A vastly profitable grassroots funding effort funded the landmark constructing, which is designed to have common attraction.
The most important mosque in Belgium’s Wallonia area has simply opened its doorways after greater than a decade of development.
The Kanuni Sultan Süleyman mosque is located in Liège, and was funded totally by its worshippers, acquired no subsidies from the Belgian authorities or donations from overseas. The complete value of development got here to some €4.5 million.
Overlaying a formidable 1,300 sq. meters, this up to date white advanced incorporates a 450-square metre mosque topped with a dome, albeit with out minarets. The mosque can welcome as much as 600 worshippers.
Mehmet Aydogdu, Liège’s consultant of Tradition and Interculturalism, described the imaginative and prescient behind the mosque’s design, “Our concept was to not make structure associated to Central Anatolia, the Center East or North Africa. It was to achieve universality – subsequently a ‘Belgitude’”.
Constructed on a former coal web site which has seen many generations of Turkish miners cross by, cast by a 1964 settlement permitting Turkish labor migration to Belgium.
Imam Ertugrul Yilmaz, was born and bread in Wallonia earlier than pursuing his greater training in Turkey, stated, “It’s with nice satisfaction for me to return again, to be an imam, as a result of I grew up with them. I do know them, they know me. We are able to work collectively.
“We wish to welcome everybody, do actions collectively, present that we reside collectively, that we’re additionally Belgian, that we’re a part of this group.”
Past its position as a spot of worship, the mosque advanced features a cultural centre accessible to all, internet hosting a wide range of occasions corresponding to conferences, instructional applications, and communal actions, additional selling dialogue and understanding amongst various communities.