Algeria to inaugurate Bouteflika-era mega mosque

Algeria’s Grand Mosque, the world’s third-biggest and Africa’s largest, will host its first public prayers on Wednesday, a year and a half after construction was completed. Known locally as the Djamaa El-Djazair, the modernist structure extends across 27.75 hectares (almost 70 acres), and is smaller only than the two mosques in Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest sites, in Saudi Arabia. To its critics, the mosque is a vanity project and a symbol…