The mosque holds prayers five times daily, and Friday prayer attendance exceeds 3,000 people.

The Grand Mosque held funeral prayers at dawn on the following Saturday.

"Your ministry brought me back to church," one woman said during Palm Sunday services, her voice trembling, as parishioners held hands and offered prayers.

In this hall the congregation occasionally held prayers until September 1942, when it had to evacuate the front section as well.

And in Greece's fields, farmers and their families held prayers.

The cylinders, Jahan explained, held written prayers which were believed to be wafted up to heaven by the spinning.

It holds regular Muslim prayers, funeral services and other religious ceremonies.

For a sport that promotes its family image and holds prerace prayers, Las Vegas may seem an odd fit.

The ruckus at the mosque every Friday prompted scores of worshipers to defect some months back, and they now hold congregational prayers in a church.

Mosques were restricted from holding communal prayers or classes.