Moscow's Muslims find no room in the mosque

 Muslims find no room in the mosque

                                                                                                     

Moscow'On a cold Friday in March, Bolshaya Tatarskaya street in the centre of Moscow is at a standstill. It runs past the Russian capital's oldest mosque.

More than two million Muslims now live and work in Moscow. It has become one of the biggest cities for Muslims in Europe and its few houses of worship can no longer cope.

During Friday prayers the historic building is overflowing and thousands of faithful are praying outside in the snow.

Cars honk their horns and local people struggle to get past on the pavements.

It is a scene repeated at all of Moscow's four mosques, as tens of thousands of Muslims gather for prayers every Friday.

Imam Hasan Fakhritdinov The imam says the authorities are ignoring demands for new mosques

The new Muslims are mainly young migrants from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Poverty and conflict forced them to seek new lives in Russia, and millions of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz have found jobs and a new home in Moscow.

"There are too many of us," says Ulugbek, a young migrant from Uzbekistan. "We have to be grateful that there are mosques in Moscow. The city was not ready to host millions of us all of a sudden."

But others think that the authorities are ignoring the needs of the Muslim population.

Hasan Fakhritdinov, imam of what is known as the city's Historical Mosque, says that the existing facilities are just not enough.

"We are asking the authorities to let us build new mosques, but they are ignoring our demands," he says. "Now people have to pray outside in the rain or the snow."

Moscow's old Tatar Mosque is currently being transformed into a grand, new building. But even then it won't be able to accommodate all the worshippers

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