Danish company wins tender on Albania’s new mosque

TIRANA, May 2 – Danish company BIG won an international tender on building a new mosque and a museum on religious harmony downtown capital Tirana.
An international jury has declared the Copenhagen-based company winner among 100 bidders offering projects for the new mosque that will offer enough space for praying to Muslims and expected to be built close to Tirana’s Skanderbeg Square, according to Tirana Mayor Edi Rama Monday.
But the Muslim Community said a day later that they fully agreed with the idea and the project but they were concerned that it could have problems with the land owners at the area it is designed to be built. They said that authorities should first clear such issues before proceeding with the building.
A Catholic cathedral has been built not far from that area and a new Orthodox one is still under construction nearby.
About two-thirds of Albania’s 3.2 million population are Muslims, followed with large Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic minorities, whose relations are generally good. Religion was banned in Albania from 1967 until 1990 by the late Communist dictator Enver Hoxha.
The motivation of the current competition comes due to the situation of the Muslim Community in Tirana in the absence of a new mosque to fulfill the needs of Muslim citizens wanting to participate in the city mosques life.
Tirana needs a new mosque, not only for the Muslim Community, not only to fulfill the growing needs of an increasing number of Muslim citizens that are served today by a modest network of mosques, but also because our capital should fill in a missing corner of the triangle that makes Tirana a unique place, the triangle of religious harmony among three main religions, that since ever have been points of reference and have mainly mirrored the local tradition of Tirana citizens of solidarity and mutual respect. While the other two religious communities have already received their contemplation places, today, under such conditions, Muslim community lacks its own space.
Next to the New Mosque, the Museum of Tirana and Religious Harmony will house the documented history of our city as well as the way it has voyaged, as an indivisible part and even essential in Tirana civic coexistence; coexistence among religions.