Framing a Mosque Project as a Sunni–Shia Conflict

What is it about?

In January 2015, the City of Helsinki received a proposal for the construction of ‘a grand mosque’. In December 2017, the Urban Environment committee rejected the proposal. In the interim, the proposed mosque was intensely debated in public. A key point of dispute was whether the mosque would increase tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Finland. One key factor that lead to the mosque project being perceived as a Sunni-Shia conflict was an article published in the main national newspaper, the Helsingin Sanomat, at the end of July 2015. The article suggested that the building of a grand mosque could import anti-Shia extremism into Finland. In defence of this claim, the article presented two key pieces of evidence. First, by quoting several different Muslim leaders, the article demonstrated a disagreement between them regarding the mosque project. Second, the article reported concerns that the police had about increasing tensions between the Sunni and Shia. The article provided little direct evidence linking disagreements around the Helsinki Grand Mosque to Sunni-Shia violence, but it constructed an implicit connection between the two. By interpreting disagreement in the Muslim community in terms of potential anti-Shia extremism, the article made it a national security issue and, therefore, a matter of great public interest.

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