Category Archives: Germany

As a mosque rises, a dispute flares in Berlin

Posted on by Bob Pitt

No Mosque in PankowA squabble over construction of the first mosque in formerly communist East Berlin is becoming the latest flash point between Muslims intent on asserting a strong identity in Europe and Europeans increasingly fearful that their secular societies are threatened by Islamic fundamentalism.

Members of the Muslim congregation hope the soaring minaret of the planned mosque will become a local landmark. “People should not fear us,” Iman Abdul Basit Tariq, the Pakistan-born leader of a flock of 200, said in an interview. “They should open their hearts to the beauty of Islam.”

Instead, the neighborhood has fought the mosque with marches, candlelight vigils, and petitions. Residents have also filed legal complaints that could block construction.

“Ideas of suppressing women and hatred for democratic values will soon be disseminated in the heart of our community,” said Roland Henning, a musician who lives half a block from the planned mosque. “And those of us who ask, ‘Why?’ are the ones being called intolerant and xenophobic. Europe isn’t just surrendering its culture. It’s surrendering any sense of logic.”

“Why should we be giving welcome to a group that hates German values and considers Christianity to be its enemy?” asked Joachim Swietlik, spokesman for the group opposed to the mosque. “Our concern isn’t based on their skin color or their countries [of origin]. It’s based on their contempt for the ideals of our liberal-democratic society.”

Boston Globe, 9 January 2007

[Picture: poster by the far-right Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) who have been prominent in the campaign against the mosque.]

Local protests greet East Berlin’s first mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Heinersdorf mosque protestorScattered protests Tuesday accompanied a ground-breaking ceremony for the first-ever mosque in what used to be Communist East Berlin.

The two-story building with a 12-meter-tall minaret is being built for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community on the site of an old sauerkraut factory in the east Berlin suburb of Pankow-Heinersdorf.

The mosque, which will be able to accommodate 500 worshippers, is expected to be completed by the end of next year or in early 2008, said the chairman of the sect’s Berlin branch, Abdul Basit Tariq.

Scattered protests Tuesday accompanied a ground-breaking ceremony for the first-ever mosque in what used to be Communist East Berlin.

The two-story building with a 12-meter-tall minaret is being built for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community on the site of an old sauerkraut factory in the east Berlin suburb of Pankow-Heinersdorf.

The mosque, which will be able to accommodate 500 worshippers, is expected to be completed by the end of next year or in early 2008, said the chairman of the sect’s Berlin branch, Abdul Basit Tariq.

In Berlin, the first mosque was constructed in 1924. Now there are some 30 Muslim places of worship in the German capital. But most of them are in Neukölln and Kreuzberg, in the western part of the city.

These are the neighborhoods in which guest workers, mainly from Turkey, moved to when they first arrived in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. Today the multi-ethnic districts are still home to Berlin’s largest Turkish community as well as to large numbers of Arab and east European immigrants.

In the former Communist and, at the time, internationally insular East Berlin, there were no mosques which might explain the protests, Tariq says.

“These are unfounded fears,” Tariq says. “People listen to the news, see scenes on television and that’s why they’re scared of Muslims. They think Muslims are terrorists and suicide bombers. Their heads are full of these things.”

Opposition to the planned mosque has underlined Germany’s problems in integrating its 3.2-million strong Muslim community. The problem is especially acute in formerly communist-ruled east Germany where few Muslims and other immigrants have settled.

Deutsche Welle, 2 January 2007

Americans oppose Dutch Islamic veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Many adults in the United States are against a proposal developed by the Dutch government that seeks to ban Islamic veils, according to a six-country poll by Harris Interactive published in the Financial Times.

59 per cent of Americans believe Islamic women should have the right to wear the garments if they wish to do so.

Support is significantly lower in the five European nations surveyed, with Spain at 39 per cent, Italy at 34 per cent, Germany at 33 per cent, Britain at 23 per cent, and France at 23 per cent.

Angus Reid Global Monitor, 31 December 2006

Dutch veil ban poll

East Berlin’s first mosque: The Muslims are coming!

Posted on by Bob Pitt

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.

Spiegel, 28 December 2006

Update:  See “Local protests greet East Berlin’s first mosque”, Deutsche Welle, 2 January 2007

Islamophobia takes a grip across Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EUMC report December 2006Muslims are suffering physical attacks, verbal taunts and widespread discrimination as a climate of Islamophobia takes a grip across Europe.

A new report lists a host of examples of crime and intimidation from arson and suspected racist murder in Germany and Spain to pork fat being smeared on a mosque in Italy.

Thugs in Ireland beat up one man after calling him “bin Laden” while a bogus email in Denmark outlined fake primary school reforms to help migrant children. A maths question read: “Jamal has an AK47 with a 30-shot magazine. If he misses 6 out of 10 shots and he wants to hit each cup 13 times, how many cups can he shoot before he needs to reload?”

The report from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia called on leaders to strengthen policies on integration, and on Muslims to “engage more actively in public life.” It also highlights the lack of reliable data, pointing out that only one country – the United Kingdom – publishes criminal justice data which specifically identify Muslims as victims of hate crime incidents.

The Muslim population of the EU is estimated to run to around 13m, around 3.5 per cent of the total. Since September 11 many feel “they have been put under a general suspicion of terrorism,” according to Beate Winkler, director of the centre.

The report says that Muslims “experience various levels of discrimination and marginalisation in employment, education and housing” and are “vulnerable to manifestations of prejudice and hatred in the form of anything from verbal threats through to physical attacks on people and property.”

Continue reading →

Campaign against Munich mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The New York Times reports on opposition to the building of a new mosque in Munich:

“… a vocal minority of residents has resisted, holding protest meetings, collecting signatures, and filing a petition with the Bavarian Parliament. ‘Bavarian life’, the petition declares, ‘is marked by the drinking of beer and the eating of pork. In Muslim faith, both are unclean and forbidden.’ With the support of Bavaria’s conservative state government, the residents have been able to tie up the project in court…. ‘Whenever Muslims in Germany come out of their closets or hidden places, the controversy starts’, said Claus Leggewie, a political scientist at the University of Giessen who has written about mosques in Germany. ‘The protests begin on technical issues, like parking problems and noise’, he said. ‘But it has a cultural bias. There is a nationalist minority, which opposes immigration and especially Muslim immigration’.”

Self-immolation – a new trend among Islamophobes?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Angered and distressed by the threat of the evils of Islam to his country, his homeland, his family and his kinfolk a German vicar committed suicide by setting himself alight on Tuesday (31st) in protest. The 73 year old Roland Weisselberg poured petrol over himself and set fire to himself in the Erfurt monastery, where Martin Luther took his monastic vows in 1505. Tuesday was a national holiday in parts of Germany to celebrate the Protestant Reformation. Despite robust efforts by many on the scene who rushed to extinguish the flames, Mr. Weisselberg later died of his injuries. In a farewell letter to his wife the vicar wrote that he was setting himself on fire to warn against the danger of the Islamification of Europe.”

BNP news article, 2 November 2006

We can only hope that Nick Griffin and the entire BNP leadership are inspired to follow Mr Weisselberg’s example.

Europe draws battle lines on head scarves

Posted on by Bob Pitt

When Nora Labrak arrived at a private employment agency last summer near the French city of Lyon, the first question she heard was not about her resume. “I was asked to remove my head scarf at the lobby”, Labrak recalled in a telephone interview. When the 29-year-old refused, she was hustled to the door.

Long or short, sober black or brightly hued, the Muslim women’s head covering is drawing growing objections, and in some places downright hostility, in Europe. It has been banned from public schools in France and Belgium, and its strictest, face-concealing variation, the niqab, has been outlawed in several European towns.

Even in multicultural Britain, the niqab has sparked ferocious debate after the suspension of a Muslim teaching assistant and remarks by Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday that the garment was “a mark of separation”.

“There’s a rise in Islamo-skepticism,” said Franck Fregosi, an expert on Islam at France’s National Center for Scientific Research, referring to the unease many non-Muslims feel about the seeming reluctance of Muslims to be part of the mainstream culture. “There’s a fear and tension that’s installed in certain parts of the population, and I don’t think it bodes well for the future.”

In Brussels, 41-year-old Nicole Thill shares that foreboding. “I haven’t had problems until now, but things are changing,” said Thill, who converted to Islam and began wearing the veil in 2001. “People’s looks are increasingly hostile. And there’s less and less respect. People don’t mind jostling you on the street because, after all, you’re only a veiled woman.”

To be sure, sentiments about Muslims vary widely in Europe. Polls offer a fractured snapshot about how the region’s Islamic community is viewed – and how it views itself. A survey by the Pew Research Center, released in July, found that a majority of European Muslims did not sense hostility from non-Muslims. But a significant number – 39 percent in France, 42 percent in Britain and 51 percent in Germany – reported otherwise.

San Francisco Chronicle, 22 October 2006

Two useful  books on the recent attempts to suppress the hijab in Europe are Dominic McGoldrick’s Human Rights and Religion: The Islamic Headscarf Debate in Europe and John R.Bowen’s Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space.

EU’s fight against radical Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Broder bookHenrik Broder, a prominent Jewish journalist in Germany, recently published a book titled, “Hooray! We Surrender!” which criticizes what the author refers to as “Europe’s weakness in its battle against Islam.”

“We must define what sets us aside as a society, and what values we must uphold in our struggle against Islam,” Broder tells Ynet.

Broder’s remarks come amid the ever-increasing tension in Europe between the traditional values and those of radical Islam, which are beginning to spread throughout the continent.

With the end of the Cold War 17 years ago, Europe was able to unite around values of democracy, individualism and a free market. But lately the atmosphere ion Europe has begun to change, and tolerant Europe has started to organize against radical Islam (and some say Islam in general), an ideology that is being referred to more and more as “an enemy of modern western society’s lifestyle.”

Until recently political correctness reigned in Europe, and those who dared point an accusatory finger at minorities were ostracized. When immigrants attacked their host-countries in Europe, the Europeans blamed western society for “inadequately absorbing them.”

Dialogue, not confrontation was the solution to the absorption difficulties of immigrants; criticism of the Muslim minority, part of which refused to accept the social ideals of the majority, was dismissed as racist – and so the Muslims in Europe did not integrate with the western population.

But following Madrid and London attacks, as well as the Muslim riots over the Mohammad caricatures, there are more and more signs indicating that the European Union is beginning to view Islam and the Muslim immigrants as an existential threat.

YnetNews, 21 October 2006