Former Church on Swedish Island Becomes Mosque - Funding Source Unclear

VISBY - A former Baptist church in Visby, the main town on the Swedish island of Gotland, is set to become a mosque. The local Muslim congregation won the bidding for the building, but it still has not raised the money to pay for it, and nobody will say where the funds are coming from.

The imam behind the project arrived in Sweden from Syria around 2014. Samnytt's review shows he later worked with Ibn Rushd, a Muslim study association that researchers have described as controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

From Church Hall to Friday Prayers

The building, known locally as Vita Huset (the White House), has been owned for two decades by a branch of the temperance organisation IOGT-NTO. It bought the roughly 700-square-metre property in 2006, when it was still in use as a Baptist church, and has since rented it out to other groups.

One of those tenants was the Gotland Muslim Congregation, which has held Friday prayers there every week for at least three or four years. Now it is buying the house outright and plans to turn it into a mosque. It is due to take over at the turn of the year, with the full price paid by April 2027.

Hedvig Strömbom of IOGT-NTO told Samnytt that three parties bid for the property. The asking price was 4.5 million kronor, and the bidding ended at 5.6 million, with the final sum set to be slightly higher still.

"We knew who we were selling to," she said. "People can think what they want about it becoming a mosque. As expected, people have opinions about it."

Down Payment Made, Millions Still Missing

The congregation has paid a deposit but has not raised the rest. A fundraising campaign is running on social media, and the imam has said the group could lose the property if it fails to come up with the money. Asked whether that means the sale might fall through, Strömbom answered simply: "Yes."

Asked whether IOGT-NTO knew about the imam's past links to Ibn Rushd, she said they had not looked into such details, and that it would not have changed the decision. The alternative, she said, was a Stockholm company that wanted to rent a house in Visby for unclear reasons.

The Imam and the Muslim Brotherhood Question

Imam Majed Omar told Swedish Radio in 2016 that he had arrived from Syria less than two years earlier. In autumn 2015 he co-founded the Islamic Association in Härnösand in northern Sweden and became imam of its mosque, where Friday attendance grew from around 50 to as many as 300.

Ibn Rushd's annual report for 2017 lists that mosque as one of the study association's partner organisations, with Omar presented as a study-circle leader teaching subjects including Arabic and Koran reading.

The same year, a report funded by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and co-written by terrorism researcher Magnus Norell claimed that several Swedish Muslim organisations were founded by and largely controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, describing Ibn Rushd's leadership as "completely controlled" by the movement. The Brotherhood or its national branches are designated as terrorist organisations in countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

Ibn Rushd was wound up as a study association in 2025. Nothing in the material Samnytt has reviewed shows any organisational link between today's Gotland congregation and Ibn Rushd.

Wanted Koran Burnings Banned

Omar has also spoken publicly about the Koran burnings that shook Sweden. He told Swedish Radio that seeing the holy book burned felt like "being stabbed in the heart", and argued that the law should make it possible to refuse permits for such protests.

He has also criticised a Gotland school that asked parents not to encourage children to fast during Ramadan, calling it "strange that a school in a modern and democratic society tells people not to practise their religion".

Samnytt has tried to reach Omar to ask how much of the price has been raised, where the deposit and donations come from, whether the congregation has received money from donors outside Gotland or Sweden, and who sits on its board. He could not be reached by phone, and no public email address could be found.