JAPAN TODAY



 

Two Japanese companies in the field of health and well-being are teaming up to provide mobile mosques that can be used in disaster zones and other temporary locations to serve Muslim communities around the world.

Yasu Project and Relive will create a fund to produce the mobile mosques and distribute them to places in need.

 

The mobile mosque is based on a large, 10-wheel Hino truck and when parked, it can expand on both sides at the push of a button to create a prayer space of 48 square meters in about five minutes. It has its own generator and four air conditioners as well as washing facilities.

Yasu Project CEO Yasuharu Inoue, who has traveled extensively in the Middle East, said he was encouraged to develop the project by the emir of Qatar. Inoue produced the first mobile mosque at a cost of 85 million yen in cooperation with the Doha Bank and Chamber of Commerce.

 

The project gained worldwide media attention and picked up its first customer: Saudi oil company Aramco. Other Japanese companies have expressed interest in the project, as well countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Relive CEO Takashi Sasaki agreed to join the project and help with funding.

“I met Mr Sasaki and he tried to make my idea a reality by suggesting we establish some kind of organization as a fund and to contribute mobile mosques to underprivileged countries and bringing some peace to war-ravaged places,” Inoue explained.

The fund’s general manager, Shirato Taro, a former member of the Tokyo Assembly, said there was concern, especially after the recent Diet elections, that some politicians were seeking to divide communities rather than bring them together.

 

“We have to coexist and live in harmony,” he said, “And the mobile mosque is part of this idea. We want to make a bridge between Japan and the Islamic world and change the world from its direction of exclusivism.”

He added that U.S. President Donald Trump had confused the world about what peace really means.

Inoue says some of the target areas include places such as Yemen, Iraq, Gaza and Africa, as well as areas that are prone to natural disasters such as Indonesia and Iran.