Newsletter No. 1163
News-Analysis
October 11, 2008

 

THE NIKKEI ESTIMATES THE NUMBER OF MOSQUES IN JAPAN TO BE OVER FIFTY

The fact that this recent Nihon Keizai Shinbun article appears in today’s Shingetsu Newsletter is something that you might regard as being “overdetermined.” My new intern clipped the article for me a few days ago, and I was going to ask her to translate it this morning. In the meantime, the Nikkei released their own English translation of the article and two separate Shingetsu Members forwarded it to me last night and this morning. I had something like a triple back-up system on this one! I do appreciate those who bring useful materials to our attention.

In the original Japanese version of the article, it seems as if this article is the first of a series that will be run on “Nearby Islam.” Perhaps the second installment will appear in the next Monday Evening edition, but I’m not sure. If it is indeed a series, we will present all of it here as it becomes available to us in English.

The main thing that caught my eye in this article was that, as for mosques in Japan, “there are now more than fifty nationwide.” My previous impression had been that there were about thirty mosques in Japan, so it seems that more are springing up than have been documented by scholars as of yet.

Japan Sees Growing Number of Mosques and Muslims
Nihon Keizai Shinbun
October 6, 2008

From across a rice paddy in Gifu Prefecture drifts the sonorous melody of the Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. Rounding the bend, the visitor is greeted by a white mosque domed in sky blue. Inside, Muslim faithful from countries such as Malaysia and Bangladesh are going about their Friday prayers.

Gifu Mosque, which opened in the city of Gifu on July 27, is regularly packed with one hundred worshippers, who press their foreheads to the navy-blue carpet stretched between the main room's pure-white walls. "When I pray here, I feel very relaxed, and forget my worries," said Mohammad Afzal Cheema, a 39-year-old Pakistani who runs a used-vehicle business.

One of the mosque's founders is Qureshi Abdul Wahab, a fifty-one-year-old man from Pakistan who also runs a used-vehicle business, in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture. "We had gathered in a house, but decided to build this new mosque because the old location was becoming too crowded," Abdul Wahab said. Construction of the Gifu Mosque cost about 140 million yen, raised through donations in Japan and abroad.

The number of mosques in Japan has been on the rise since around 2000, and there are now more than fifty nationwide. Last November, one was built in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. Another is currently under construction in Fukuoka Prefecture. Keiko Sakurai, professor of Islamic regional studies at Waseda University, said that the increase in mosques is a function of the growing number of Muslims settling down in Japan, whom Sakurai estimates to now number about 56,000 legal residents, more than quadruple the 13,000 here in 1990. Sakurai says that many of these Muslims run restaurants and used-vehicle businesses, and that Pakistanis in particular have tapped their international networks to succeed at used-car trading.

Given the increase in the Muslim population, some Japanese companies are deciding to accommodate daily prayers. USS Co., a major used-vehicle seller, began building prayer rooms inside its auction houses four years ago. "We created them because we had more and more customers from Islamic countries," said Vice President Dai Seta. Now most of the firm's eighteen auction sites, including the one in Yokohama, have prayer rooms.

Customers seemed to be pleased. One from Iran said he used to pray in nearby parking lots, but that now he and others have gravitated to the auction house and its prayer room.