Reykjavík Mosque

Félag múslima á Íslandi (Muslim Association of Iceland)
Basic information
Location	Reykjavík, Iceland
Geographic coordinates	64°08′3″N 21°52′30″W / 64.13417°N 21.87500°W / 64.13417; -21.87500
Affiliation	Sunni Islam
Leadership	Sheikh Salmann Tamimi
Architectural description
Architectural type	Office Complex
Architectural style	Late Modernism
Groundbreaking	1987
Completed	1991
Specifications
Direction of façade	Mecca
Capacity	Main Prayer Hall: 50
Dome height (outer)	90 ft (27 m)
Minaret height	130 ft (40 m)
Materials	Steel, Concrete, Marble, Glass

The Reykjavík Mosque (Icelandic: Moskan í Reykjavík Arabic: Masjid an-nuur The Mosque of the Light) is a Sunni mosque and gathering area for Muslims in Iceland. It is located in the Ármúli district. The mosque was opened in 2002 by the Muslim Association of Iceland after requesting the city government for permission to build a purpose-built mosque in 2000, with no swift response.^[1][2]

Services

It offers Friday prayers every week and it is open for prayers nightly also. There are two imams, Salmann Tamimi a Palestinian immigrant who was also president of the Muslim Association of Iceland until 2010, and an imam from Algeria. During Ramadan, a sheikh from Libya joins and leads the taraweeh prayers. In January 2009, a new wooden altar was built by members of the association.

Ramadan of 2013

In the year 2013, for the Islamic month of Ramadan (which fell in most of July and the beginning of August), the Muslim Association of Iceland invited Ismaeel Malik, an American currently studying at Umm al-Qura University, to lead the prayers and deliver the Friday sermons. On Saturdays, the mosque held dinners along with motivational lectures. Ismaeel Malik was also invited to an Iftar dinner hosted by Luis E. Arreaga, the current United States Ambassador to Iceland. The ambassador and the embassy staff were "particularly pleased" to have an American Muslim visiting Iceland participate in the dinner.^[3]

New Mosque

Permission to build a purpose-built mosque was first sought in 1999.^[4] The city government authorized a plot of land much smaller than requested but did not approve the building plans.^[5] The project stalled when approval of additional land and further progress was tied to approval of the adjacent Russian Orthodox church.^[6] This delay was 'especially signalled as a possible sign of prejudice against Muslims by the ECRI (European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance) human rights report on Iceland in 2007'.^[7] On July 6th 2013, Reykjavík City Council, under the leadership of Jón Gnarr, gave permission for an 800 square metre purpose-built mosque in Reykjavík, with a roof no higher than nine metres and a ten-metre minaret, in the easternmost part of Sogamýri, between Miklubraut and Suðurlandsbraut. Following a design competition, a design was chosen in 2015 by Gunnlaugur Stefán Baldursson and Pia Bickmann;^[8] the mosque is to include a prayer hall, library, information centre and probably a restaurant.^[9]

According to the chair of the Muslim Association of Iceland, Ibrahim Sverrir Agnarsson, "My hope is that the mosque can serve as a statement of liberalism, open to all, a place where a North African laborer can pray next to a U. S. businessman."^[10]

The decision to grant the building plot free of charge proved to be controversial.^[11] The decision also led to the creation of a Facebook group "We protest against a mosque in Iceland" by Skúli Skúlason.^[12] One independent opinion poll of adults run between September 26th and October 1st 2013 asked ‘hversu fylgjandi eða andvíg(ur) ertu því að eftirfarandi trúfélög fái að byggja trúarbyggingar á Íslandi’ ('how supportive or opposed are you that the following religious groups should get to build a religious building in Iceland?'). It found fairly consistent and positive attitudes to building by the Church of Iceland and the neo-pagan Ásatrúarfélagið (8.5% and 9.1% opposed, 67.2% and 54.7% in favour, respectively), but quite strong opposition to building by the Muslim Association of Iceland (43.4% opposed, 31.5% in favour).^[13] At first, the only significant political figure to voice objections was the one-time mayor of Reykjavík Ólafur Friðrik Magnússon, in 2013,^[14] but the campaign for the 2014 Icelandic local elections saw further negative comments, prominently from the Progressive Party candidate for Mayor of Reykjavík Sveinbjörg Birna Sveinbjörnsdóttir.^[15] In 2015, the Icelandic prsident, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, suggested that the mosque might be partly Saudi-funded and a site for radicalisation.^[16]

Siðmennt, the Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association, issued a statement about it in general terms and did not criticise this particular decision because of the principle of equal treatment. According to Siðmennt, it was not part of municipality's functions to grant building plots to religious or life-stance organizations, such as the Evangelic-Lutheran State Church, the Catholic Church, or the Association of Muslims in Iceland, free of charge. However, since that system is in place it must be applied equally to all. Siðmennt would not apply for a building plot for itself though in order to stick to its main principle of separation of state and church.^[17]

In 2010 Salmann Tamimi said that the Association of Muslims in Iceland would never raise money from abroad to build the new mosque.^[18]

References in art and literature

A positive, fictional account of the building of Reykjavík's first purpose-built mosque appears in Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl's 2009 novel Gæska: Skáldsaga.^[19] Iceland's submission to the 2015 Venice Biennale, by Christoph Büchel, was an installation in a deconsecrated church entitled The Mosque: The First Mosque in the Historic City of Venice. This was partly inspired by the Reykjavík Mosque controversy, and was itself a source of rancour, being swiftly shut down by the Venetian authorities.^[20]

See also

• Islam in Iceland
• List of first mosques by country

External links

• (Icelandic) Íslam.is - Main website of the Islamic Association of Iceland, partially translated

References