Islamophobia Watch

The four young men look unremarkable in Cologne's downtown pedestrian zone. Now and then they press a pamphlet into somebody's hand with a smile.

These young men handing out flyers work for an organization called "Pro Cologne". They are gathering support in the otherwise liberal-minded and open city of Cologne to protest an enormous mosque slated for construction in the district of Ehrenfeld. Around 300 members of Pro Cologne have collected more than 20,000 signatures, and a few unsavory characters on the German far right hope to use their success as a way to win seats in state parliaments.

With a new political party called "Pro NRW" (Pro North-Rhine Westphalia), stemming from the Pro Cologne movement, two leaders named Markus Beisicht and Manfred Rouhs want to win enough votes to enter the state parliament in 2010. About a dozen Pro Cologne spinoffs are already preparing local campaigns across the state – in Gelsenkirchen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Essen and Bottrop, among other places. Where no new mosques are being planned, Beisicht says, the party will just fight smaller existing mosques.

The methods of the anti-mosque movement have been studied by far-right groups in other countries, like Austria's FPÖ ("Austrian Freedom Party") and Belgium's Vlaams Belang ("Flemish Interest") party. In November, Markus Beisicht gave a special presentation on the Cologne movement to FPÖ members in Graz. "We will lead our fight across Europe," he told them, "whether it's in Graz, Cologne or Vienna." He's invited friends from the FPÖ, Vlaams Belang and France's National Front to a big "Anti-Islam Congress" in Cologne next September.

Spiegel Onlne, 3 January 2008

BERLIN – German Muslim groups on Wednesday accused a senior politician in Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party of stirring up hostility against foreigners in a bid to win a regional election.

Roland Koch of the Christian Democrats (CDU) has focused his campaign for re-election as premier of the prosperous western state of Hesse on crime, in particular offences by foreigners. He reacted to an assault on a German pensioner by two youths – one Greek, one Turkish – in a Munich railway station by saying Germany had too many young foreign criminals and urging an end to "multicultural" coddling of immigrants.

The brutal attack, caught on a surveillance camera and played repeatedly on German television in recent days, prompted calls for tougher sentencing, boot camps and even the deportation of criminals of foreign origins.

"The debate is shameful and scandalous," head of the TGD Turkish Communities in Germany Kenan Kolat told Reuters on Wednesday, saying the deportation issue was "political arson". "This is pure populism," he said, urging Merkel to speak out against it.

Germany is home to about 15 million people with an immigrant background – about 18 percent of the population – and Merkel has talked often about the need to integrate the country's 3.2 million Muslims, most of whom are of Turkish origin. But she says immigrants must accept German culture and won rapturous applause at a conference of her mostly Roman Catholic party last month for saying mosques should not dwarf churches.

Reuters, 2 January 2008

Update:  See also criticisms by Stephen Kramer of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, who has said that Koch's campaign "can hardly be distinguished from the NPD," a neo-Nazi party.

BERLIN — German Muslims have hit out at Chancellor Angela Merkel for suggesting that mosque minarets should not be higher than church steeples, saying her provocative remarks were politically motivated.

"We must be on guard against sparking artificial discussions for political purposes which have little connection with reality," Bekir Alboga, spokesman for the Coordination Council of Muslims, an umbrella organization for Muslims in Germany, said.

Merkel, a Lutheran pastor's daughter, told a congress of her conservative Christian Democrats that "we must take care that mosque cupolas are not built demonstratively higher than church steeples".

Merkel's fellow conservatives in Bavaria have been saying for months that minarets should not dwarf steeples. Local residents are up in arms about plans to build mosques in Berlin, Munich and Cologne. Christians in Cologne do not want the city's skyline – now dominated by one of the world's largest cathedrals – to be altered by two tall minarets.

Islamophobic remarks have gained momentum after Merkel's conservative party came to power in November 2005. In statements endorsed by Merkel's party last June, Germany's top cardinal warned against "uncritical tolerance" which could lead to Islam enjoying equal standing with Christianity in the country.

Islam Online, 7 December 2007

BERLIN — Members of a German neo-Nazi party demonstrated Saturday in Frankfurt against the construction of a mosque in an area which already has two.

About 200 people marched shouting "Stop the Islamisation of Germany," said Joerg Krebs, a spokesman for the local branch of the NPD, a neo-Nazi party. "We don’t want a big mosque in Hausen," a Frankfurt quarter, "as there are already two mosques."

The mosque is expected to cost about 10 million euros. Germany is home to some 3.4 million Muslims and there are 159 mosques scattered over the country. Some 900 people in the city held a counter-demonstration Saturday against the neo-Nazi rally.

European Jewish Press, 20 October 2007

See also Watchblog Islamophobie, 21 October 2007

From London's docklands to the rolling hills of Tuscany, from southern Austria to Amsterdam and Cologne, the issue of Islamic architecture and its impact on citadels of "western civilisation" is increasingly contentious.

The far right is making capital from Islamophobia by focusing on the visible symbols of Islam in Europe. In Switzerland it is the far-right SVP that is setting the terms of the debate.

Next door in Austria the far right leader Jörg Haider is also calling for a ban in his province of Carinthia, even though there are few Muslims and no known plans for mosques. "Carinthia," he said, "will be a pioneer in the battle against radical Islam for the protection of our dominant western culture."

In Italy the mayors of Bologna and Genoa last month cancelled or delayed planning permission for mosques after a vociferous campaign by the far-right Northern League, one of whose leaders, Roberto Calderoli, threatened to stage a "day of pork" to offend Muslims and to take pigs to "defile" the site of the proposed mosque in Bologna.

While the far right makes the running, their noisy campaign is being supported more quietly by mainstream politicians and some Christian leaders. And on the left pro-secularist and anti-clericalist sentiment is also frequently ambivalent about Islamic building projects.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne has voiced his unease over a large new mosque being built for the city's 120,000 Muslims in the Rhineland Roman Catholic stronghold. A similar scheme in Munich has also faced local protests.

The Bishop of Graz in Austria has been more emphatic. "Muslims should not build mosques which dominate town's skylines in countries like ours," said Bishop Egon Kapellari.

Guardian, 11 October 2007

"'No we are not racist. It is just that we need to preserve and protect our German identity and culture, and our Judeo-Christian heritage. The more Turkish Muslims come here, the less we know who and what we are. We cannot allow our identity and culture to be confused like that...'

"The gem quoted above was the comment made by a rather ordinary German at a public debate on Islam and the Rule of Law in Berlin; and just one week after an equally gruelling series of public talks in Amsterdam I could not help but feel as if Europe's slide to the right is accelerating faster than ever.

"That a public forum on Islam and the rule of law could degenerate into a senseless round of Turk-bashing speaks volumes about the shallowness of public debate in some parts of Europe these days.... What was most alarming, however, was the manner in which a host of complex issues and dilemmas were reduced and pathologised to a single problem: The Muslims and their non-Western culture and belief system."

Farish A. Noor at The Other Malaysia, 11 September 2007 

In the London Evening Standard (5 September 2007) Anne McElvoy expresses her admiration for the repressive methods pursued by Angela Merkel's government in response to the threat of terrorism:

"Germany has a different approach to its Muslim immigrants than Britain. There is less emphasis on a 'hearts and minds' campaign; her hardline interior minister Wolfgang Schauble ended up in constitutional hot water for suggesting that if a suspected terrorist was wrongly killed, it was preferable to risking the wider loss of innocent life....

"What is striking is the difference in tone. The vast efforts of the Government in Britain since the first bomb attacks have gone into improving community relations, attempting to find Muslim leaders who can separate potential extremists from the mainstream. Mr Brown has reversed some of the more confrontational Blairite policies, like the ostracism of the Muslim Council of Britain. Borderline organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir remain unbanned.

"In Germany and France, facing increasingly agitated Muslim populations, this would be unthinkable. Vast numbers of suspects are kept under the equivalent of control orders, deportations of troublemakers are more swift and frequent.... Germany, as one senior minister told me recently, does not believe in a 'softly softly' solution. 'Look where that got you', he said."

In many Western cities, plans to erect mosques often stir more passion than any other local issue – and politicians are leaping into the fray. The Economist reports.

COLOGNE, Germany – Never mind that a local brothel claiming to be Europe's largest calls itself the Pasha and sports an ersatz arabesque theme. Some residents of this ancient city on the banks of the Rhine see the brothel as a shining example of their tolerance. But what irks them is that some Muslims want to build a mosque, complete with a dome and minarets.

The residents complain that the minarets would clash with the towering spires of the city's celebrated 13th-Century cathedral. But as the debate heats up, it has revealed a cultural schism that goes much deeper than any disagreement over architectural aesthetics.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner, spiritual leader of the city's Catholics and a close friend of Pope Benedict XVI, has said that the proposed mosque leaves him with an "uneasy feeling." Monsignor Rainer Fischer, another Catholic clergyman in the city, said: "The idea of building the mosque has brought up a number of issues that have always been there but were submerged. Now they are out in the open."

These issues include Germany's fears about the rising tide of Muslim immigration across Europe, frustrations over the failure to integrate Germany's 2.7 million Turkish immigrants and gnawing doubts about whether the Turks and other Muslim immigrants truly want to integrate into a Western society.

"The mosque is not a symbol of integration, it's a symbol of isolation, the symbol of an isolated enclave of Oriental culture," said Joerg Uckermann, deputy mayor of the Ehrenfeld district and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. "I think the minarets are a sign of sharia" – Islamic law – "and I do not want that here. This is a Christian city," Uckermann said, openly expressing what many residents would say only in private.

The ferocity of the opposition has come as a shock to members of the Turkish community. It also angers them. "They are saying that this is a Christian nation, and there is no space for any other religion? This is against all the principles of freedom and democracy," said Yildirim.

Detroit Free Press, 22 August 2007