EFL - The original title was rather unfortunately titled, In Germany, Mosque-Building Boom Regarded With Fear. It kind of gave me the wrong idea.
-snip- literary lead-in deemded non-essential by this math major.
Gulcek’s mosque reflects the surge in Islamic construction sweeping Germany. The number of traditional mosques with their distinctive minarets nearly doubled in Germany from 77 in 2002 to 141 in 2003, according to Islam Archive, a Muslim research group in the city of Soest. An additional 154 mosques and cultural centers are planned, many of them in the countryside where vistas are dotted with symbols of crescent moons and crosses... For many Europeans since Sept. 11, mosques are perceived - unlike churches or synagogues - as caldrons of radicalism instead of places of worship. That sentiment is likely to endure if Islamic militants were involved in the train bombings in Madrid that killed more than 200 people and wounded 1,400 others.
| Guess it's gonna endure, then... |
``Building a mosque won’t create integration,’’ said Werner Mueller, a pharmacist in a Berlin neighborhood where proposals for two mosques are encountering opposition from government agencies. ``These new mosques will make Islam more visible, and jobless and angry Muslim men will go to them. They can become places infiltrated by political Islam.’’
| "I say Holmes, that's brilliant, brilliant!" |
Such sensitivity is rooted in Al Quds mosque in Hamburg - a warren of rooms above a gym with smudged windows where Mohamed Atta and other Sept. 11 hijackers prayed before moving to the United States. Thousands of nondescript mosques, some tucked in alleys, others half-hidden in old factories, are scattered across the continent. There are nearly 2,400 in Germany, according to the Islam Archive.
The Berlin government is seeking more control over blueprints for larger mosques. The city’s planning office wants veto power on all building projects that may impinge upon a borough’s character. The veto proposal is expected to take effect this year and could complicate plans for four mosques in the city boroughs of Kreuzberg and Neukoelln. The government says it is not singling out mosques, but trying to bring uniformity to the skyline. ``Berlin has a large Turkish population,’’ said Petra Reetz, a spokeswoman for the planning office. ``That always has to be a consideration. But we are still a central European town and we’d like to keep the face of a central European town, not a Turkish town.’’ Such sentiments have made Mehmet Bayram a patient architect. The projects he treasures most, including mosques and Islamic cultural centers, are yet to be built, tangled in negotiations with government agencies. Bayram splices architecture, folding Islamic nuances into European designs to make Muslim edifices more palatable to the German eye. What could be considered minarets on the facade of one of his proposed cultural centers, for example, are instead spiraling stairwells.
Gulcek’s mosque is being built south of the city center by the Turkish Islamic Union, one of several Muslim organizations in Germany overseeing construction plans for such projects. At 3 million, Turks are the the nation’s largest minority. Gulcek moved to Berlin with his parents 24 years ago from the Turkish city of Kayseri. ``It’s taken 13 years to build,’’ said Gulcek, a smiling, yet exasperated, diplomat of sorts between cultures. ``The biggest problem was raising money from Berlin Muslims. Then we found out our minarets were too high and we had to raise more money for a $100,000 fine from the borough. Why? It came down to a misunderstanding. We didn’t know about German law, and the borough didn’t tell us.
``It was difficult to explain our idea of the mosque to the Germans. We should have explained it better. If you communicate, there are fewer problems, but there always seems to be a lace curtain between Germans and Muslims. Europeans have a prejudice and a fear of change.’’ |