Burqas banned at Germany’s first liberal mosque

Sunnis and Shiites, gays and straights, all welcome at new Berlin prayer center, says female founder, who will preach at Friday’s opening

Seyran Ates’ vision of a liberal mosque where all Muslims can pray together — women and men, Sunni and Shiite, straight and gay — is almost a reality, and the 54-year-old daughter of Turkish guest workers in Germany is ecstatic as she enters the light-flooded room undergoing its final touches.

I couldn’t be more euphoric, it’s a dream come true,” Ates said with a smile as she touched the white carpet that three Turkish workers were laying out in the freshly painted room

Ates, a well-known women’s rights activist and lawyer, has fought for eight years to establish a place of prayer for progressive Muslims in Germany where they can leave their religious conflicts behind and focus on their shared Islamic values. The mosque, which opens Friday, will be the first of its kind for liberal Muslims in Germany, Ates said.

This project was long overdue,” she said in an interview this week. “There’s so much Islamist terror and so much evilness happening in the name of my religion … it’s important that we, the modern and liberal Muslims, also show our faces in public.”

The mosque is named Ibn-Rushd-Goethe-Mosque, combining the names of medieval Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd and German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe. It is located on a busy shopping street in the immigrant neighborhood of Moabit, which is dotted with Indian and Vietnamese restaurants and Middle Eastern cafes.

Visitors looking for a minaret or trying to follow the call of the muezzin will be searching in vain. The mosque occupies a big room on the third floor of an old Lutheran church.

“To get started, we’ve rented this room for one year,” Ates said.

More than 4 million Muslims live in Germany, the majority from Turkey but also from the Balkans, the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Indeed the mosque, Ates told Germany’s Spiegel, will not be open to women wearing the Nikab or Burka. Asked why not, she replied, “For security reasons and because it is our conviction that full veil has nothing to do with religion but is a political statement.”

“There won’t be any hate preaching against democracy here,” Ates added, in her AP interview. Instead, followers can express doubt about their beliefs and approach their religion with sense and reason instead of blind devotion, she said.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/burqas-are-banned-at-germanys-first-liberal-mosque/

A police car is parked in front of the [b]St. Johannis Protestant church which houses the Ibn Rushd-Goethe-mosque [/b]in Berlin on June 16, 2017..imagine a church housing a mosque...can a mosque house a church

Police officers are posted at the entrance of the Ibn Rushd-Goethe-mosque in the St. Johannis Protestant church in Berlin

Can't believe I wasted my time on this thread.

AlexisM16:


Please, get your bigotry out of this place. Advanced folks are looking for world peace, some third-world person is screaming blue murder.

Newsflash!!! Those that gave you your religion are asking you to be human enough to overlook so many things in those books and you're being heady about it.

LOL, this post of yours is a pure case of being more Catholic than the pope. Get over yourself and live and let live.

yea i knew someone was gonna cry....well,am not one of those who are naive...i guess you dont know whats going on around the world?i asked a question..[b].can a mosque allow a church to be in the same building with them?[/b]and your talking of bigotry..[b].humans enough to overlook what?why do you think police cars are there??[/b]to prevent someone from killing everyone one of them..very soon the woman would get death threats..sometimes the way people reason makes my head spin..the christians want to live with everyone..can you say the same for the other religion?you think its because in nigeria they slaughter christians and they do nothing right...we all know the so called liberal mosque wont last,because very soon afatwa will be issued and there will be calls for them to be killed..theres a religious war going on around the world and i guess your too blinded by your own bigotry and political correctness to see whats right infront of you.i will never give anyone my right cheek..READ THE NEWS MAN!!!

i wonder what you know about world peace MR THIRD WORLD boy..

newsflash!!! there are lots of people holier that the POPE..capish