Jakarta-wapresri.go.id. Vice President Jusuf Kalla received a Spanish Muslim Community Delegation led by the Chairman of the Islamic Community of Spain, Mr. Malik Abderrahman Ruiz on Tuesday (May, 10) at his office in Jakarta, the day before they attended the International Summit of the Moderate Islamic Leaders (ISOMIL) that is held on May 9 to 11 , 2016 at the Jakarta Convention Center in Jakarta.

Mr. Ruiz also proposed to Indonesia, through the Vice President, to assist the establishment of Sevilla Grand Mosque that is set to be built in 2017, after he had previously also submitted similar proposal to some other Islamic countries, such as Malaysia, Morocco, and Turkey.

Mr. Ruiz said that as a minority in Spain, it is not easy for them to get funding in Spain, both from the authorities and from the local Muslim community.

“Yet in fact, there are about 25 to 30 thousand Muslims in Sevilla, but there is no any single mosque is existing there. We only have garages which are transformed into small mosques,” he said.

Sevilla Grand Mosque that is expected to spend about 17 million Euros, according to Mr. Ruiz, will later serve as a center of social and cultural activities for Sevilla Muslim community and surrounding.

“More importantly, this project is not only a construction of a mosque for the Islamic community in Sevilla, but also an Islamic cultural center which functions as a place to exchange information for the Muslim community and non-Muslims in the vicinity,” said Mr. Mr. Luis Ibrahim Hernandez Martinez, Vice Chairman of Sevilla Grand Mosque Foundation, who was also present at the meeting.

The Vice President welcomed the idea and appreciated the hard work of the Muslim Community of Spain to realize their dream of having a house of worship.

In addition, the Vice President also underscored the importance of establishing good relationship among people, not only within the community, but also in the European region.

“Through that relationship, we should be able to explain to the world that Islam is not a radical or terrorist religion,” he said.

At the end of the meeting, the Vice President promised to study the proposal and to make every effort to take part in the development of the mosque.