About ten couples have a Muslim wedding in the Czech Republic every year, Vladimir Sanka, director of the Islamic Centre in Prague, has told CTK, adding that most of the couples are foreigners but there are also Czechs who have adopted the Islamic faith.
For a Muslim marriage to be legal, the couple must have a civilian wedding first, Sanka said.
Muslims were registered as a religious group in the Czech Republic only in 2004, but the state has not yet granted special rights to them, that Christians and Jews, for example, enjoy.
The special rights include the right to establish schools, assist in prisons, military and hospitals, and conclude legal marriages.
Religious groups can apply for granting the special rights ten years after their official registration. They have to submit 10,000 signatures of adult supporters of the group who have permanent residence in the Czech Republic.
“The gaining of 10,000 signatures is unfeasible for us. We can hardly achieve this in the next decades either,” Sanka told CTK.
If Muslims managed to meet the conditions, they would use the chance of concluding legal religious marriages, establishing schools and offer lessons of Islam at schools that would be interested in it, Sanka said.
At present, two Muslim spiritual leaders, imams, operate in the Czech Republic. One comes from Yemen and speaks Arabic. The other comes from Bosnia and speaks both Arabic and Czech. Unlike Christian priests, the imams are not paid from the state budget. They are paid by the Muslim community.
Along with the registration in 2004, Czech Muslims gained the right to apply for “halal” slaughter of animals in accordance with their faith. The Muslims ask the Agriculture Ministry for an exception for a concrete slaughter house. The ministry usually complies with the request, Sanka said.
The slaughter is then made by a Muslim community member who is acquainted with the rite.
Sanka said that some 12,000 Muslims live in the 10-million Czech Republic, but only one-third of them regularly visit the country’s two mosques, situated in Prague and Brno, and smaller houses of prayer.
A large part of local Muslims come from the Arab countries, but some also from the Balkans, the Caucasus (Chechnya, Dagestan) and Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan).
About 500 to 600 of local Muslims are of Czech origin.
Four Muslim communities operate in the Czech Republic, seated in Prague, Brno, Teplice, north Bohemia, and Hradec Kralove, east Bohemia.
Muslims have special burial places in the Czech Republic. Prague’s Olsanske cemetery and the cemetery in Trebic, south Moravia, offer graves turned towards Mecca. The Brno cemetery offered them as well, but the capacity has already been exhausted.