Financed exclusively by the faithful, the Kanuni Sultan Süleyman mosque opened its doors in Liège.
The largest mosque in Wallonia was inaugurated in Liège after more than ten years of construction.
Funded exclusively by the faithful and the Turkish cultural centerKanuni Sultan Süleyman, a Belgian non-profit association, the mosque received neither Belgian subsidy nor foreign donation.
Its cost amounts to 4.5 million euros. On the wall, the list of donors has more than 900 names. Everyone contributed according to their means.
If other larger buildings used as places of worship by Muslims exist in Wallonia, their original purpose was other than religious. It is therefore the largest mosque built in the region.
Former coal mine
About fifteen years ago, the elders – “all former miners” specifies the Alderman – acquired land with an area of 11,000 m² in the Glain district in Liège.
The place is highly symbolic. The building is erected on the old Patience and Beaujonc coal mine for which several generations of Turkish workers have worked.
In place of the current mosque there were in the past the two “Belle-Fleur”, the name given in Belgium to the elevators to take miners down and up. The chimney was demolished in 2014.
In 1964, a bilateral agreement signed between Ankara and Brussels allowed thousands of Turkish workers, mainly from central Anatolia, to come and work in Belgium. Their families joined them a few years later thanks to family reunification.
“This is how the Glain district became a district very frequented by the Turkish community and the Moroccan community,” explains Mehmet Aydogdu, Alderman of Culture in Liège.
There Kanuni Sultan Süleyman Mosque welcome today until 600 faithful from all origins.
“Most of them are Turks,” assures Ertugrul Yilmaz, Imam of the Kanuni Sultan Süleyman Mosque, “but there are also Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, Guineans, Bosnians, Pakistanis and also people converted like Italians. , Belgians, or Spaniards”.
“A local mosque”
The building, designed by Belgian architects Pierre Blondel and Nicolas Duvivier, oscillates between tradition and modernity.
The 1,300 m² modern white complex includes a 450 m² mosque overlooked by a dome but devoid of minarets.
As part of this project, the architect Pierre Blondel also traveled to Turkey for three weeks to “feel the atmosphere, but also to observe the architectural change taking place in the Muslim world”, assures the Alderman.
The project initiated in 2013, which planned four minarets 30 meters high, had raised concerns among local residents.
In the end, a minaret in twisted metal, to recall the steel industry, “spearhead in the Liège region”, of “18 meters maximum”, will be built when the financing is gathered, explains the Alderman. “During the muezzin’s call to prayer, the minaret will not broadcast sound but will light up,” he specifies.
Cultural and religious center
The imam of the Kanuni Sultan Süleyman Mosque, Ertugrul Yilmaz, 35, was born and raised in Belgium. He went to university in Turkey to become an imam before returning to Wallonia.
In addition to the mosque dedicated to worship, the structure also includes a cultural center open to allclassrooms and conference rooms.
“We would like to welcome everyone,” assures the imam, “to do activities together, to show that we live together, that we are also Belgian, that we are part of this community.”
A Christmas market and a fancy fair, the name given in Belgium to fairs and village fairs, will be organized in the wooden chalets in the garden, rejoices the Alderman.