Catering to the growing number of Muslims, the North Carolina city of Chapel Hill will open its first mosque in the next few weeks, fulfilling a five-year-old dream of the religious minority.
\n\u201cChapel Hill has been known to welcome different faiths,\u201d the Chapel Hill Islamic Society (CHIS) secretary, Sohail Khan, told Daily Tarheel on Wednesday, October 7.
\n\u201cI think the Muslim community, as such, has been kind of missing. The closest place is in Durham. Some folks go as far as Raleigh.\u201d
\nThough the city has more than 50 churches, a Jewish synagogue and two Buddhist temples, it doesn\u2019t have a mosque.
\nOvercoming the problem, hundreds of Chapel Hill Muslims have been forced to pray alone, travel to mosques in other cities or meet at select hours in the rooms of a local church or the Student Union.
\n\u201cThere are three mosques in Durham, which are accessible to me because I have a car,\u201d Omar Rezk, an Egyptian junior majoring in nutrition in the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Public Health, who has attended a mosque in Durham since he was a kid, said.
\n\u201cI know for some students on campus who don\u2019t have cars, that does affect them to a certain degree.\u201d
\nMuslims students have their own prayer room in UNC, which is opened from 8 am to 10 pm on a daily basis.
\nFriday prayers are also held at the room.<\/p>\n
Challenges<\/strong> Source: OnIslam<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Catering to the growing number of Muslims, the North Carolina city of Chapel Hill will open its first mosque in the next few weeks, fulfilling a five-year-old dream of the religious minority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nThe dream of having a mosque started in 2010 when CHIS bought a four-bedroom home on nearly an acre of land at 103 Stateside Drive for the purpose of creating a worship place.
\nBy 2014, Chapel Hill Planning Commission approved the property after applying some changes to the place, with a cost of more than $3,500 paid by CHIS.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a long, drawn-out process,\u201d Khan said.
\n\u201cThe fact that we got our primary approval in June of 2014 didn\u2019t allow us to start work immediately. It meant a host of other, smaller approvals until we finally got our construction permit a year later.\u201d
\nProviding funds for the mosque has been the biggest challenge for the city\u2019s Muslim community.
\n\u201cAll those changes obviously take time and money,\u201d Khan said.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re a small group. Money is always a challenge.\u201d
\nWith an estimated $150,000 price tag from donations, the project is expected to be completed by November.
\nLast February 10, three Muslim-American students\u2014Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19\u2014were found shot in the head, execution-style, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
\nThe two young women were wearing traditional hijabs when they were killed.
\nThe gunman, identified as 46-year-old Craig Stephen Hicks, reportedly turned himself into police.
\nShocked by the heinous crime, world Muslims mourned the three young American Muslims in North Carolina, pouring into social media to send messages of solidarity to the victims\u2019 families.
\nTwitter users started to employ the hashtag “#MuslimLivesMatter,” to comment on how the mainstream media ignored the news of the murder which did not make national headlines.<\/p>\n