Harun Nasrullah
Muslim students are denouncing Islamophobic acts carried out by opponents of a proposed mosque in Daegu, South Korea’s third-largest city.
The “Daegu Anti-Mosque Committee” organised a big barbecue with pork, only a few metres away from the mosque under construction on December 15. It is in this area of Daegu, a large city in southern Korea, that dozens of Muslim students from nearby Kyungpook University gather.
A pig’s head was placed on a chair in front of the mosque on December 6.
It was the third time in two months that foreign Muslim students had found this macabre installation, a dubious reference to Islam’s ban on eating pork.
In Daegu, Muslim students had been meeting since 2014 in a two-storey house that served as a cultural and religious centre
“The previous old building, which has been used by roughly 150 Muslims, mostly KNU students, was not a proper building for a prayer place. There were several problems, like no cooling system and no floor heating,” said Muaz Razaq, a Kyungpook University student.
“Also, it was a small house, so many of the students had to stand outside,” he added.
In December 2020, the construction of a mosque building began with the approval of the district authority. The plan is to erect a two-story, 20-meter-high mosque with a minaret at the top. The land is co-owned by six Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Hit with complaints from villagers, the district office reversed its initial stance and imposed an administrative order in February 2021 to stop the mosque’s construction.
But in December, the Muslim landlords won a court order to repeal the district office’s decision. In September this year, the top court upheld the lower court’s decision, clearing the path for the mosque’s construction.
But since then, they have faced opposition from a group of neighbours who regularly demonstrate to block the work.
These demonstrations have taken an Islamophobic turn on several occasions, as several videos and photos sent to our editorial office by one of the students show.
Despite the court’s ruling, construction could not move forward because residents hampered the project by blocking the entrance of the construction site with their cars and putting up anti-Islamic posters and banners in the area.
