A public storm has erupted in the capital of the Silesia region, Katowice, in southern Poland, over the construction of a new Muslim prayer hall because local residents believe that they have been misled that it would be a small facility for around 45 people whereas a building covering more than 400 square metres is actually being built.
Residents are collecting signatures on a petition calling for the project to be stopped while the city authorities in Katowice have claimed that there was no legal requirement to hold public consultations before going ahead with the construction.
Several hundred locals protested in the Zawodzie district of Katowice on August 11, voicing their concerns about the project and the influx of Muslims in general. The demonstration was supported by the regional structures of the right-wing Confederation Liberty and Independence (Konfederacja) and the National Movement.
“If we don’t act in time, we’ll wake up when it’s too late. Islamisation in Poland will continue, just as it has in Berlin and in other Western European countries. I travel a lot; I was recently in Turkey, and I know how Muslims treat women and children. And now a mosque is being built here in Katowice, supposedly for 45 people, but the facility is very large and could accommodate many more,” Małgorzata Dąbrowska, a Katowice resident who strongly opposes the project in Zawodzie, told Niezależna.pl.
Opposition is being voiced not only in Katowice itself but also in neighbouring cities, where residents fear the loss of their Silesian region’s cultural and religious identity.
Those participating in the Katowice protest argued that Poland is a Catholic country and if Muslims wish to build mosques they should do so in their own countries. They were fearful that projects such as these could lead the way to Poland repeating the mistakes made with regards to Muslim migration in western Europe.
Michał Olszewski, a Katowice activist with the National Movement, argues that every prayer hall is in effect a mosque and claims that the project is being sponsored by the State of Qatar.
The Doha Centre for Culture and Dialogue is already operational in Katowice, organising, among other things, Arabic-language classes and cooking workshops. The newly constructed facility is connected to the tenement building that houses the centre, which has been at the site for close to 20 years.
Katowice authorities issued a building permit on January 12, 2026, and construction work began recently.
According to the Katowice local authority the investor is the Muslim Association for Cultural Education, based in Lublin, and there is no financial involvement by the municipality of Katowice.
“The City of Katowice is not participating in this project in any way. Questions concerning the cost of the investment should be directed to the investor,” said the authority’s statement.
The greatest controversy though concerns the scale of the facility. According to the Silesian news website Tarnowskie Góry the new building is to cover more than 400 square metres. City Hall, meanwhile, provides very different figures.
“According to the architectural and construction design, the building is intended to accommodate a maximum of 45 people at any one time. This limit applies to the entire investment project, including both the extension and the reconstruction of part of the existing building,” states the municipality.
The issue has also drawn the attention of Silesian MP Grzegorz Płaczek from the right-wing Confederation, who submitted a request to the Katowice authorities asking 41 questions with regard to the project.
The MP drew particular attention to the fact that the local community had not been informed in advance about the planned prayer hall. He has also called on the city mayor, Marcin Krupa, to hold a local referendum on how such projects should be consulted on.
But according to the city it did not have to consult on a project of this kind.
“The regulations governing proceedings concerning planning conditions and the granting of building permits do not provide for public consultations in cases of this kind. The parties to the administrative proceedings were, however, notified that the proceedings had been initiated and were allowed to actively participate in them,” the authority claimed.
The authority’s statement added that “no formal complaint concerning the development at 130 1 Maja Street has been submitted. Katowice City Hall has, however, received requests for access to public information, inquiries and correspondence, which have been forwarded to the relevant departments. Replies have been provided, or the matters are currently being processed in accordance with the applicable regulations.”
The investor denies that a larger place of worship is planned. “We are not building a mosque in Katowice,” Jabbar Koubaisy, the imam who heads the Doha Centre, told TVN24.
Asked about the size of the Muslim community in Katowice and the wider Silesian metropolitan area, City Hall acknowledged that it does not keep records of places of worship according to denomination, nor does it collect statistics on residents’ religious affiliation. It merely pointed out that two Muslim associations have been active in Katowice for years: the Islamic Culture Centre and the aforementioned Doha Centre for Dialogue and Culture.
Polish politicians have repeatedly reassured the public that there were no plans for mass migration from the Middle East and Africa, as Poland was, they insisted, able to draw on more culturally similar migrants from Ukraine, Belarus and the Caucasian countries.
Poland issued almost 145,000 work permits to foreign nationals in the first half of 2025, according to labour ministry figures, with citizens of Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Turkmenistan among the main recipients. Poland’s Muslim community is expanding as labour migrants arrive in growing numbers, though Muslims still represent just 0.1 to 0.2 per cent of the country’s population.
According to Agata Nalborczyk, a professor at Warsaw University’s Faculty of Asian and African Cultures, there are between 40,000 and 76,000 Muslims living in Poland. They are visible because they work in customer-facing roles such as taxi drivers or food delivery couriers.
Nalborczyk says the new arrivals cannot be treated as a settled minority as they have not so far been able to bring their families with them and are more than likely to treat Poland as a transit country before moving to western Europe where there is much more of a support and benefits structure for that community.
According to polling, public opinion is firmly against Muslim migration into Poland with half saying they would not want Muslims to be Polish citizens, their neighbours or members of their family, placing them behind both Jewish and Roma people as the least accepted ethnic and religious group.
Muslim migration in Poland is opposed by all of Poland’s right with little enthusiasm from the centre and centre-left either. Poles associate Muslims with mass migration to western Europe, a phenomenon bedevilled by illegal migration and reports of the lack of integration by Muslims into western society.
While the number of Muslims remains small in Poland, so does the number of mosques and worship centres, which is limited to nine in major cities and to five working mosques: in Gdańsk, Warsaw and Białystok, and in Kruszyniany and Bohoniki, the villages of the only indigenous Muslim minority in Poland, the Tatars.
There is also relatively little available in terms of halal food in Poland. According to the website Halalfood.pl there are 19 restaurants serving halal food in Poland, 18 of them in Warsaw.
Neither the religious, cultural nor the political infrastructure makes encouraging reading for Muslims moving to Poland. Yet the demands of the labour market mean that such migration is beginning to take place.