Muslim groups plan mosques
Members of the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam will break ground on Saskatoon’s first ever dedicated mosque this summer, followed by another for mainstream Sunni Muslims in the coming years.
The 25,000- square- foot mosque will be built across from the Greenbryre Golf Course, just outside city limits in Corman Park near Highway 16. Topped with a 100-foot minaret, it will feature classrooms, a sports facility and separate prayer and meal halls for men and women.
Tanveer Shah, president of the north Saskatoon chapter of the local Ahmadiyya movement, said the mosque will be called Dar ur-Rehmat, or House of Blessing.
A number of local engineers from the Ahmadiyya community came together to draft plans for the mosque, with help from a student architect from Calgary.
“Roughly, the cost is $6.1 million, and we have more than 60 per cent already,” Shah said. “The whole project is funded by local membership.”
Fundraising efforts have been bolstered by the Ahmadiyya practice of donating 10 per cent of income to community projects, Shah said. The Ahmadiyya community has grown to about 800 people in Saskatoon. They say their five daily prayers at a converted building near McKercher Drive.
Efforts are also now underway to build a purpose-built Sunni mosque, as Saskatoon’s rapidly expanding Muslim community outgrows its temporary places of worship.
Amin Elshorbagy, a professor of engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, is involved with the fundraising push for the Sunni mosque. Elshorbagy said the Muslim community purchased 90 acres in 1994 for around $20,000, but has since sold off some 75 acres of that to raise funds.
This site is also located near Highway 16, past Rosewood near the Hillcrest Memorial Gardens.
At present, Sunni prayer services are held at a former school at 222 Copland Cres., located in Grosvenor Park. The building is also home to the Saskatoon Misbah School, a K-8 Muslim school that received associate school status in 2003.
The local Muslim community has outgrown this current makeshift mosque, Elshorbagy said.
“For many years there was no urgent need to go there, because the one on Copland Crescent was really large enough for the community,” Elshorbagy said. “But over the last two to three years the community grew quite significantly.”
There are now two Friday prayer services — each attracting 800 to 1,000 worshippers — since the building is too small to accommodate everyone at once. Saskatoon was home to 1,000 Muslims in 2007, but now has more than 4,000, Elshorbagy said, due to immigration from Muslim countries across the world.
The large number of worshippers attending the Copland Crescent community centre has caused some tension within Grosvenor Park, Elshorbagy said, mostly because of the onstreet parking space they use.
“We want to really take the pressure off the neighbourhood,” he said. “In response to our neighbours, we want to make their life easier.”
Two years ago the Sunni community formed a strategic planning committee and recently decided to proceed with building the mosque.
“They approved in principle the idea of starting,” Elshorbagy said, although he could not say how long it may take to raise the millions of dollars needed to build the mosque or when they may begin construction.
Wealthy philanthropists from Gulf countries finance the construction of mosques in various parts of the world, Elshorbagy said, but the money for Saskatoon’s mosque will be raised locally through donations.
“The only way we operate is by raising money from community members,” he said. “There are people in Saskatoon who would donate a lot ... we don’t have the Gulf emirs or sheiks and we don’t have any intention to ask them for money.”
Once the new Sunni mosque is built, Elshorbagy said, the facility at Copland Crescent will still be used, although the Misbah School will move to the new mosque.
With two mosques in the area, the Rosewood and Lakewood-area neighbourhoods will likely see a large influx of Muslims in the coming years.
Shah said the Ahmadiyya community is already gravitating to the area, which will make it much easier for the devout to attend frequent prayers.
“A lot of people are buying houses (in Rosewood) already,” Shah said. “From there it’s just across the highway, not even a half kilometre.”
In most majority Muslim countries the sounds of the call to prayer can be heard five times per day, starting at sunrise. But Muslims in Saskatoon don’t broadcast the call over loudspeakers out of courtesy to other Canadians, Shah said, and won’t begin doing so when the mosque is built.
“Because of the local laws, we can’t do that,” he said with a laugh. “The neighbours will be very upset, especially about the one at 3:30 in the morning.”