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'WE WANT THE CATHEDRAL, NOT MINARETS'
Far-Right Mobilizes against Cologne Mega-Mosque
By Anna Reimann
A right-wing citizens' initiative is protesting against Germany's largest mosque, which is being built in Cologne. They have enlisted the efforts of the far-right from Austria and Belgium in their fight against the "Islamization of Europe."
The Pro Cologne citizens' initiative wants to prevent the construction of Germany's largest mosque in Cologne. The group, which held a rally in Cologne last Saturday, is drawing support from right-wing activists across Europe.
Fifty meters (164 feet) away, about 150 demonstrators from the citizens' initiative Pro Cologne (Pro Köln) stand waiting.
They have assembled on the other side of Venloer Street, not far from the premises where DITIB currently operates a mosque on the site of a former factory and where a new, larger mosque with a dome and minarets is to be built soon. That's what Cologne's politicians have decided, in any case -- all political parties voted in favor of the project. Only Pro Cologne stands opposed.
A man in a black suit flits past Scho-Antwerpes. "That's someone from Pro Cologne," the mayor mumbles. "Unfortunately he always says hello to me. It's terrible."
She doesn't want to have anything to do with the citizens' initiative, which is under observation from the North Rhine-Westphalia branch of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, because its "generalizing and sweeping defamation of foreigners is suspected of violating human dignity." The citizens' initiative, which is listed as a far-right organization in the Office for the Protection of the Constitution'
At this rally, Pro Cologne has recruited help from the far-right fringe of the political spectrum in Austria and Belgium: the leader of Austria's populist right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) Heinz-Christian Strache, and Bart Debie from the extreme right Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party in Antwerp. Standing behind the police barriers are Pro Cologne members with very short hair, salon-tanned faces and white armbands designating them as security personnel provided by the organizers of the rally. Several dozen citizens wait for their prominent visitors, armed with German flags and wooden crosses. A few adolescents with Iron Cross necklaces and Pitbull sweatshirts have joined the throng. Asked why they are here, they decline to reply.
Others, however, are more than happy to air their views. Pro Cologne's Bernd Schöppe sees the construction of the mosque as "one more step towards the Islamization of Europe." Fellow demonstrator Thomas Bendt also believes the mosque is intended as a symbol of Muslim fundamentalist power. The mosque won't act openly, he believes. "If men and women are going to pray separately in the new mosque, that's not the kind of freedom we want," he says.
A woman who prefers to remain anonymous even believes that once the Muslim community has grown sufficiently large, it will attack Cologne's cathedral. She wants to feel at home somewhere, she says, without feeling she is in a foreign city.
'We Want the Cathedral Here, not Minarets'
Ehrenfeld residents watch the activities on the street from their balconies above the demonstration area, which has been closed off by the police. The residents have suspended signs that read "Red Card for Racists." Left-wing counter-demonstrato
Suddenly the anti-mosque demonstrators grow restless. Smoke rises in the air shortly before Strache, the Freedom Party leader, reaches the rally and walks with swift steps through the crowd of Pro-Cologne sympathizers. The police suspects a smoke bomb at first, but cannot clarify where the smoke is coming from.
Round signs showing a red line across a stylized mosque are unpacked, and loud classical music is heard from within the Pro Cologne ranks. The protesters begin marching. Those at the front of the silent march carry a large banner featuring a quote from German writer Ralph Giordano: "There is no fundamental right to the construction of a large mosque." The Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Giordano has sharply criticized the construction of the mosque -- and now the right-wingers have co-opted him for their cause. Giordano, however, is vigorously resisting Pro Cologne's efforts to enlist him for their cause. He has dubbed the right-wing citizens' initiative the "local variety of Nazism."
"We want the cathedral here, not minarets."
In contrast, several hundred citizens followed the call from trade unions, political parties and associations to rally in favor of the construction of the mosque. "Freedom of religion means that Muslims are allowed to build a representative mosque in Cologne," says Wolfgang Uellenberg van Dawen, the leader of the Cologne branch of the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB).
But a different tune can be heard in front of Ehrenfeld's local town hall, where Strache is giving a speech. "We want the cathedral here, not minarets," he shouts, adding that "the left-wing counter-demonstrato
Fear and Loathing
The domed structure, which is to have two 55-meter (180-foot) minarets, will be Germany's largest mosque, with room for about 2,000 believers to pray in. Ever since Giordano has made his views on the mosque public, the issue has been attracting attention in Germany's national media. Most recently, Cologne-based writer Dieter Wellershof weighed up the arguments on both sides in an article entitled "What Does The Mosque Stand For?" published in the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Many citizens who feel skeptical about the mosque, but who don't want to have anything to do with Pro Cologne, seem to be asking themselves the same question. The feeling of fear and uncertainty has increased among the local population, says one Ehrenfeld resident, who is herself in favor of the mosque. But Pro Cologne is inciting people to hatred, she adds. "And yet people in Cologne aren't like that. They want to live in a multi-cultural city."
"I feel afraid," confesses one elderly woman with carefully curled hair. "I'm not sure exactly what of -- probably the right-wingers most of all." She says she is not opposed to the Muslims receiving a new mosque, but adds that, as a local resident, she is concerned about the "traffic problems" that would result.
"I'm just afraid of fundamentalist Muslims gaining more and more ground," says one female shop assistant. But it's hardly possible to voice this fear because of the risk of immediately being labeled right-wing, she says. "I think Pro Cologne is horrible," she adds. Only the two extremes, "the young, far-left demonstrators and the right-wingers from Pro Cologne," are attracting attention, and that's sad, she says. "It's like an absurd carnival," she says.
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------------EAST BERLIN'S FIRST MOSQUE
The Muslims Are Coming!
By Michael Scott Moore and Jochen-Martin Gutsch in Berlin
A citizens' group in Berlin turned out this week for a candlelight vigil to protest plans for a new mosque in their neighborhood. It will be the first to be built in the former East Berlin, where almost no Muslims live -- but no one can quite explain why it shouldn't be there.
A member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Berlin stands in front of a sign that reads, "There is no God but Allah." The community has just won approval for a new mosque in an eastern district of the German capital.
"The mosque is supposed to go up right here," says Günter Bronner, a blustery white-haired man with glasses pushed up on his forehead who's lived in the neighborhood for 42 years. He points to a drab piece of land at the end of the street where a defunct sauerkraut factory stands. "They want to have a minaret with a muezzin who gives the call to prayer five times a day. Can you imagine? Five times a day over our rooftops."
Officials gave the go-ahead last Friday for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association to build a new mosque in Heinersdorf, an eastern neighborhood of Berlin where very few Muslims live. It will be the first mosque on the once-Communist eastern side of the city, and an organization of locals turned out Wednesday to protest. "It was pretty brazen to hand this (approval) to us as a Christmas present," quipped Joachim Swietlik, head of the citizens' group, who claims that 90 percent of Heinersdorf doesn't want the mosque.
The row highlights a Europe-wide debate about the integration of Muslims, ranging from calls for improved schooling and language teaching and tougher tests for immigrants to a discussion about whether veils and headscarves hinder the integration of Muslim women.
Ahmadiyya initially presented plans for the mosque to district officials in the spring of 2005, and at the time there was no controversy. But Swietlik as well as others complain they know very little about the group, which currently worships in a single-family house in Reinickendorf, a neighboring district.
"They should build a mosque where their community is based," said Swietlik, a 42-year-old auto glazier who was raised in the former East Germany. "Or wherever a lot of Muslims live -- Kreuzberg, Wedding," he added, referring to the districts where many Turks who came to West Berlin under guest worker programs during the 1960s settled and had kids.
Ahmadis, though, aren't Turkish, and may not be welcome in Kreuzberg or Wedding. They're a largely Pakistani sect of Muslims established in India in 1889 by a man called Mirsa Ghulam Ahmed. Strict orthodox Islamic teaching sees Mohammed as the last prophet of God, and the Ahmadis agree -- but they also recognize "shadow prophets," less important messengers of God, and Ahmed counts as one of these. This wrinkle in their beliefs separates them from many other Muslims. The Pakistani government even declared them "not Muslim" in 1974, and in 1975 Ahmadiyya was kicked out of the Saudi Arabian-led Muslim World League.
KFC and Allah
The mosque in Heinersdorf is meant to be two stories high, with a 12-meter (40-foot) minaret, on the half-vacant sauerkraut factory site. The smell of frying oil wafts over the property from a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ahmadiyya admits it has no particular reason to build there besides the inexpensive land, but an Ahmadi mosque in Germany would not be unprecedented: There are 17 in the country already.
"In our experience, the protests stop as soon as we start to build the mosque," says the German head of Ahmadiyya, Abdullah Uwe Wagishauser, a 56-year-old former hippie from western Germany who converted to Islam in the 1970s. The group has no plans to oppose the protesters in Heinersdorf; in fact almost every mosque they've built has met with local protests and resistance. He says it's a classic case of not-in-my-backyard. "No one wants a mosque in their neighborhood,
The resistance in Heinersdorf, though, is unusually strong. The Pankow-Heinersdorf Citizens' Interest Group -- with 70 members -- managed to gather 6,000 signatures between the spring of 2006 and last Friday, when their attempt to ban the mosque formally failed. Their objections included traffic chaos and falling property prices, but the longest paragraph in the petition expresses concern about "an Islamic-Ahmadiyya parallel society, which would have the goal of overturning our liberal-democratic order."
A threat to democracy?
Ahmadiyya has about 30,000 members in Germany. The group isn't considered a problem by the government. Erhart Körting, who as Berlin's Senator of the Interior has to worry about terrorism, says Ahmadiyya is a "rather orthodox club," but not a threat to the German constitution. Ahmadiyya rejects violence, and not even the Citizens' Interest Group perceive the group as a terrorist threat.
A computer drawing of the planned mosque in Heinersdorf. The building will go up on a vacant piece of land where a sauerkraut factory used to be.
The imam of the 200-strong Ahmadiyya group in Berlin is a Pakistani-born man with German citizenship called Abdul Basit Tariq. He gives Friday prayers in German and spoke at Berlin's five-year commemoration of Sept. 11, 2001, at the invitation of William Timken, America's ambassador to Germany. He's heavy, tired-looking, and quite conservative. When his wife knocks to let him know about a call on his cell phone, he takes it from her hand, which pokes out from behind the frosted-glass kitchen door -- to keep a male interviewer in their home from laying eyes on her. He believes marriage is "God's will" and wants to protect his community from the easy morality of modern Europe as much as the Interest Group wants to keep Heinersdorf free of Ahmadiyya.
"We've tried to meet with representatives of the Ahmadiyya community," complains Swietlik. "But these meetings always bring up new questions."
He points out that 6,000 signatures on the petition represents a full 90 percent of Heinersdorf'
Gabi Groth, a lean 49-year-old saleswoman with brown hair and wire-frame glasses who turned out for the candlelight vigil, added, "We Heinersdorfers are afraid that radicals from the right and left will come here and make an issue out of this mosque."
She may have been thinking of a meeting in March 2006, when Ahmadiyya held an information session in a Heinersdorf school gymnasium. Fifteen-hundred locals turned up, too many for everyone to find a seat -- which made the atmosphere tense even before the meeting was crashed by members of the German far right. Police broke things up before the information session could start and led Ahmadiyya representatives out under special protection. Someone hollered, "Wir sind das Volk!" ("We are the people") -- an anti-Communist phrase from the old East Germany -- and a lot of people in the gym took up the chant.
"We can do as many information sessions as we want," says Wagishauser, the German head of Ahmadiyya, with resignation. "I can't even remember how much we've explained and discussed in all the places where we've wanted to build mosques. In the end it's not much use. Communism used to be the great threat; now it's Islam. It's just the conflict of our time."
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