Huge German mosques are "land grab, not a place of prayer"

Roger Boyes in Berlin
From The Times (London)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5295628.ece

The building of huge mosques throughout Germany is nothing short of a “a bid for power and influence, a land grab”, according to Ralph Giordano, 85, the German Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor, in an interview with The Times that is likely to stir Muslim anger. . The comments from Mr Giordano came as the Muslim community of Cologne – about 120,000 strong – prepared to lay the foundation stone for yet another giant mosque, one of more than a hundred that are being planned or built across the country.

Barely six weeks ago another mosque, capable of accommodating 1,200 worshippers, was opened in Duisburg in the nearby Ruhr region of northwest Germany.

Spiky minarets are starting to punctuate the German urban skyscape – and the rumble of discontent from nonMuslim Germans is growing louder. One result is that the issue of immigration seems sets to be on the agenda in the general election next year. The Christian Democrats resolved this week that the German language should be anchored in the constitution – seen as a slight by the three million Turks who live in the country.


“When I first saw the blueprints for the grand mosque in Cologne, I was shocked,” said Mr Giordano, who is now very active in the campaign against Turkish mosque-building. “It sent a completely wrong signal, it was a bid for power and influence, a land grab, not a place of prayer, so I told the mayor: Stop this mosque now!” That was in a public discussion that was filmed and placed online. The result was, he says, an avalanche of many hundred of supportive letters.

“They all struck the same note: Mr Giordano we are afraid as you are of this creeping Islamification but we can’t say anything in public because we will end up being branded as neo-Nazis.”

The novelist and essayist pauses for effect. “Well, that’s something that cannot be pinned on me!”

Mr Giordano finds himself in the company of far-right activists. “Of course, you have to distance yourself clearly from these people – obviously their racist, neo-Nazis arguments are quite different from mine – but I am not going to be muzzled just because people are fighting on the same issue with false arguments and a false ideology.”

Fritz Schramma, the Mayor of Cologne, argues that the mosque will become a tourist attraction and that it will be integrated into the urban culture. “It’s not right that Muslims should have to pray in old factory warehouses,” he said.

There is a hope too that if Muslims are allowed to become part of the urban landscape rather than hidden away there will be less risk of furtive fundamentalism.