Heather Ecker, the Detroit Institute of Arts' curator of Islamic art, is seen in the museum's new Islamic art gallery, which opens on Sunday. (Carlos Osorio/Associated Press)

On Sunday, the Detroit Institute of Arts will open its new permanent gallery of Islamic art.

Five years in the making and costing $750,000 US, the 3,350-square-foot gallery on the institute's first floor includes pieces from the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Central Asia and India that go all the way back to the seventh century AD. Many of the pieces were already in the museum or its archives.

The museum, known as the DIA, is located in the heart of the largest concentration of Muslims in the U.S., and director Graham W.J. Beal said the time had come to display the DIA's collection more prominently. "The Arab and Islamic community is significant enough that it needs to see itself in the museum," he told The Associated Press.

Among the treasures in the DIA's collection is a pair of Ottoman mosque candlesticks, the largest known, dating from about 1500 AD, and a 15th-century leather-bound Qur'an that belonged to Timur, one of the Mongol conquerors of the Middle East.

Gaps in the collection have been filled by works of art on loan from nine public and private collections.

The majority of the works on exhibit are secular. "We have fabulous carpets, some beautiful ceramics and even household goods from the Middle Ages," says Heather Ecker, the institute's curator of Islamic art.

Ecker noted in an interview with the Detroit Free Press that the works in the new gallery are not predominantly from the Arab world. "It takes the view of the Islamic world quite broadly," she said. "If I can acquire a beautiful Qur'an from Malaysia, I'll do it … Arab art is a subset of Islamic art. The most populous Muslim countries in the world are Indonesia and India."

"We want people to see the connections between the Islamic world and almost every other culture," she told the newspaper.

According to Ecker, interest in Islamic art has risen since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Before then, Islamic art was often included in exhibits of European and American art and played a supporting role .

Ecker was hired in 2005 as the museum's first dedicated curator of Islamic art since the 1920s, and plans for the new gallery got underway as part of a $158 million US makeover of the DIA. The new gallery was scheduled to open in November 2007, but required extra time and money.

The DIA's effort has sparked criticism. Most disturbing to Beal was a letter from a member who asked why the museum was "promoting godless Islam."

"Nobody has said, 'Why are you showing Native American art?'" he said. "I've never had that question in my whole career."

Ecker said it's impossible to separate the museum's work form outside tensions, but it can help to dispel ignorance. "Not only non-Muslims, but a lot of Muslims don't have a good understanding of the 1,500 years of Islamic history," she said.

With files from The Associated Press