Bally’s temporary casino in Chicago opened earlier this month, the most recent addition to the roster of Illinois casinos. While the property has garnered its fair share of local opposition for various reasons — traffic, security concerns and problem gambling among them — one specific complaint has absolutely no factual basis.
To be ultra clear: Bally’s Casino and the Medinah Temple it calls home isn’t a mosque. It never was.
The Islamabad Times reports that various Muslim-majority country social media groups are taking to the internet to claim Chicago has opened a casino in a mosque — or at least a building that looks a lot like one.
The Medinah Temple does indeed bear resemblances to a mosque, and the building bears an inscription of the Kalma Tayyaba, which roughly translates to “There is none worthy of worship except God (Allah) and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”
