New Iqaluit mosque opens doors

After years in the making, Iqaluit's new mosque held its inauguration Friday, officially opening as a place of worship.

The building will serve as a prayer spaceand a community centre for Iqaluit's 100 or so Muslims, as well as a place to learn about Islam.

"By establishing this mosque, we are saying one thing:we are now an integral part of Iqaluit, we are now a part of the Iqaluit community," saidHussainGuisti,theZubaidahTallabFoundation's general manager.

If you can build a mosque inIqaluit, you can build it anywhere else on the planet.- HussainGuisti

Members of the foundation, along withthe Islamic Association ofNunavut,built the mosquethemselves at a cost of $800,000. The foundation has also helped construct mosques in Inuvik, N.W.T., and Thompson, Manitoba.

"We just finished the mosque now. The guys were working outside underneath the mosque in 56 below," Guisti said."I mean, that's treacherous. If you can build a mosque in Iqaluit, you can build it anywhere else on the planet."

Guisti said the mosque's presence will encourage more Muslim families to move to the Nunavut capital. There are also plans to operate a food bank at the site, he said.

The makeup of Iqaluit's Muslim population is already diverse.They're engineers, doctors, teachers, government workers, taxi drivers.

Now, they have a place of their own.

"This mosque is not only for prayer, but for educating our kids, our families," saidMuhammad Wani, vice-president of the Islamic Association of Nunavut.

"This was a dream which came true."