LE MONDE (France)
Baddre-Eddine Bentaïb, a French Muslim from the city of Orléans, has set up a website mapping and providing information on mosques throughout France. Now, he is embarking on a “Ramadan road trip” that will take him around the country.
When travelling around France for his work, Bentaïb discovered there was no easy way of finding a place of worship, he tells Le Monde, and so his idea, trouvetamosquee.fr (Find Your Mosque), was born.
Inspired by two Americans who visited a different mosque each day in New York for the thirty days of Ramadan, Bentaïb will travel from mosque to mosque providing videos and commentaries on his visits.
Other than providing essential information on mosques, Bentaïb seeks to “de-stigmatize” Islam in France: “I noticed that places of worship generally don’t communicate via the Internet and because of this, when I would type in the word “mosque” the majority of sites would be Islamophobic,” says Bentaïb.
He says he has received a positive response from imams and hopes the website will be a useful resource in helping them to communicate with one another.