Watch: Bangladesh's billion-dollar 'model' mosques will be open for women

Bangladesh new ambitious project aims to build a total of 560 model mosques across the country. The plan is likely to get completed by December 2020.

Touted as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's flagship project, the plan aims to set up model mosques across the country to check radical ideologies and counter Islamist extremist. The preliminary work for the project has already been started.

The billion-dollar model mosque project is believed to be partly funded by Saudi Arabia and will be open to women unlike most of Bangladesh's nearly three hundred thousand mosques.

There will also be research and cultural centres, library and learning centres.

Majority of mosques in the country are privately owned and have little government control and oversight.

The move is likely to warm PM Hasina's relations with the Muslim community and a diplomatic footing in the Middle East.