important. That's why we come here, whether it's raining or snowing," said Ashur Ashurov, a silver-haired man in his sixties.
Estimates vary for the number of Muslims in Moscow, a vast city of 10.5 million. Russian officials put it at about 1.2 million but the Council of Muftis, the official Muslim organisation in Russia, says it is closer to two million.
With only four mosques, "there is a catastrophic shortage of place," said the Sobornaya mosque's imam, Ildar Khazrat Alyautdinov. "It is not enough to accommodate those who want to come and pray."Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from ex-Soviet republics in mainly Muslim Central Asia have flocked to Moscow, swelling the capital's already significant Muslim population. |
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