New mosques are popping up across the United States.
Virginia Beach, Va., is now poised for its first mosque. A city planning commission has voted for the “Crescent Community Center” project to go forward in a rural part of the city.
And in neighboring Maryland, the government of Turkey is building a $100 million mega mosque. The Turkish-American Culture and Civilization Center will cover 15 acres in the town of Lanham. Earlier this year, Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the mosque.
Meanwhile, the Clarion Project reports that about 1,200 mosques are now operating in the U.S., and almost 80 percent of them were built within the last 12 years.
The majority of those mosques are led by Wahhabi clerics—from the same branch of Islam that Osama bin Laden followed.
