Mufti rejects claim Tatars were expelled from Kaunas mosque

LRT, citing ELTA, reported that Romas Jakubauskas, mufti of Lithuania’s Sunni Muslim Spiritual Centre, has rejected claims that Lithuanian Tatars were expelled from the Kaunas mosque.

Commenting on parliamentarian Vytautas Sinica’s appeal to prosecutors over the mosque, Jakubauskas said the dispute should not be viewed solely as a conflict between Lithuanian Tatars and the current leadership of the house of worship.

“The mosque was not taken away from Lithuanian Tatars. Anyone can enter it and pray. Nobody expelled the Tatars,” Jakubauskas told ELTA.

He said the issue should be considered separately from both ethnic and legal perspectives. The religious community administering the mosque may include Lithuanian Muslims of different nationalities, while its leadership is elected by its members, he said.

Jakubauskas declined to directly assess Sinica’s proposal to return the mosque to the Lithuanian Tatar community. He said it was first necessary to establish whether the dispute concerned minority rights, ownership or the management of the religious community.

He also disputed claims that Lithuanian Tatars had been barred from entering the Kaunas mosque since 2019. Anyone who considers themselves Muslim and wants to visit the mosque can do so, he said. If someone were refused entry on ethnic grounds, they would have the right to contact the relevant institutions, but Jakubauskas said he had not heard of such cases.

According to the mufti, the change in 2019 concerned the leadership of the religious community rather than Tatars’ access to the mosque. A group of community members voted for a different leadership, which then joined another muftiate, he said. Tatars participate in both communities, he added.

Sinica appealed to the Prosecutor General’s Office on Thursday, asking it to defend the public interest in the dispute over the Kaunas mosque. The parliamentarian claims that the mosque, built with state funds during the interwar period, was given to the Lithuanian Tatar community, but that its control was taken over in 2019 by Muslims who came from various Asian countries.

Sinica says Lithuanian Tatars are not allowed into the mosque. He has asked prosecutors to apply to a court to defend the public interest, take the mosque into state ownership and later transfer it to the Lithuanian Tatar community.