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On Muslim holidays, hundreds of faithful hoping to pray at the Ditib Mosque in Cologne, Germany must spread their prayer rugs in a nearby parking lot and follow the service from afar on loudspeakers. The mosque only holds 600 people.
Yet plans to replace the flat-roofed storefront mosque with a new house of worship, complete with a dome and two 54-meter-tall (177-feet-tall) minarets, have triggered an angry response from right-wing groups and, most recently, Cologne's Roman Catholic archbishop.
Mehmet Orman, 43, a Turkish immigrant who prays every night at Ditib Mosque—ignoring its broken windows and worn-out prayer rugs—hopes construction can begin as scheduled by the end of the year.
"There are 2.7 million Turks in Germany; of course we need a big, representative mosque in this country," Orman said.
Construction of traditional mosques in Germany and elsewhere in Europe has often involved such handwringing. Mosques have faced similar opposition in France, the scene of riots in largely Muslim suburbs in 2005, as well as Britain, the recent target of a new wave of Islamic terrorism.
But the Ditib Mosque project holds particular significance in Cologne, which has such a prominent Catholic heritage that Pope Benedict XVI has dubbed it the "Rome of the North.”
Last month, dozens of right-wing extremists from all over Germany, Austria and Belgium demonstrated against the construction of the Cologne mosque, claiming that the building would "fortify the Muslims' claim to power in Christian Europe," in the words of Manfred Rouhs, the demonstration's organizer.
Rouhs heads the right-wing Pro Cologne movement, which has collected 18,000 signatures from local citizens against the disputed mosque. The mosque would be located in a vivid immigrant neighborhood filled with Turkish teahouses, kebab restaurants and gold jewelry stores.
It is not only the extremist fringe that is upset, however. Opposition to the mosque has also built up in the center of the German society.
Joachim Meisner, the archbishop of Cologne, said in a widely publicized interview on the radio station Deutschlandfunk that the construction of the mosque would make him "feel unwell" and that the "immigration of Muslims has created a breach in our German, European culture."
Mehmet Yildirim, the director of Ditib, a Turkish-Islamic umbrella group for 700 German mosques, called the objections of the mosque's opponents "racist and insulting."
"We shouldn't have to justify that we need a house for prayer in Germany," Yildirim, 56, said in an interview at Ditib's headquarters in Cologne.
Yet Meisner's words count a lot in Cologne, which is one of Germany's most devoutly Roman Catholic cities and is known worldwide for its twelve Romanesque churches and its 750-year-old cathedral with two 157-meter (515-feet) landmark steeples.
The dispute further escalated when Ralph Giordano, a prominent German writer and Jewish Holocaust survivor, also opposed the mosque's construction and declared the integration of Muslim immigrants in Germany a failure. Germans and Muslim immigrants were living in parallel societies, he claimed.
"I don't want to meet burqas and chadors on German streets, nor do I want to hear the call of the muezzin from towering minarets," Giordano, 84, wrote in a commentary for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily newspaper.
In reaction, Giordano said he has received six phone calls of death threats from Turks.
With a size of 4,500 square meters (48,440 square feet), the future mosque would be one of the biggest in Germany. It would accommodate up to 2,000 worshippers and house an Islamic library, facilities for cultural events and several stores. The construction would cost between $20 and $40 million and mostly be financed by private donations.
Approximately 3.3 million Muslims live in Germany, of which 70 percent are originally from Turkey.
While the city has not yet issued the final building permit, many city council members are in favor of the controversial construction, said Marlis Bredehorst, Cologne's official on integration issues.
"It is important that the Muslims here have dignified houses of prayer—they are part of our society," Bredehorst said. "Two hundred years ago, the Protestants had to pray secretively in Catholic Cologne. That is something we can't imagine anymore today."
On Muslim holidays, hundreds of faithful hoping to pray at the Ditib Mosque in Cologne, Germany must spread their prayer rugs in a nearby parking lot and follow the service from afar on loudspeakers. The mosque only holds 600 people.
Yet plans to replace the flat-roofed storefront mosque with a new house of worship, complete with a dome and two 54-meter-tall (177-feet-tall) minarets, have triggered an angry response from right-wing groups and, most recently, Cologne's Roman Catholic archbishop.
Mehmet Orman, 43, a Turkish immigrant who prays every night at Ditib Mosque—ignoring its broken windows and worn-out prayer rugs—hopes construction can begin as scheduled by the end of the year.
"There are 2.7 million Turks in Germany; of course we need a big, representative mosque in this country," Orman said.
Construction of traditional mosques in Germany and elsewhere in Europe has often involved such handwringing. Mosques have faced similar opposition in France, the scene of riots in largely Muslim suburbs in 2005, as well as Britain, the recent target of a new wave of Islamic terrorism.
But the Ditib Mosque project holds particular significance in Cologne, which has such a prominent Catholic heritage that Pope Benedict XVI has dubbed it the "Rome of the North.”
Last month, dozens of right-wing extremists from all over Germany, Austria and Belgium demonstrated against the construction of the Cologne mosque, claiming that the building would "fortify the Muslims' claim to power in Christian Europe," in the words of Manfred Rouhs, the demonstration's organizer.
Rouhs heads the right-wing Pro Cologne movement, which has collected 18,000 signatures from local citizens against the disputed mosque. The mosque would be located in a vivid immigrant neighborhood filled with Turkish teahouses, kebab restaurants and gold jewelry stores.
It is not only the extremist fringe that is upset, however. Opposition to the mosque has also built up in the center of the German society.
Joachim Meisner, the archbishop of Cologne, said in a widely publicized interview on the radio station Deutschlandfunk that the construction of the mosque would make him "feel unwell" and that the "immigration of Muslims has created a breach in our German, European culture."
Mehmet Yildirim, the director of Ditib, a Turkish-Islamic umbrella group for 700 German mosques, called the objections of the mosque's opponents "racist and insulting."
"We shouldn't have to justify that we need a house for prayer in Germany," Yildirim, 56, said in an interview at Ditib's headquarters in Cologne.
Yet Meisner's words count a lot in Cologne, which is one of Germany's most devoutly Roman Catholic cities and is known worldwide for its twelve Romanesque churches and its 750-year-old cathedral with two 157-meter (515-feet) landmark steeples.
The dispute further escalated when Ralph Giordano, a prominent German writer and Jewish Holocaust survivor, also opposed the mosque's construction and declared the integration of Muslim immigrants in Germany a failure. Germans and Muslim immigrants were living in parallel societies, he claimed.
"I don't want to meet burqas and chadors on German streets, nor do I want to hear the call of the muezzin from towering minarets," Giordano, 84, wrote in a commentary for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily newspaper.
In reaction, Giordano said he has received six phone calls of death threats from Turks.
With a size of 4,500 square meters (48,440 square feet), the future mosque would be one of the biggest in Germany. It would accommodate up to 2,000 worshippers and house an Islamic library, facilities for cultural events and several stores. The construction would cost between $20 and $40 million and mostly be financed by private donations.
Approximately 3.3 million Muslims live in Germany, of which 70 percent are originally from Turkey.
While the city has not yet issued the final building permit, many city council members are in favor of the controversial construction, said Marlis Bredehorst, Cologne's official on integration issues.
"It is important that the Muslims here have dignified houses of prayer—they are part of our society," Bredehorst said. "Two hundred years ago, the Protestants had to pray secretively in Catholic Cologne. That is something we can't imagine anymore today."