Hurghada's Islamic Cultural Centre Has Sat Closed for Years, and Residents Want It Reopened

The Islamic Cultural Centre on Abdel Moneim Riyad Square, in the middle of Hurghada, has been closed for years, and residents are pressing for it to be restored and reopened, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The centre was built about four decades ago and was for years one of the city's addresses for religious and cultural life. It was not only an Awqaf Ministry building: its library, holding books and reference works on religious, intellectual and cultural subjects, drew students, researchers and readers. Since the doors closed, that role has gone with it.

The appeals are directed at Dr Osama El-Azhary, the Minister of Awqaf, to look at the building's condition on the ground and put it back into the ministry's development and restoration plans. The report notes a precedent: in 2016 the then-minister, Dr Mokhtar Gomaa, ordered the centre to be rehabilitated quickly and its library restocked with Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs publications.

Residents have put forward a fuller idea of what a reopened centre could be:

• the existing books and references preserved, repaired and added to with recent titles
• a digital section giving researchers and students electronic access
• rooms for study and research, and activities for children and young people
• seminars run with religious, educational and cultural institutions in the governorate
• programmes introducing Islamic culture in several languages, for a city that receives visitors from around the world

Bashar Abu Talib, head of the tourist guides syndicate, said reopening matters all the more because of what Hurghada is: a tourist city taking in large numbers of visitors from many countries. Such a city needs more than tourism facilities, he said — it needs its religious and cultural landmarks kept up, as part of the picture of Egypt that visitors take away.

The report does not say when the centre closed, what condition the building and its collection are now in, or whether the ministry has responded to the appeals.