On one street in Paramaribo, a mosque stands next to a synagogue. The Surinamese Islamic Association built its present mosque between 1973 and 1984.
This is the Mosque Keizerstraat, in the capital of Suriname, on the north coast of South America.
The Surinamese Islamic Association was founded in 1929. Its first mosque on this street was a rectangular wooden building with minarets, finished in 1932. In 1979, the boxer Muhammad Ali visited it.
Work on today’s mosque ran from 1973 to 1984. It has a dark dome and slender white minarets, and it is still an active mosque today.
Next door is the Neveh Shalom Synagogue, and writers often describe relations between the two communities as friendly. Suriname became independent from the Netherlands in 1975, two years after work on this mosque began.
Many travel writers call this the largest mosque in the Caribbean, but we found no source that confirms it.
