FRANKFURT – Muslim passengers and employees at Frankfort Airport will now be able to pray on time with the administration of the busiest German airport opening a new prayer room in Terminal 2, ETurbo News reported.
The new prayer room is open daily from 5 am to 11 pm. Moreover, Friday prayers are held weekly at the time stated in the Muslim prayer calendar according to the geographical coordinates of Frankfurt.
The multi-functional space, which opened on February 1, has a foyer with a storage facility for shoes and coats, as Muslims pray barefooted. The prayer room itself is at the rear and constitutes a quiet area for the Muslim prayer.
A curtain divides the space in two so that men and women can pray separately. In the entrance area, separate washrooms for men and women are available for ritual Wudu’ washing as well.
Muslims pray five times a day, with each prayer made of a series of postures and movements, each set of which is called a rak‘ah.
The five prayer times are divided all through the day which starts with Fajr prayer at dawn.
Fraport, the operator of Frankfurt Airport (FRA), has created several places of worship and retreat for Christians, Jews, and Muslims across FRA’s two terminals.
A total of ten chapels and prayer rooms provide space for religious diversity, dialog, and peaceful coexistence among the world’s religions at the FRA global aviation hub.
21 Muslim Nations Represented
Frankfurt is a central German metropolis and the largest city of the German federal state of Hesse. The city’s population of 746,878 according to 2017 estimates, making it the 5th largest city in Germany after Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne.
Being at the center of the larger Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region, which has a population of 5.5 million, Frankfurt is part of Germany’s 2nd largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr Region.
The city is culturally and ethnically diverse, with around half of the population, and a majority of young people, having a migration background. A quarter of the population is foreign nationals, including many expatriates.
Although Frankfurt was historically a Protestant-dominated city, the 19th century saw an increasing number of Catholics moved there. The Jewish community has a history dating back to Medieval times and has always ranked among the largest in Germany.
Due to the growing immigration of people from Muslim countries beginning in the 1960s, Frankfurt has a large Muslim community that makes about 12.6% of its total population according to 2011 estimates.
According to calculations based on census data, Frankfurt Muslims come from about 21 Muslim countries, where a large part of them originate from Turkey and Morocco. The city’s largest mosque is Noor Mosque which was constructed in 1959 and it’s the 3rd largest in Germany.