Skopje Municipality "Ignores Mosque Requests"

The IVZ press department told Balkan Insight on Monday that they are still awaiting a reply to their request for permission to build the mosque, which they submitted in 2007 to the municipality.

The municipality of “Centar” is “utterly ignoring us and avoids any discussion on the subject,” the IVZ said.

In 2007 the Islamic Community filed an appeal to the city planners requesting that the lot envisaged for the reconstruction of the old Burmali mosque be located on the city’s main square. The Burmali mosque was torn down in the 1920s by the then Serbian rulers of the city.

No one from the Municipality of “Centar”, which is run by the ruling VMRO DPMNE party, was available on Monday to respond to the IVZ claims. According to the current city construction plans, the lot requested by the IVZ is now reserved for the future residence of the Skopje mayor.

The issue of a mosque in the predominantly Orthodox Christian municipality became a hot subject in early 2008 when the government announced plans to fund the construction of an Orthodox church in the same central square.

A coalition of predominantly ethnic Albanian NGOs was then formed in support of the IVZ's request for permission to build the mosque.

The government, faced with claims that it would be against the secular principles of the state to finance the construction of a religious site, sold the lot intended for the church to the Macedonian Orthodox Church, MPC, for what many say was a pittance.

The MPC has not said when it plans to start construction on the church.

“We remain firm in our stance that the minute the groundwork on the church begins we will start building the mosque, with or without a permit,” the IVZ told Balkan Insight.

Islam is the second largest religion in Macedonia after Orthodox Christianity, which is primarily practiced by the country's ethnic Macedonian community. A quarter of Macedonia’s’ population are ethnic Albanians, and this community is predominantly Muslim.

The country suffered a short-lived conflict in 2001 between ethnic Albanians and state security forces, and the peace agreement that ended the violence aimed to create a multiethnic state and guarantee rights to the ethnic Albanian minority.