By IINA,
Dubai : A newly built Masjid in a Jordanian city was named Al Maseeh Eisa bin Mariam (Jesus Christ Son of Mary) in a bid to show Muslims and Christians can coexist. This comes amid what many Jordanians and Muslims describe as increasing enmity between Islam in the West. “In this way, we want to emphasize that Jesus is loved by all Muslims,” the Masjid’s imam, Jamal Safarati, was quoted as saying in press reports. “Muslims don’t disagree on that,” he added. Verses from the Quran dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ have been inscribed on the facade of the mosque, which was inaugurated three months ago.
The masjid was built a short distance from a church in the small city of Madaba, 30km southwest of Amman. “Some people were surprised at first by giving a mosque a Christian name,” Gulf News reported quoting a priest who asked not to be named, as saying. “We are used to hearing Muslim names for Islamic places, but we are not used to hear Christians names.” Today, the initial surprise has given way to positive acceptance.
Many Jordanians, both Christians and Muslims, now believe naming the Masjid after Virgin Mary’s son will reflect positively on the city, where Muslims and Christians coexist. The population of the small city is estimated at 60,000. “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” Ebar Madanat Madani, a young Christian mother who lives in Madaba, said. “The city is a tourist attraction, and it is good to show visitors that we, as Muslims and Christians, have been living together in the city for a long time with no problems,” she said.
The city of Madaba is best known for its Byzantine and Umayyad mosaics, especially the Madaba Map, a large Byzantine-era mosaic map of Palestine and the Nile delta. “It is an important initiative to improve dialogue in our town, whose Christian and Muslim population coexist,” Osama Abu Al Walid, one of the city’s residents was quoted as saying. The move comes amid many attempts to bridge the gap of misunderstanding between Westerners and Muslims, and remove the anti-Islam feelings created after the 9/11 attacks in the US. “The West doesn’t represent all the Christians in the world,” commented the Jordanian priest. “We should differentiate between the people and the religion.”