Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/CAIRO: A record 1,200 new mosques have been opened across Egypt in 2002, according to the government officials.
Ayman Omar, an undersecretary at the Ministry of Awqaf told Arab News that the ministry financed some of the 1,200 new mosques while others were privately built but under government supervision. He said that since September 2020, as many as 2,712 new mosques have been opened in Egypt.
Egypt refurbishes around 404 other mosques
Around 404 other mosques have been refurbished in the same period. The officials said that a total of 9,600 mosques were built or renovated at a cost of 10.2bn Egyptian pounds (400m dollars) since June 2014 when President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi assumed office.
A ministry official Sheikh Rafi Al-Sayed said that at present 2,451 mosques are affiliated with the Awqaf Ministry 1,391 of which are “makeshift.” With the number of mosques increasing, the famous saying that Cairo is ‘the city of a thousand minarets’ seems to be changing as the nation now has more than that.
Apart from overseeing the mosques in the African country, the ministry also carries out charitable work. According to Al-Sayed, the government spent more than EGP330m on community service in 2022 alone. According to a recent statement from the ministry, it spent EGP30m on assisting 1,000 girls from poor families and EGP20m on providing fertile /cattle to small breeders.
