Tallinn officials on January 8 announced they were beginning discussions about constructing a large mosque in the capital, saying it will be Estonia's first and the largest in northern Europe.

The country's tiny Azerbaijani community is taking the lead in raising the estimated 3-6 million dollars needed to build the mosque, usually the focus of religious life for followers of Islam. Estonia has just a few thousand Muslims—mostly people who immigrated here from Soviet republics in Central Asia and Azerbaijan, during Moscow rule. Most of Estonia's 1.4 million population are Lutheran or Orthodox, though all forms of religious practice were officially outlawed during 50 years of Soviet occupation. Tallinn Mayor Jüri Mõis argued that the new mosque would add to the diversity of the capital, now dominated by several new skyscrapers and hundreds of German merchant houses built in the Middle Ages.He added that the project would pump large amounts of money into the local economy. Officials said the development was still in the early planning stages, and they didn't say when final approval for the project would be given or how soon construction could begin. The current draft plans for the Tallinn mosque were modeled after a mosque in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, in the southern Caucasus. The mosque would serve the Islamic community in the 10 countries around the Baltic Sea, and it would welcome adherents of both major branches of Islam—Shiites and Sunni.