”We shall make every effort to strengthen our relations with our brothers in Muslim and Arab countries, and we shall do our best for the Muslim community”. This statement was made by the former Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz – May Allah bless him – reflecting the depth of Saudi Arabia’s dedication to Islam and to the service of Muslims worldwide.
Saudi Arabia’s commitment to serve the Muslim community takes many forms. The Kingdom has provided tens of billions of Dollars in aid throughout the world. To allow Muslims to perform Hajj in safety and comfort, it has built a vast net work of airports, seaports, roads and other facilities, and it has spent huge sums on the expansion work of the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah. It is active in ventures to promote the interests of Muslims everywhere. Saudi Arabia has also undertaken multiple programs. One of those is the effort to serve Muslim minority communities in non-Muslim countries. Tens of millions of Muslims have settled outside the historic Islamic world. Their communities have prospered and grown and have been supplemented by the conversion to Islam of a large number of people. As the birthplace of Islam and its heartland, Saudi Arabia feels a special responsibility not only to the Islamic world, but also to Muslims living outside of it. To fulfill that responsibility, Saudi Arabia has over the past few decades undertaken endeavors to meet the spiritual needs of this vast and growing community of believers and to strengthen its ties with the Islamic world.
To realize this objective, the Kingdom has approached it from several angles. The primary channel is to establish Mosques and Islamic centers in areas of large Muslim communities. This effort was accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s resulting in 210 Islamic centers throughout the world with funds from Saudi Arabia.
These centers are complexes designed to meet not only the spiritual requirements, but also the cultural and social needs of Muslim communities. Generally, they include a big Mosque, classrooms for students, a library, and auditoriums and halls for conferences, exhibitions and cultural seminars.
Once established, these centers attract Muslims from miles around who gather to pray, especially on Friday. The centers also perform important educational, social and cultural functions. They provide courses in Islamic studies; extremely popular offerings for Muslim families who want their children to receive proper religious training. Additionally these complexes are important gathering places where Muslims of different backgrounds get together for exhibitions and cultural events, thus bridging cultural differences for Muslims of varying origins.
These centers range in size from vast complexes capable of accommodating thousands of visitors to those designed for small groups of Muslims. The most significant ones are located in Washington, DC, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Madrid, London, Rome, Paris, Bonn, Brussels, Geneva, Tokyo, Toronto, Vienna, Lisbon, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.
The two newest of these complexes were opened in suburban Los Angeles and Edinburgh, Scotland; both gifts were from the Late King Fahad to the Muslim communities in these two cities. The focal point of each of the new facilities is a large Mosque built according to traditional Islamic architectural designs. Standing out as attractive landmarks these Mosques are designed in a way to ensure that they are in harmony with their neighborhoods. Both of these complexes have large Islamic centers equipped with all necessary modern facilities.
In areas where the Muslim community is not large, yet still in need of a spiritual center, smaller mosques have been built by the Saudi Arabian funds. Such Mosques have been established at 1500 locations in Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia and North and South America.
In addition to directly funding the establishment of Islamic centers and mosques throughout the world, Saudi Arabia has either formed or supports the activities of a large number of specialized organizations dedicated to serving Muslims inside and outside the Islamic world. These include the Organization of the Islamic conference (OIC), the Muslim world League, the King Faisal Foundation, The World Assembly of Muslim Youth and other entities dedicated to serving Muslims throughout the world. The Kingdom has also formed special organization, such as the International Islamic Relief Organization and the Higher Committee for Collection of Donations for Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as numerous social and cultural institutions.
These bodies are active throughout the world to support in religious, political and social causes that impact the Muslim community. They collect funds to alleviate the sufferings of disaster victims worldwide, both Muslims and non-Muslims and to rehabilitate societies hurt by manmade and natural calamites.
These organizations are dedicated to serving the needy people throughout the world, regardless of their religion. They provide funding and technical assistance to build dams and irrigation networks, dig wells and setup farming communities in regions devastated by famine. They setup health clinics and conduct campaigns to vaccinate children and conduct a range of other humanitarian services.
Saudi Arabia’s and the Islamic organizations’ supports were galvanized into action. Most mosques had been closed and there was a dire need for copies of the Holy Qur’an in the independent republics. Moving quickly, the Kingdom established large Islamic centers in the capitals of all six independent republics and mosques in their smaller cities. At the same time it began airlifting to the republics millions of copies of the Holy Qur’an printed in local languages at the King Fahd Holy Qur’an Printing Complex in Madinah Al-Mounawarah for free distribution at mosques and Islamic centers. The printing complex has been a particularly useful tool in Saudi Arabia’s effort to serve Muslim communities. Established in 1985, it has printed more than 100 million copies of the Holy Qur’an as well as recorded millions of audio cassettes of the Holy book in eight major languages. These are distributed free of charge to pilgrims at the Holy Mosque in Makkah Al-Mukarramah as well as in mosques throughout the world.
Another aspect of Saudi Arabia’s national effort to serve Muslim minorities involves education for all Muslims. As Muslim communities outside the Islamic world have continued to grow, a real need has emerged for Islamic and Arabic educational facilities for children. In most cases, Islamic centers and mosques in the community adequately fulfill this need. Some two decades ago, Saudi Arabia began establishing Islamic academies in North America and Europe. These full-fledged schools, offering a complete curriculum in Arabic and the local language with emphasis on Islamic studies, are located near Washington DC, and in London. Bonn and Moscow. Studies have already been initiated to establish others, including in southern California and Scotland.
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia is involved in a major effort to provide scholarships for outstanding students from Muslim minority communities to study at Saudi universities.
