Prophet Muhammad and his father Abdullah would be honoured in the proposed mosque that will be built in place of the Babri Masjid, according to a group representing the All India Rabta-e-Masajid (network of mosques) and Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation, four years after the Supreme Court's ruling in the Ayodhya dispute.
Set to be the biggest mosque in the country with a capacity to accommodate 9,000 worshippers, Masjid Muhammad Bin Abdullah’s foundation will be laid soon. The first brick for the mosque, to come up on a five-acre site at Daanipur, 25 km from Ayodhya, was gifted at an event in Mumbai.
In its verdict on the decades-long dispute, the SC on November 9, 2019 awarded the disputed 2.77-acre land to the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust and asked the government to give an alternative 5 acres of land for building a mosque.
Senior clerics from various Islamic sects received the first brick during an event where the design was unveiled. The event at Rangsharda Hall in Bandra was attended by the chairman of the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board and the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation, Zufar Ahmed Faruqui, the architect Imran Shaikh, the actors Raza Murad and Shahzad Khan, the former chairman of the Maharashtra minority commission and Haji Arafat, as well as the heads and khadims of numerous dargahs across the nation.
The event, said Shaikh, was the culmination of months of discussions among top ulema (religious leaders) regarding the name of the mosque. The mosque’s five gates will be named after Prophet Muhammad and the four Caliphs who succeeded him, namely Hazrat Abu Bakar, Hazrat Umar, Hazrat Usman and Hazrat Ali.