Utah Shiites secure $250K grant toward renovation work on mosque

Northern Utah’s growing Shiite Muslim community won a $250,000 boost in its quest to preserve a historic Latter-day Saint chapel-turned-mosque.

While Taylorsville’s Alrasool Islamic Center is the happy recipient of a highly competitive grant from National Fund for Sacred Places, the award is conditional on the mosque’s ability to raise $400,000 on its own within a timeline of approximately one and a half years.

Since 2008, the building has served as a community center for the Wasatch Front’s Shiites, which consists of immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan seeking freedom of religion and freedom of speech, members of the community remarked.