Three Styrian mosques open doors to encourage exchange

Three mosques in Styria are opening to visitors on Sunday for Austria’s Open Mosque Day, offering tours and information to encourage dialogue and challenge prejudices, ORF reports.

This year’s event is held under the motto “Confidence through encounters.” The participating venues are a mosque in Liezen and prayer houses in Leoben and on Gmeinstraße in Graz-Puntigam.

Between 60,000 and 70,000 Muslims currently live in Styria, most of them in Graz, according to Statistics Austria. Open Mosque Day has been held since 2013 to give visitors an authentic insight into community life.

Mehmet Celebi, chairman of the Islamic Religious Community of Styria, said visitors in Graz could explore stations on Islamic calligraphy and find information about Islam, its communities and history. Mosque tours will also give visitors the chance to ask questions directly.

Celebi said organisers expected critical questions and welcomed them, noting that prejudices about Islam exist and that recent months had contributed to the atmosphere. He said honest understanding required critical discussion.

A planned expansion of the Graz-Puntigam prayer house into a mosque with a silent minaret drew criticism a year ago. Residents feared noise and traffic problems. Celebi said the project had not received the go-ahead and the building procedure was still ongoing.