Slovenia’s 1st Mosque Opens After 50 Years

Slovenia’s first mosque opened in the capital Ljubljana on Monday after surmounting financial hurdles and right-wing opposition, 50 years after the initial request to build was made.

Slovenia’s first mosque opened in the capital Ljubljana on Monday after surmounting financial hurdles and right-wing opposition, 50 years after the initial request to build was made.

Opponents of the project have repeatedly tried to halt it, and pig heads and blood have also been left on the site.

Islamic community head said the mosque’s opening was “a turning point in our lives”.

“Slovenia is the last former Yugoslav state to get a mosque, making Ljubljana a capital rather than a provincial town on the edge of the world,” he told a press conference.

Muslims in the predominantly Catholic Alpine country first filed a request to build a mosque in the late 1960s while Slovenia was still part of the former Communist Yugoslavia.

Situated in a semi-industrial area of Ljubljana, the mosque, which can hold up to 1,400 people, constitutes the core of the six-building Islamic Cultural Center.