Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA.ir), Muslim and government leaders alike hope that work on the Grande Mosque will serve to bind the city together and serve as a community anchor. Marseille is France’s second largest city and home to 250,000 Muslims, many of whom are currently obliged to perform their rites in makeshift prayer houses.
With a minaret soaring 25 metres high, the Grand Mosque will hold up to 7,000 people in its prayer room and the complex will also boast a Quranic school, library, restaurant and tea room when it opens in 2012.
Muslims in Marseille have long campaigned for a mega-mosque as a prominent gathering place for Muslims.
The turning point came in 2001 when Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin threw his weight behind the project, overriding objections from the far-right.
After years of delays, the project still faces hurdles to raise the full $27 million needed to finance it. Nourredine Cheikh, an Algerian-born businessman and president of the association leading the campaign for the mosque, said his group was hoping for big donations from North African countries, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
The grand mosque would be built in the Saint-Louis area of Marseille, an ethnically mixed neighborhood that suffers high unemployment and poverty.
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