SHARE
COPY LINK

ISLAM

Rioting breaks out in Malmö suburb

Scores of young people rioted on Thursday night in Rosengård, the Malmö suburb in which tensions have been running high since the recent closure of an Islamic cultural centre.

Rioting breaks out in Malmö suburb

Some 100 youths ran amok for the second straight night, setting cars and garbage bins ablaze and throwing stones at police, police said.

“We’ve had a very difficult evening. There have been fires burning since this afternoon in garbage bins and cars, there’s extensive damage to public property, and there’s been stonethrowing and bomb threats against police,” police spokeswoman Ewa-Gun Westford told AFP.

One person was arrested during the riots, she said.

Westford said the troubles were linked to the recent closure of an Islamic cultural centre in Malmö’s heavily-immigrant populated neighbourhood Rosengård.

The owner of the building wanted to use the space for other purposes, and the Islamic centre, which housed a mosque among other things, moved out and handed over the keys.

But a group of young people squatted the office space on November 24th, and police intervened early this week to remove the occupants and empty the offices.

Police guarded the location until Wednesday, and once they left youths tried to occupy the building again.

Riots broke out on Wednesday night, when youths set fires in the area and threw stones and bottles at police. Seventeen youths were detained during those clashes.

“The origin of the riots is the occupation of the building. But that’s not really the reason now, now other troublemakers have just joined in, taking advantage of the situation,” Westford said.

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.

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

SHOW COMMENTS