Great Mosque of Brussels to operate without the Islamic and Cultural Center of Belgium
The worship at the Great Mosque of Brussels will be maintained after the departure of the “Islamic and Cultural Center of Belgium” (ICCB), announced on Friday the Minister of Justice, Koen Geens. The direction of daily prayers will be entrusted, in a rotating manner, to imams from mosques already recognized in the Brussels-Capital Region.
Representatives of the minister Geens and of the Brussels minister-president, Rudi Vervoort, participated this Friday in an information meeting on the future of the Great Mosque. The objective was to ease the concerns expressed following the departure of the ICCB.
The concession agreement that the ICCB had received for the Great Mosque was terminated a few months ago by the former Minister of the Interior, Jan Jambon. Its decision followed the recommendations of the Parliamentary Investigation Commission on the Brussels attacks, which considered among other things that the Islamic and Cultural Center of Belgium “spread Wahhabi Salafism, a trend that can play a determining role in the radicalism and violent radicalism.”
After the departure of the ICCB, the place of worship will remain open and the daily prayers will be maintained. Urgent work at the building is also planned to ensure the safety of users, said Minister Geens.
The director Muslims in Belgium will be in charge of temporarily managing the site, as long as it is possible to fully implement the recommendations of the House of Representatives Committee, the minister added.
A global project, involving a training institute of ministers of the Islamic religion and a museum space, is also being studied to make this mosque a vector of social cohesion, he concluded.
