Just before Christian patriarchs met in Damascus, it was reported by the Syrian Arab News Agency that Tartous, Syria, is now host to the Middle East’s first mosque named after the Virgin Mary.
The Daily Star noted that the mosque’s formal name is al-Sayyida Maryam.
Mohammad Abdul-Sattar al-Sayyed, Syria’s awqaf minister, has stressed before – specifically, during a Muslim-Christian interreligious event in that same city – the need for cooperation and tolerance.
The Qur’an favors both Mary’s virginity (3:47, 19:20) and her Immaculate Conception (3:36, 3:42), as American Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen observed.