Taboo-breaking magnanimous mosque opens in Berlin
German-Turkish lawyer, author and romantic Seyran Ates readies for an initial Friday request during a Ibn Rushd-Goethe-mosque. Photo: AFP
BERLIN: With a goal to widespread a magnanimous form of Islam, a mosque where group and women urge side by side has non-stop a doors in Berlin, finish with womanlike imams.
The Arabic word “Allahu Akbar” (‘God is great’) resonated by a swarming Ibn Rushd Goethe Mosque on Friday, as Malaysian-American Ani Zonneveld, one of a world’s few womanlike imams, launched a call to prayer.
Then one of a founders of a new place of worship, counsel and women’s rights romantic Seyran Ates, non-stop a eventuality with difference of acquire before Christian and Jewish guest and a vast media contingent.
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“We wish to send a vigilance opposite apprehension and a injustice of a religion,” pronounced Turkish-born Ates, 54, dressed in a prolonged white robe. “We wish to rehearse a sacrament together.”
Ates — no foreigner to violation taboos, carrying called for a “sexual revolution” in a Muslim universe – vowed she would not concede ultra-conservatives “to sack me of my right to be Muslim”.
Kneeling on immature carpets, a true – group and women, side by side – bent to Makkah for a normal request as a imam spoke in German.
Some of a women wore veils or conduct coverings, others did not.
The new mosque, a 88th in a German capital, is located in a rented room on a third building of a Protestant Johanniskirche building.
All Muslims – Sunni or Shia, Alawite or Sufi – are acquire in a mosque named after one of Germany’s biggest writers, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and 12th-century Islamic academician Ibn Rushd, also famous as Averroes.
The 7 first members pronounced they wish to open their request gymnasium to all groups, including gays and lesbians.
“This mosque allows Muslims to conclude themselves in a new way,” pronounced co-founder and German Islam academician Abdel-Hakim Ourghi.
He combined that “we will try to depoliticise Islam”, as a sacrament was being ripped by opposition domestic movements. “Because sacrament is a private matter.”
Police stood ensure outward a opening of a building. The founders pronounced they had not perceived any threats or insults, though that they entirely approaching not everybody would be happy.
Germany, with some 4 million Muslims, has been a aim of jihadist attacks, a deadliest final Dec when a lorry tore by a Berlin Christmas marketplace throng murdering 12 people.
The attainment of some-more than one million refugees, many from especially Muslim countries, given 2015 has worsened a fears of some Germans.
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Ates — who has campaigned opposite forced marriages, domestic assault and supposed “honour killings” among Muslim migrants – pronounced a plan was 8 years in a making.
“Many left along a way,” she said. “They told us it was dangerous, that they were afraid.”
Elham Manea, a Swiss domestic scientist of Yemeni background, pronounced a time had come for change, with other supposed magnanimous mosques carrying also non-stop in a United States, Britain and Switzerland.
The Berlin mosque, financed by private donations, is located in a Berlin district of Moabit, that has a vast newcomer population.
It was in this community that Tunisian Anis Amri, a Christmas marketplace attacker, busy a radical mosque that has given been closed.
Article source: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1438817/taboo-breaking-liberal-mosque-opens-berlin/