Berlin mosque for men and women to pray together gets death threats
Imams of either gender can lead the prayers
BERLIN // The founders of a new liberal mosque that opened in Berlin this month and allows men and women to pray together have received death threats. The Ibn Rushd- Goethe Mosque, named after the 12-century Andalusian philosopher and Germany’s most illustrious writer, was inaugurated on June 16 on the premises of a Protestant church in a working-class area of Berlin with a high migrant population.
Prayers can be led by female or male imams, worshippers from the various branches of Islam are welcome, and full face veils are forbidden.
Seyran Ates, a leader of the mosque initiative, said she had received many threats and abusive messages, and was under police protection.
“I take it seriously. I’m not ignoring it but I’m not going to be driven by fear. I’m trying to deal with it sensibly,” said the lawyer and women’s rights activist.
Police were on guard for Friday prayers at the mosque, a 90-square-metre room, leased from the church, with a plain white carpet and green prayer mats.
The mosque is aimed at countering fundamentalism and catering for what the mosque’s founders said was the silent majority of Muslims in Germany who wanted a modern interpretation of Islam.
But in many Muslim countries most men and women say they prefer to be divided when praying at a mosque or prayer hall.
The Islamic authorities in Egypt and Turkey said they disagreed with the founders of the Berlin mosque.
Diyanet, Turkey’s main Mus- lim authority, dismissed the mosque’s practices as “experiments aimed at nothing more than depraving and ruining religion” and accused the founders of the mosque of being followers of Fetullah Gulen, a cleric in exile in the US. Ankara accuses Mr Gulen of running a terrorist network and masterminding the coup attempt in Turkey last July that failed. The seven founders of the Berlin mosque – who include a male and a female imam – argue that some scholars over the centuries had said it was permissible for men and women to pray together.
“There is a reality that no one can deny and it’s that for the last 1,400 years in Mecca, where the religion was founded, men and women have prayed together and they still do so at the Haj, shoulder to shoulder, and it’s the same on the Temple Mount,” said Ms Ates, who is of Turkish-Kurdish descent.
The dispute over the mosque could further sour already difficult relations between Germany and Turkey. On Friday, Berlin rejected the Turkish criticism of the mosque.
“I would like to clearly reject statements that obviously aim to deny the right of people in Germany to freely exercise their religion and limit their right to freedom of expression,” said a spokesman for the German foreign ministry . “How, where, when and in which manner people worship is not a matter for the state.”
Germany has about 4 million Muslims, of whom about 3 million are of Turkish origin. They are served by Ditib, Germany’s biggest association of mosques. Deutsche Welle, a German public broadcaster that publishes in 30 languages, said its Arabic article on the opening of the mosque drew 1.7 million clicks by last Monday afternoon, and provoked many angry responses.