Seville’s Muslim Community Divided Over Plans for Grand Mosque

The Muslims of Seville have again seized, in recent weeks, the city council so that it authorizes them to transform the former Moroccan pavilion into a large mosque. This latest request to the local authorities seems to suffer the same fate as the previous ones, due to the dissensions between the different Islamic groups in the city. The lack of cohesion has divided the Muslim community and led to the birth of several groups and the proliferation of mosques, estimated at around thirty.

As many mosques as communities, all as different from each other, reports ABC. Among these small communities, ten are currently registered as mosques in the official registers of the Andalusia Council; two others, the tariqa of the Senegalese community and that of the community of the Great Mosque of Seville, do not appear in these registers.

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The leaders of the community of the Great Mosque were the first to initiate the project to build a mosque in Seville in 2004. It should be located in Los Bermejales according to an agreement with the city council, but following a complaint from a citizen, the Andalusian justice has requested the cancellation of the project for "procedural defect". In 2003, this community had applied to the Andalusia Council for authorization to transform the church of Santa Lucía into a mosque. Without success.

In addition, the leaders of the Ishbilia mosque, located next to the Amate park in Seville, have also spent several years fighting for the construction of a mosque on a plot east of Seville, but have not been able to obtain the support of the local authorities. They have not given up on the project, however, as they have just submitted another request to the city council for the transfer of the former Moroccan pavilion. This mosque, which is gaining strength due to its activities and initiatives with public entities and NGOs, associated with the tariqa of the Senegalese community, which brings together many migrant believers, form a stronger union movement, capable of carrying and making the project of building a large mosque in Seville come true.