MADRID,
November 4, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – For the first time in the
southern European country, Spanish Muslims performed `Eid Al-Fitr prayer
in open-air courtyards on Thursday, November 3.
In
the northeastern city of Zaragoza, some 3,000 Muslim worshipers turned
out early on Thursday for the prayers, celebrating the first day of the
Muslim occasion, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of
Ramadan.
The
prayer was held in an exhibition courtyard as a gesture of peaceful
coexistence and `Eid greetings from the Christian administration of the
fair.
Spain
has a Muslim minority of about 600,000 people out of a total population
of 40 million.
The
country has recognized Islam through the law of religious freedom,
issued in July 1967.
In
Droves
In
southern Spain, thousands of Muslim worshipers also came in droves to
perform the prayer at different mosques in the predominantly Muslim
area.
Hundreds
of Muslim immigrants flocked to the Marbella mosque, Spain's largest and
most beautiful mosque, to perform the congregational prayer.
More
worshipers poured from neighboring areas which have a heavy Muslim
presence such as Almera.
"The
mosque is bursting at the seams with worshippers and should be
expanded," Abdul Hamid Bgaw, Moroccan, told IslamOnline.net.
He
said Muslims have to go all the way to the Marbella mosque because
neighboring areas badly lack in grand mosques.
Spanish
Muslims have been pressing for state permissions to build mosques in the
cities with large Muslims population as Granada, Almera, Alicante,
Madrid and Barcelona.
After
an absence of almost 500 years, the Adhan (call to prayer) and the
muezzin’s cry of 'Allahu Akbar' (God is greatest) rang on July 10,
2003, from the minaret of the Great Mosque of Granada.
The
site of the mosque was bought 22 years ago, when it was still a small
plot of farmland squeezed between a convent and a church on the crest of
the Albaicin, the last Muslim quarter of Granada.
