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ISLAM

Unrest continues near vacated Malmö mosque

Fresh disturbances erupted on Wednesday evening near the basement location which had previously served as a mosque in Malmö's Rosengård district.

Published: 18 December 2008 07:15 CET
Unrest continues near vacated Malmö mosque

Fireworks were aimed at police and several fires were lit when police arrived to blockade the basement office with containers.

Tensions in the area were still high as of 12.30am Thursday morning, according to police in Skåne.

One man was arrested during the evening on suspicions of preparing to commit assault. Three other men and boys were also detained.

The youngest, born in 1992, was taken home to his parents.

The police’s main goal for the evening was to ensure that emergency crews could perform their duties and extinguish the fires which continued to burn in the area.

More than ten fires were lit over the course of the evening.

The basement offices, which had previously served as a mosque for the Islamiska kulturföreningen (‘Islamic Cultural Association’), had been occupied since November 24th to protest against the landlord’s decision not to renew the association’s lease for the space, which it had held for the past 15 years.

On Monday, police forcibly removed the remaining three protesters from the space in front of a crowd of angry onlookers.

Emotions have been running high since the forced evacuation, resulting in sporadic disturbances throughout the week.

ISLAM

Mosques in Cologne to start broadcasting the call to prayer every Friday

The mayor of Cologne has announced a two-year pilot project that will allow mosques to broadcast the call to prayer on the Muslim day of rest each week.

Published: 11 October 2021 10:28 CEST
Mosques in Cologne to start broadcasting the call to prayer every Friday
The DITIP mosque in Cologne. Photo: dpa | Henning Kaiser

Mosques in the city of the banks of the Rhine will be allowed to call worshippers to prayer on Fridays for five minutes between midday and 3pm.

“Many residents of Cologne are Muslims. In my view it is a mark of respect to allow the muezzin’s call,” city mayor Henriette Reker wrote on Twitter.

In Muslim-majority countries, a muezzin calls worshippers to prayer five times a day to remind people that one of the daily prayers is about to take place.

Traditionally the muezzins would call out from the minaret of the mosque but these days the call is generally broadcast over loudspeakers.

Cologne’s pilot project would permit such broadcasts to coincide with the main weekly prayer, which takes place on a Friday afternoon.

Reker pointed out that Christian calls to prayer were already a central feature of a city famous for its medieval cathedral.

“Whoever arrives at Cologne central station is welcomed by the cathedral and the sound of its church bells,” she said.

Reker said that the call of a muezzin filling the skies alongside church bells “shows that diversity is both appreciated and enacted in Cologne”.

Mosques that are interested in taking part will have to conform to guidelines on sound volume that are set depending on where the building is situated. Local residents will also be informed beforehand.

The pilot project has come in for criticism from some quarters.

Bild journalist Daniel Kremer said that several of the mosques in Cologne were financed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “a man who opposes the liberal values of our democracy”, he said.

Kremer added that “it’s wrong to equate church bells with the call to prayer. The bells are a signal without words that also helps tell the time. But the muezzin calls out ‘Allah is great!’ and ‘I testify that there is no God but Allah.’ That is a big difference.”

Cologne is not the first city in North Rhine-Westphalia to allow mosques to broadcast the call to prayer.

In a region with a large Turkish immigrant community, mosques in Gelsenkirchen and Düren have been broadcasting the religious call since as long ago as the 1990s.

SEE ALSO: Imams ‘made in Germany’: country’s first Islamic training college opens its doors

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