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Why many Hong Kong Muslims have to worship in makeshift mosques

Stopgap places of worship have sprouted across Hong Kong to cater to a growing Islamic population whose needs are being all but ignored by officialdom

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The Kowloon Mosque and Islamic Centre.

It’s lunchtime on a Friday and dozens of Muslim men are kneeling in prayer inside an austere unit on the ground floor of the dilapidated Kai Tak Mansion in Kowloon Bay. Next door to shuttered shops in the back alley, what was once a car repair workshop is now a makeshift mosque for more than 70 Muslim households living in the building, which will be torn down in November.

Yiu Kam-wing, the building’s manager, says residents of South Asian descent started moving into the 60-year-old building two decades ago.

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“As the building will soon be demolished, all the leases are short term. So a 500 sq ft flat costs just HK$4,000 a month. Muslim worshippers have been using the former garage as a mosque for many years,” he says.

The prayer room in Kai Tak Mansion is one of many stopgap religious facilities that have sprouted across Hong Kong to cater to a growing Muslim population faced with apparent official apathy to the community’s needs.

According to government statistics, there were 100,000 Muslim residents in 2006, a number which has risen to 300,000 today. Half of these are Indonesians, who account for much of the growth in the Muslim population; more domestic helpers from the country have come to the city in the past decade. Ethnic Chinese Muslims account for 40,000 and there are 20,000 Pakistanis. The remainder are smaller populations from various other countries.

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Although there is estimated to be one church for every 700 Christians in Hong Kong, the Muslim community must make do with just six official mosques – four on Hong Kong Island and two in Kowloon.

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