Muslims from Chechnya have helped fund the building of a new mosque in an Arab village in Israel. The mosque was named after Chechnya’s former leader Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in 2004, in the village of Abu Ghosh. Abu Ghosh residents say their forbears were Chechens who came five centuries ago to then Ottoman-ruled Palestine. “We were raised to accept and welcome everyone, no matter what their race or religion,” said Salim Jabr, the former Abu Ghosh mayor and chief fund-raiser for the $10 million mosque.
The building has four minarets – a number typical of mosques in the Caucasus but otherwise unseen in Israel or the Palestinian territories, where one or two is the norm. The slender spires reach up 52 meters (171 feet) around a gilded dome that sits above a marbled prayer hall capable of taking in 3,000 worshippers. The previous village mosque held only 150, Jabr says – insufficient for a population of 6,500. Turkish artisans provided woodwork and filigree for the mosque, gratis. There’s a contemporary Israeli touch, too, in the roomy, ventilated bomb shelter built into a lower floor.