Residents of the Al-Mahmoudiyah and Marwah 1 and 2 neighborhoods in Jeddah have appealed to businesspersons and philanthropists to build more mosques in their areas because they say current buildings are inadequate for the large number of worshippers.
Salah Dahlan, a resident of Marwah 2, said more than 30,000 people live in his neighborhood. “I am sorry to say that the situation is really bad. There are only three mosques whose combined capacity is hardly more than 1,200 worshippers. All of them are one-story buildings and only one of them conducts Friday prayers, so you can imagine how crowded it gets,” he said.
Fayiz Al-Umari, a resident of the Al-Muhammadiyah neighborhood, said: “We have only one mosque close to where I live. Most of the residents come to pray there. This leads to traffic jams because too many cars come to the location. I often find cars double and triple-parked around my building, and I can’t move my car until the prayer service is over,” he said.
Sheikh Fuhaid Al-Barqi, director-general of Jeddah endowments and mosques, acknowledged that a number of Jeddah neighborhoods do not have enough mosques. “We are constructing four new mosques at a total cost of SR37 million. We expect them to be completed within a few months,” he said.
“Even though there are already more than 4,000 mosques in Jeddah, we still need more because of urban and population expansion. When an application for a new mosque is presented to us, we coordinate with the Jeddah Mayoralty to provide a piece of land to a philanthropist or a businessman for them to build the mosque upon.”
“The government supplies water, electricity and sewage systems for free, yet the person building the mosque will bear the cost of construction. That includes the expenses needed to cover the costs of paperwork, engineers, blueprints, maps and workers,” he said.
Jeddah neighborhoods appeal for more mosques
