Impoverished Yemenis are outraged by this luxury mosque – the ingrates!

President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his expensive pet project, the Saleh Mosque

POVERTY-stricken Yemen is plagued by internal armed conflict, terrorism and severe malnutrition.

It desperately needs hospitals and schools and a vastly improved infrastructure – but what does it get instead? A bloody great mosque named after Yemen’s authoritarian President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Yemenis, according to this report, are bewildered – especially when they learned that this useless lump of a structure cost a staggering $60 million. It’s a massive sum in a country that ranks as the poorest in the Arab world.

Said Salem Ahmed, a government employee:

We need schools and hospitals. Many Yemenis have to travel abroad for medical treatment. This is hypocrisy.

Mohammed Haider, a Yemeni economic expert added:

There is no strategic plan for the development of Yemen’s economy. We are too dependent on oil exports – even though the government tells us production could decrease by 50 percent next year.

Haider says the mosque represents the haphazard management of the country’s resources with little thought going into how to use Yemen’s farmland or fisheries.

His views were echoed by Rushdi Mohammed, a student:

Yemen doesn’t need this luxurious mosque. We need industrial projects to rescue the country from poverty, unemployment and diseases.

Nonetheless, senior Islamic clerics dutifully turned out for the weekend opening ceremony of the Saleh Mosque to play their part in glorifying the country’s leader.

The gargantuan monument to superstition is surrounded by sprawling gardens and has space for 40,000 faithful. It’s the only one in all of Yemen where worshippers are searched by police and bomb-sniffing dogs.  Earlier this year at least 15 people were killed and 55 hurt in a bombing at a mosque in north Yemen.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said that in 2003 37 percent of the population was undernourished. Another UN agency estimates that 46 percent of the population lives under the poverty line.

Much of what the country does earn – largely through oil sales – is believed to go toward arms and security.

The mosque’s design follows a unique Yemeni style of architecture, with wooden roofs and 15 wooden doors, each 75 feet high and carved with copper patterns. Inside, a large crystal chandelier lights up the main prayer area. The mosque has three floors, with libraries and 25 classrooms.