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ISLAM

Islamic school closed for ‘endangering children’

A private Islamic primary school in Vienna's Brigittenau district has been shut down as the city council believes its students’ welfare was endangered, the Kurier newspaper reports.

Published: 23 January 2015 10:55 CET
Islamic school closed for 'endangering children'
Photo: meinbezirk.at

This comes after a young girl was knocked over by a classmate and seriously bruised her forehead. The headmistress did not call an ambulance and only reported the incident to the police the following day – when the girl still had significant swelling on her head.

When she was challenged about this she said that protecting her pupils’ parents is a priority for her – especially as many of them are originally from Chechnya and do not have health insurance.

She said that the girl’s mother had taken her daughter to the doctor herself.

The school board said that the headmistress had banned any of her teaching staff from cooperating with local authorities, even if a child was injured. She wanted everything to be handled internally, so as not to upset the children's parents.

The school, which is run by an organization called Zukunft für alle, rejected allegations that the children were in any danger and said it would challenge the school board’s ruling.

Chairwoman Silia Kandil told the Kurier that unless it is a medical emergency, parents have the right to decide whether to take their child to the doctor or not. She added that she had not instructed the headmistress not to call an ambulance, and that she seemed to be suffering from "burn out". 

Parents will now have to look for new schools for their children, and many have complained that the school board is discriminating against Muslims. The school had 33 pupils.

In 2013 the school was criticised for “a lack of moral reliability” by the school board after it failed to pay for textbooks it had ordered.

Last year another Islamic school, the Saudi School Vienna, also made headlines after school history books were allegedly found to contain anti-Semitic texts.

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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