After more than a 90-year wait, Muslims in the Republic of Montenegro will have the first secondary school to accommodate students aspiring for Islamic education, reported TimeTurk.
"We are finally done with the school construction and will enroll students for the 2008/09 school year," Omer Halil Kajshaj, head of the foreign relations department at the Islamic Sheikdom of Montenegro, told IslamOnline.net.
The four-storey school, which will have a 16-room dorm, will open its doors on August 20 in the capital Podgorica.
It will have facilities such as a library, a computer lab, a gym and a theatre.
"Students from municipalities across the republic can enroll," said Kajshaj, adding that only male students will be accepted this year.
"The school will enroll girls starting from the next year."
The foundation stone for the school was laid in 2000, but the dearth of donations from charities and Arab courtiers, especially after the 9/11 attacks, put a brake on the construction.
The building of the 300-square-meter school has cost €2 million, some €1.5 million of which donated by a Turkish governmental institution.
The Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank and a number of charities in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates donated the remaining € 500,000.
Montenegro's 140,000 Muslims make up 20 percent of the total 650,000 population.
There are 26 mosques in Ulcinj, southernmost city at Montenegrin coast.
The school comes to meet the needs of the Muslim minority in Montenegro, where no Islamic school has been established in the past 90 years.
"During the Turkish rule of Montenegro, there were few Islamic schools, but they gradually died out in subsequent decades," notes Kajshaj.
"The last Islamic school in the republic was closed down in the northern municipality of Pljevlja in 1918."
In the post World War II period, students aspiring for Islamic education had to enroll in Islamic schools in neighboring Kosovo, Bosnia or Macedonia.
Kajshaj says that two classes, each catering for 20 students, were initially scheduled to open for students of the first year.
"But with the growing demand for enrollment, a third class will open this year."
Two classes will be dedicated for Bosniaks students, who speak Bosnian language and who constitute the majority of applicants, while the third will be for ethnic Albanians.
Muslims played a pivotal role in the independence of Montenegro, voting in favor of a separation from Serbia in the 2006 referendum.
Since independence, the government has kept a cordial relations with them.
"The authorities allow us into jails to lead Muslim prisoners in Eid prayer," said Enis Burxheviq, the imam of the Islamic society in the northern town of Bijelo Polje.
"I lead 60 prisoners into prayer."
He also cites a recent law allowing Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims to retrieve endowments confiscated during the Yugoslav rule if they provide the needed documentation.
"We will do this."