The minaret was erected atop a yellow prefabricated mosque in Canada’s far north.
“This is the first minaret to be erected in the Arctic," Amier Suliman, a mosque committee member, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Thursday, October 28.
The minaret was erected atop a yellow prefabricated mosque in the city of
It has four levels and stands 30 feet (10 meters) off the ground.
"It's really beautiful when we turn on the lights in the dark," said Suliman.
Inuvik, a town about 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, has a population of 4,000 people.
It has a steadily growing Muslim community of nearly 100 people, largely immigrants from Sudan, Lebanon and Egypt.
For long, Inuvik Muslims aspired for a proper worship place to serve their needs, but the skyrocketing prices of labour and materials, which are substantially higher than in southern parts of Canada, have aborted their dream.
Finally, they found a supplier of prefabricated buildings in Manitoba that said it could ship a structure to Inuvik for half the price of building a mosque from scratch on site.
A local Muslim charity -- the Zubaidah Tallab Foundation of Thompson, Manitoba -- also offered to pay the costs for the 140-square meter facility.
By the end of August, the tiny yellow mosque's voyage began on the back of truck, winding through the vast prairies and woods of Western Canada toward Hay River on the shores of Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories.
From there it was transferred onto a barge and floated down the McKenzie River to Inuvik.
Finishing touches -- applying a second coat of paint inside, and hooking up bathroom plumbing -- remain before the mosque's grand opening next week.
Significant
Inuvik Muslims are delighted with the minaret-decorated mosque which will serve their spiritual needs.
"Some will say it's a new frontier for Islam," Suliman said.
"But for me what is significant is that Muslims here who once prayed on Fridays at a local Catholic church or in a trailer now have a proper place to worship, with a proper minaret."
Muslims in the West have been facing hard times building minarets.
Last year, Swiss voters backed a right-wing initiative to ban the building of minarets in the European country.
Several European countries are mulling similar steps, including Sweden and the Netherlands.
"Now we have a home to worship in our own hometown. That's the most important for me," said Suliman.
Muslims make around 1.9 percent of Canada's 32.8 million people and Islam is the number one non-Christian faith in the Roman Catholic country.
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