Canada opens massive Ahmadiyya mosque

Prime Minister Stephen Harper opened "Baitun nur" (House of Light, in Urdu), the country's largest Muslim mosque built in western Calgary by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community of Pakistan.

The 4,500-square-meter (48,500-square-foot), 15-million dollar structure shows "the true and benevolent face of Islam," Harper said at the inauguration on Saturday.

The building bearing the 99 names of God in Arabic on one of its facades, with a 1,500-capacity prayer hall was also opened by the group's global spiritual leader, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad.

The Ahmadiyya community in Canada has almost 50,000 members.

The sect, which has around 200,000 followers in Indonesia and has been established in the country since the 1920s, believes, Prophet Mohammad (Pbuh) was not the final prophet, contradicting a central tenet of Islam.

The Ahmadiyya group is officially declared non-Muslim in Pakistan and is considered "deviant" by religious authorities in the largest Muslim country Indonesia.

Islam's two major sects, Sunnis and Shiites, both consider Ahmadiyya followers to be non-Muslims.