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.
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Rumour Mosque
The appearance of an expensive mosque in impoverished and predominantly Catholic Nicaragua has got the rumour mill turning.
Monthly Issue
April 2026
In this monthly issue, we examine how our understanding of energy — and how we source and use it — is evolving.
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