A mosque opened on Sunday in the village of Bogovlja in central Croatia, some 120 kilometres south of Zagreb, near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is only the fourth mosque in the country, after the ones already operating in the major cities of Rijeka and Zagreb and the eastern Croatian village of Gunja.
The grand mufti of the Islamic Community in Croatia, Aziz Efendi Hasanovic, said that the house of worship in Bogovlja would serve to show young people what Islam looks like, that it is “the Islam full of openmindedness, full of good deeds, and the Islam free of any deviations,” and added that Muslim places of worship and Islamic centres in Croatia are “places for meetings of different religions and different cultures”.
Hasanavic added that he would travel to Abu Dhabi on Monday to promote Croatia's model of cooperation and culture of dialogue. He is due to attend an international conference in Abu Dhabi held on May 8-9 on challenges and opportunities facing some 500 million Muslims working and living outside of the Islamic world.
During the ceremony in Bogovlja, Hasanavic said he would speak about the ways of improving the status of Muslims in Christian European countries, as well as the status of Christians in the Islamic world.
In this context, he mentioned the status of Muslims in Croatia who have the right to take Islamic religion classes at school, and who can practice their religious rites in institutions such as prisons or hospitals. They also have the right to build places of worship and Islamic centres in villages and towns where they live.
In Croatia there are 26 places of worship catering to Muslims, including four mosques. According to the most recent 2011 population census, there were 63,000 Muslims in the country, meaning there was one place of worship per roughly 2,500 believers. In other European countries, this ratio of believers per place of worship ranges from 650 in Greece to 8,000 in Sweden.
The local imam in the city of Karlovac, near Bogovlja, Admir Efendi Muhic, said that 2 million kuna (€270,000) had been invested in the construction of the 350-square-metre mosque. The new Bogovlja mosque will serve some 400 Muslims living in the area, and would also open its doors to some 2,000 residents of the local Cetingrad municipality, regardless of their ethnicity or religion.
The ceremony was attended by Croatian state officials as well as representatives of embassies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, Iran and Indonesia in Croatia, and local authority officials of Bosnia and Herzegovina's cantons bordering Croatia's Karlovac County.
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