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ISLAM

Norway Muslims face mosque-burning threat

An anonymous group has threatened to unleash a campaign of mosque burnings across Norway, in an email sent last week to the World Islamic Mission Mosque.

Published: 24 September 2013 09:19 CEST
Norway Muslims face mosque-burning threat
Central Jamaat-e Ahl-e Sunnat - Anders Bettum
"Before 2013 is over, all mosques in Norway be burned to the ground,” the email read. “We are a group of men who have planned this for seven years.” 
 
Ghulam Sarwar, Chairman of the Norway branch of Jamaat Ahle Sunnat, an international Muslim organisation, dismissed the threat.
 
“I think this is just some crazies who want attention,” he told TV2.  
 
But the email was one of a several anti-Muslim actions that took place over the last week, leading Oslo Police  to arrange an emergency meeting with the country’s Islamic Council on Monday. 

On Friday morning, before Muslims came to pray, a huge banner of a sausage was erected outside a mosque in Fredrikstad, with the inscription "Always a wiener for a Muslim" written on it. 

Then on Saturday, a severed pig’s head was found outside Norway's largest mosque, Central Jamaat-e Ahl-e Sunnat, in Oslo.
 
“Many people were very angry and I am also angry,” said  Mohamed Hassan, a Somali-Norwegian who was one of those who found the head. “I would never do something like that to others where they pray. They are insulting other peoples’ religion.” 
 
“This is a result of attitudes that we have seen building for a long time,” Mehtab Afsar,  the Islamic Council's secretary general, said. “There is a sense of fear among our members who believe that this is starting to get a little serious.” 
 

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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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