Rumour Mosque

The appearance of an expensive mosque in a residential area of impoverished Nicaragua has got the rumour mill turning – especially as there are just 300 or so Muslims in the entire region. People are asking who paid for it and the conclusion they are jumping to is Iran. “[Iran’s] president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Muslim, and Nicaragua’s leftist leader, Daniel Ortega, a Catholic, say they share a revolutionary kinship. As part of a grandiose effort to show that Iran is a global superpower, Mr. Ahmadinejad and his government promised in 2007 and 2008 to invest up to $1 billion in this impoverished country of 5.7 million, including a new city and deep-water port in a remote jungle on the Atlantic Coast,” writes the Wall Street Journal.