If you travel often on the George Price Highway, you may have seen the development of the Mosque of Light at the one-and-a-half-mile mark over the last ten months. The Ahmadiyya Jama't Muslims are in the process of relocating to this new mosque - the second in Belize.
And with most of the construction finished, they can begin to worship inside, and are inviting persons from any religious background to feel free to use the mosque for their own form of worship.
The community's president, Naveed Mangla, spoke about the uniqueness of the mosque - adding that it was built by volunteers who used their own money.
Naveed Mangla, President, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
"This property was purchased about 3 to 4 years ago and they started the foundation stone of building the Masjid Noor, Masjid in English would mean a mosque, and the name was given by the current leader of the community. Masjid Noor meaning Mosque of Light, whoever comes they will find light, meaning the closeness to God Almighty or the way to communicate with God Almighty. We started the foundation stone about 15 months ago and by the grace of God this has been built in a unique way because the people that build it were Canadian volunteers that had built another mosque in Canada in a similar way, because in Islam, building a mosque is such an honor."
"These were about ten to fifteen volunteers that gave up everything and came on their own accord and stayed here during the whole time, the whole pandemic and built this mosque with not charging anything to the community and they did it from their own pocket so it's very unique in a sense and goes to say how our Jama'at functions."
"This mosque that you see can accommodate around 200 worshippers and is built around 7,000 square feet and the whole property, there's another property at the back too, is about 2 acres but we're only utilizing 1/3 with the building of the mosque and we're hoping in the future maybe we can build a lab or maybe a small clinic or maybe a small school, that's something we definitely hope to do anyway that we believe would be the best way to serve the place where we live in, we would love to do that."
Ata'ulhaq Gabb, Local Missionary, Ahmaddiyya Jama'at
"This is the worship area, this will be able to house 200 people and there's an office area here for Naveed and also the library is upstairs and there's the missionary residence and the guest house and the kitchen. So this is the area that will be utilized for men and women, there is a women bathroom there and a men bathroom over here. That is the female entrance and this is the male entrance because."
"There is something within Islam which promotes the separation of men and women. So you would say that this area would be the women area and that area would be the male area."
The mosque can comfortably fit about 200 people, but with COVID regulations in place, the community is limiting the number of people inside at any given time to about 50.
