Marina Tabassum was an unconventional choice to design Bangladesh's new Baitur Rouf Mosque, which has just won a prestigious international prize.
French authorities have shut down around 20 mosques and prayer halls considered to be preaching radical Islam since December, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Monday.
France's prime minister said on Friday he would consider a temporary ban on foreign financing of mosques, urging a "new model" for relations with Islam after a spate of jihadist attacks.
Bangladesh on Friday moved to regulate weekly sermons in hundreds of thousands of mosques as part of a stepped-up campaign to combat Islamist extremism, officials said.
Prayers in mosques, reading of the Holy Qur’an in Muslim homes, and fasting from sunrise to sunset marked the first day of the holy month of Ramadan on Monday.
At least two Sunni Muslim mosques have been attacked in Iraq and two people killed in apparent retaliation for the execution of a senior Shi'ite cleric in Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, officials and police said on Monday.
