Author: Jeffrey Fleishman
Publication: Los Angeles Times
Date: March 21, 2004
In Germany, Mosque-Building Boom
Regarded With Fear
The chink and scrape of stonecutters
echo through the gray-domed mosque that rises like a glimmer of misplaced
architecture in a city where the Muslim call to prayer is a widening whisper.
Dusted in marble, workmen scurry in the muted glow of stained glass. Some
paint Quranic verses on the walls; others make last-minute alterations
to golden-tipped minarets pricking a drizzly skyline. Anxious Berliners
sometimes peek into the courtyard, where Ali Gulcek, a husky, nimble man,
assures them his religion is not a threat.
"I need to enlighten the Germans
so their prejudice of Islam will go away," said Gulcek, a German citizen
born to Turkish parents whose Muslim organization is building the mosque.
"Our mosque will be completed in May. We've wanted a legitimate mosque
for so long. For years, we've been meeting in back yards and basements.
We don't want to hide anymore."
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.
Like the cultural battles over allowing
Muslim women to wear head scarves in European schools, mosques are another
indication that immigration is transforming social, religious and aesthetic
landscapes. Staccato Turkish and throaty Arabic syllables whirl amid European
vernaculars, and where once there was a German bakery, there is now a Moroccan
kebab stand. In some bookshops, the Quran is as prominent as the Bible,
and Muslim worry beads sometimes rattle alongside rosaries.
Signs Of Change
Mosques are landmarks of faith.
But in Europe they also are symbols of change that can instigate fear,
especially as congregations at Christian churches steadily decline on a
continent with the fastest-aging population in the world. A mosque often
means a neighborhood is no longer what it was. Skin hues are darker, customs
different, and society's failure at integration is laid bare.
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.
"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."
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.
Building Relations
"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."
