http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/08/news/mosque.php
Plans for a mosque in central Munich are stirring sentiment against foreigners Some Christians protest as Muslims raise their profile MUNICH: Helga Schandl says she has nothing against Muslims. For three decades, she worked in Munich's wholesale food market, where many of her colleagues were immigrants from Turkey. "I have experienced integration firsthand," she said. Yet Schandl, a 67-year-old Bavarian, is leading a fierce campaign to halt plans to build a mosque in a working- class district here. "It is a provocation," she said of the mosque, which would sit across a graceful square from her Roman Catholic church --- its minarets an exotic counterpoint to the church's neo- Baroque steeples. "The mosque doesn't have anything to do with religion," she said. "It is a power play." In the many ways that Christians and Muslims rub up against each other in this country, the construction of mosques has become one of the most contentious. Symbols of a foreign faith, rising in the middle of German cities, they are stoking anti-foreign sentiment and reinforcing fears that Christianity is under threat. Why, Schandl asked, do the Turks want to build their mosque right here, on a site opposite St. Korbinian? Like churches everywhere in Germany, it is struggling to survive in a secular society. A few empty churches are being converted into banks or restaurants. For Onder Yildiz, a soft-spoken but intense leader of the Turkish community, the answer is simple: "A mosque next to a church helps intensify dialogue between the religions," he said. On one level, Yildiz is right: St. Korbinian, and the mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, have welcomed the mosque, which would be the third, and most prominent, in Munich, the heartland of German Catholicism. But 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. Mosques have existed in Germany for decades, but only in recent years has there been a building boom. There are now 150 mosques in Germany, in addition to some 2,000 Muslim prayer rooms in cellars, warehouses and other converted industrial spaces. As Germany's 3.2 million Muslims put down deeper roots, they are no longer willing to worship furtively. A few of their projects, like a new mosque in the city of Duisburg, have a hint of the grandeur of great European cathedrals. More than 1,000 people can pray under its soaring domes, which are meant to evoke the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. "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." Rightist politicians pander to these sentiments, Leggewie said, helped by the specter of Islamic terrorism and by a number of extremist mosques in Germany that have rattled even some open- minded Germans. Muslim groups aggravate the tensions, he said, by not talking to their non-Muslim neighbors. The Munich dispute has an added edge because Bavaria is the most religious and conservative state in Germany. Pope Benedict XVI was born near here and once served as archbishop of Munich. He delivered his now-famous speech, in which he appeared to equate Islam with violence, at the nearby University of Regensburg. "I understood his message," Schandl said, nursing a beer at the market where she used to work. Munich has between 80,000 and 120,000 Muslims, the bulk of them from Turkey. Muslims constitute nearly 10 percent of the city's population. The city's first mosque was built in the 1960s on the outskirts of town and caused little comment. The proposed mosque is designed to take the place of an Islamic prayer center that is now housed in an old furniture warehouse nearby. As the Turks see it, having a proper mosque is a sign of their maturity as an immigrant group in German society. "Turks are now in their third generation in Germany," said Metin Avci, the imam of the community in Sendling. "In the first generation, they only wanted to work to earn money. In the second and third generations, they developed a desire to worship in a more visible way." After a competition, the group chose a local architect, Walter Höfler. He says that his contemporary design does not compete with that of the church. The minarets of the mosque, he noted, would rise about 40 meters, or 130 feet, which would be 14 meters short of the steeples of the church. The mosque would have the capacity for 250 men and 150 women. But Yildiz said that it was also designed to accommodate non-Muslims for social and educational activities. "We want to integrate into Germany," said Yildiz, 40, who has lived here for 25 years. "We want to have a presentable place, where we can invite guests to drink tea." Both St. Korbinian and the neighboring Protestant church seem open to such a dialogue. They have steadfastly supported the mosque. But they say the debate has divided their members. Wolfgang Neuner, a parish councilor at St. Korbinian, said that parishioners told him they would not feel comfortable at prayer knowing they were near a mosque. Andrea Borger, the deacon at the Protestant church, got a letter asking, "What are you going to say when your daughter isn't able to walk in this neighborhood without a head scarf?" +++ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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