Not in My Backyard, Say an Increasing Number of Germans.

[Macs.]

DOMES AND MINARETS?

Not in My Backyard, Say an Increasing Number of Germans

By Jochen Bölsche (boelsche@gmx.de)

The planned construction of over 180 mosques in Germany is mobilizing right-wing xenophobes but also an increasing number of leftist critics. They fear the Muslim places of worship will facilitate the establishment of a completely parallel society.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1056367,00.jpg

The issue at hand wasn't the construction of a missile base or a new nuclear power plant. Yet the media reported "turmoil" and an "enraged" audience in a school auditorium in Ehrenfeld, a district of the German city of Cologne. The mood was almost comparable to that of the protest gatherings once held against nuclear missiles or reactors.

Instead the outrage was directed at a huge mosque planned for the area. Still, the words used by the project's opponents called to mind the protests of earlier times. "The minarets even look like missiles," railed one woman. A man said the mosque's dome reminded him "of a nuclear plant."

Ill will over mosques like the one being built in Cologne is spreading rapidly throughout Germany, often to the surprise of local politicians. For a long time the establishment of Muslim prayer rooms provoked little protest, housed as they were mostly in residential buildings, shops and back courtyards. Recently, though, there has been an increasing number of acts of protest, some violent. Molotov cocktails were thrown through mosque windows in the Bavarian town of Lauingen; Christians set protest crosses inscribed with "Terra christiana est," or this is Christian land, on the grounds of a mosque in Hanover; and construction trailers went up in flames in the Berlin district of Pankow.

The anti-Islam protest movement has also begun to spill over into city politics. In Cologne, for example, the extreme right anti-mosque initiative Pro Cologne captured five local government seats in recent elections. Now the group is aspiring to enter the national scene as Pro Germany, together with other like-minded organizations, some from the far-right fringe. Their approach follows the example of populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, whose anti-immigration party garnered a surprising degree of support before he was murdered in 2002.

In Germany there is also a market for these "single-issue parties," suggests trend researcher Adjiedj Bakas, who himself emigrated from Surinam to the Netherlands. In the populous Ruhr Valley region of western Germany the Voter Initiative Recklinghausen (whose acronym "WIR" is the German word for "we") has found resonance with its message. The group claims it is fighting against "creeping Islamization," and is allied in the local government with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), one of Germany's major political parties. WIR members say they aren't alone in their opposition to Islam and their concern "that in 20 years in Recklinghausen, as in all large German cities, the majority of the residents under the age of 40 will be Muslims." "Discomfort is already spreading in some parts of the city," says Georg Schliehe, a WIR representative on the local city council, "but policy, public authorities and scholars downplay the problem."

This burgeoning sentiment against mosques has no doubt been strengthened by the Islamist murders and suicide attacks that have also afflicted European cities in recent years. Some Muslims like Imran Sagir, director of a property development company specializing in mosques, say they can understand German citizens' fears. When you hear on the news about crimes committed in the name of Islam," he says, "who can blame people who don't want a mosque in the neighborhood?"

Wolfgang Huber, the head of Germany's Protestant Church and bishop for the states of Berlin and Brandenburg, names what he sees as one important cause for the increasing unease. He says there is an "obviously large-scale initiative" on the part of Islamic organizations to show their presence in as high-profile a way as possible and in as many places as possible. No fewer than 184 new mosques, some with domes and minarets, are currently being built or planned throughout Germany. That's considerably more than the 163 existing traditional mosques (along with around 2,600 prayer rooms mostly hidden within secular buildings).

And that appears to be only the start of an expected wider European mosque-building boom. One organization alone -- Ahmadiyya, a movement seen as an outsider community within Islam that the respected German weekly Die Zeit described as "something like the Jehovah's Witnesses among Muslims" -- has introduced a "100 mosque plan" for Germany.

Currently 25 percent of these projects have been completed.

More often than in the past, Muslim communities nowadays are trying to include Middle Eastern style minarets in their building projects. It's an addition that is rousing greater protest -- no matter where the mosque is getting built in Germany. "As soon as the foreignness is cemented in a structure like a mosque, the problems just multiply," says Christoph Dahling-Sander, the Protestant church's representative in the city of Hanover for matters concerning Islam.

There have been some notable exceptions, though. Residents in the far northern town of Rendsburg in the state of Schleswig-Holstein kept their famous northern German composure and a majority accepted the construction of a large mosque. But as a rule, when building plans for mosques become public, neighbors immediately mobilize with a laundry list of concerns about why they will be bad for the neighborhood. They fear parking shortages, plunging property values and noise pollution. Hoping to maintain a veneer of political correctness, local politicians with the traditional parties play down these concerns. But by doing so, they just create even greater opportunity for grassroots groups like the citizens' movement Pro Germany.

"Where this kind of gaudy Middle Eastern building goes up, with a dome and minarets, the next thing will be an application to the authorities for permission to do the call to prayer," a passage on the Pro Germany Web site reads. It's visions like this that are leading more and more Germans to see the construction of mosques as the expression of a "kind of land grab," observes Claus Leggewie, a political science professor at the University of Giessen in the western state of Hesse.

This impression is aggravated not only by right-wing agitators but also, according to Leggewie, by careless or sometimes even deliberately provocative statements by Muslim builders. Many seem to think like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In words spoken in 1997, Erdogan made mosque construction seem like part of a strategy of Islamization: "The minarets are our lances, the domes our helmets, the believers our army."

The names of some of the newly built mosques aren't exaclty in harmony with the reassuring "Islam is peace" slogan. Religious scholar Ursula Spuler-Stegemann at Germany's University of Marburg, among others, criticizes the fact that mosques are named after warlords like Fatih Sultan Mehmet, conqueror of Constantinople. "That can only be an agenda," she believes. "These Muslims don't just want to show their presence here, but also to strengthen and expand it."

Statements made by intellectuals like Spuler-Stegemann, who has also said that, "Islam has a problem with violence," underscore the fact that criticism of mosque construction is no longer exclusively the domain of mindless xenophobes. And it would be a mistake, offical representatives on immigration issues from Germany's states warned a recent joint convention, to sweepingly dismiss mosque critics as being right-wing extremists.

In the case of the controversy over the mosque planned for Cologne's Ehrenfeld neighborhood, the right-wing Pro protesters have indeed been pushed into the margins. Their complaints have been drowned out by more high-profile statements coming from prominent leftists and liberals including German Jewish journalist Ralph Giordano, women's rights activist Alice Schwarzer and investigative reporter Günter Wallraff, who have all spoken out against the mosque. Representatives of Germany's large churches have increasingly added their voices to the criticism as well. The "dishonest dialogue" with Islam described in SPIEGEL's pages in December 2001 -- in which church representatives simply ignored scandalous and unbearable aspects like persecution of Christians, discrimination against women, toleration of terror and "honor" killings for the sake of harmony -- is now a thing of the past.

In place of the "fairy tale that we're all 'children of Abraham'," in the words of Leggewie, the churches are now making an effort not to entangle themselves in finding contrived common ground with Islam. Instead they are trying to find areas in which they differ -- and this applies particularly to the construction of mosques.
More:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,565146,00.html

[The Balkan]

Heh, it's the same story everywhere. In St. Louis there's about 50,000 Bosniaks and they just built a minaret there, and most of the people have never even seen one let alone had one in the next neighborhood over, so they're afraid Lol. Either they're acusing us of gun runing and gangbanging or Islamicizing their city. The first one unfortunetly has some validity in those areas, the second, not really. We could care less what other people's views are.

http://www.asiseeitnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/islamictower3-thumb.jpg
http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x105/newsbosnia/st-louis-bosnian-minaret.jpg

Although to an extent I understand their ..shall we say anxiety.

Alot of the Muslims in UK and such seem to think they can do whatever they want and when they build a mosque the whole area just magicly becomes little Arabia and they can do with it what they please.

[toki]

There's an islamic prayer center the block next to mine and some african free church in my backyard. I can definitely understand the problems. I have no problem with a mosque in general or a prayer room, but i don't like the idea, that the architecture is implanted, where it doesn't belong. (Btw the african church is a pain in the ass on sundays, the muslims are absolutely quite).

I compare it with this one: There was a house in our city center, prominent next to a place painted in Bavarian colours. It had a bavarian Bierkeller ('pub') in it. There was such an uproar that the owner had to remove the bavarian colours. It was against our tradition. It ruined the whole place.

Same here, let them have their houses, but do not create architecture that doesn't reflect our place. The churches we have are often centuries old. The city grew around them, not the other way around.

My problem hasn't to do with the idea of those buildings, but the architectural mark they leave.

I know others really hate the general idea of a mosque around, i don't.

[Dercius]

The moment its allowed to construct a Catholic Cathedral, a Protestant Church, or anything like that in Ryhad or Meca in Saudi Arabia, they are welcome to do the same in my backyard. Reciprocity, thats the whole problem here.

[TR1]

A cathedral in the middle of a middle eastern city would look as funky as a minaret in a German nation. Can't say I'm for such constructions.

[Laworkerbee]

Why is it that a German concerned about an invading culture that carries with it a backwards religion is considered a "right-wing xenophobe" that title seems a bit unfair.

[Dercius]

I mean, the moment there is religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, I will accept them building mosques with their petrodollars on my backyard.

[The Balkan]

The moment its allowed to construct a Catholic Cathedral, a Protestant Church, or anything like that in Ryhad or Meca in Saudi Arabia, they are welcome to do the same in my backyard. Reciprocity, thats the whole problem here.

Why Saudi Arabia? I mean seems like you're trying to pick the extreme to make your point. That's like talking about putting a Mosque in the heart of Rome or Vatican City, not Germany. My country has churches, mosques and a old synagogue all in the same area, and Sarajevo is definetly a majority Muslim city now and historicly the center of Bosnian Muslims.


Mosque, Ashkenazi Synogoge, Orthodox Church and Sarajevo Cathedral ("Cathedral Of Jesus") all in the same pic.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/27/90882425_a9482de3cf_b.jpg



Here as well.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2351/2311461098_db7b6fe49c.jpg


Does the combination of all of these look "funky"? Lol.

[toki]

I live 300 m next to the oldest building in the city "old St. Martin". 990 years old. The islamic prayer center i posted earlier is merely 50 m from it. And it's ok in my book. I don't see any problem. If they would build a mosque next to the little church, there would be space, i would be pissed off (nobody would allow it though... anyway). I'm not even arguing against muslims in this context, just about respect to the architecture.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Duesseldorf_Alt_St_Martin_2.jpg/748px-Duesseldorf_Alt_St_Martin_2.jpg

[Herman the II]

I might think different about mosques if they would pray and preach in German and not Arabic or Turkish, also clerics that actually studied (in a scientific way on a German university) Religion would also help.

Off course Muslims have a right for own mosques but for now I can understand the concerns of my fellow countrymen. There are enough ways to stop those buildings...

[IDF_TANKER]

There's an islamic prayer center the block next to mine and some african free church in my backyard. I can definitely understand the problems. I have no problem with a mosque in general or a prayer room, but i don't like the idea, that the architecture is implanted, where it doesn't belong. (Btw the african church is a pain in the ass on sundays, the muslims are absolutely quite).

I compare it with this one: There was a house in our city center, prominent next to a place painted in Bavarian colours. It had a bavarian Bierkeller ('pub') in it. There was such an uproar that the owner had to remove the bavarian colours. It was against our tradition. It ruined the whole place.

Same here, let them have their houses, but do not create architecture that doesn't reflect our place. The churches we have are often centuries old. The city grew around them, not the other way around.

My problem hasn't to do with the idea of those buildings, but the architectural mark they leave.

I know others really hate the general idea of a mosque around, i don't.

Really? They have first prayer is around 4:00 AM and moazin calls everybody for the prayer using megaphones. You don't hear it?

[Niels]

Off course Muslims have a right for own mosques but for now I can understand the concerns of my fellow countrymen. There are enough ways to stop those buildings...
No they don't. Your country, your rules.

[Laworkerbee]

Really? They have first prayer is around 4:00 AM and moazin calls everybody for the prayer using megaphones. You don't hear it?

Toki is a heavy sleeper and probably mumbles the call to prayer in his sleep with a German accent.

Allah u Akbar, Allah u Akbar, Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah - Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah, Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullaah, Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullaah, Hayya la-s-saleah - Hayya la-s-saleah , Hayya la-l-faleah - Hayya la-l-faleah, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha ill Allah rofl

In all seriousness, I don't think Toki was talking about a Masjid, but a prayer room which are much more nondescript, you would never know one is around half the time.

[toki]

Why Saudi Arabia? I mean seems like you're trying to pick the extreme to make your point. That's like talking about putting a Mosque in the heart of Rome or Vatican City, not Germany. My country has churches, mosques and a old synagogue all in the same area, and Sarajevo is definetly a majority Muslim city now and historicly the center of Bosnian Muslims.

Why? Germany has a muslim 'tradition' of maybe 40 years and a christian of nearly 2000 years - yes as long as the religion exists. In the middle ages the Holy Roman Empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire) (later) of German Nation pretty much created a christian axis. It's not an import religion, christian history was also made here. Protestantism is a German invention if you want. Why would you pick out Rome as a city?

[Herman the II]

Really? They have first prayer is around 4:00 AM and moazin calls everybody for the prayer using megaphones. You don't hear it?


Moazin? Not allowed in Germany.., the Police would turn up because of disturbance. Nobody is allowed to shout around with a megaphone at 4:00 AM.
Only exclusion is the church-bell.... :) (after endless lawsuits)

[toki]

Toki is a heavy sleeper and probably mumbles the call to prayer in his sleep with a German accent.

Allah u Akbar, Allah u Akbar, Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah - Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah, Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullaah, Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullaah, Hayya la-s-saleah - Hayya la-s-saleah , Hayya la-l-faleah - Hayya la-l-faleah, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha ill Allah rofl

In all seriousness, I don't think Toki was talking about a Masjid, but a prayer room which are much more nondescript, you would never know one is around half the time.

And i was serious, the islamic center is quite, the African christians on a sunday though make me want to throw stones. Damn loud, thank god they don't have their big party every sunday. They often fly in reverents from England. Actually i do not really know whate they actually represent, but they're really loud.

[Laworkerbee]

And i was serious, the islamic center is quite, the African christians on a sunday though make me want to throw stones. Damn loud, thank god they don't have their big party every sunday. They often fly in reverents from England. Actually i do not really know whate they actually represent, but they're really loud.

Yeah I visited such a center a few years ago in Northern California, it was in a shopping center and I was like wtf is this? It was real quiet, nothing like a masjid.

[johanness]

My country has churches, mosques and a old synagogue all in the same area, and Sarajevo is definetly a majority Muslim city now and historicly the center of Bosnian Muslims.


Here as well.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2351/2311461098_db7b6fe49c.jpg


Does the combination of all of these look "funky"? Lol.

Interesting. The photo was taken before the civil war between catholics, orthodox and moslems, or after it?

[California Joe]

It's all crazy talk.

Seriously though, at what point does a countries liberal immigration policies and their own fear of being seen as xenophobic etc contribute to their own downfall?

If you were a very patient and prolific type group, wouldn't you just bide your time, use the country you were nonviolently invading, and slowly take over?

[toki]

Yeah I visited such a center a few years ago in Northern California, it was in a shopping center and I was like wtf is this? It was real quiet, nothing like a masjid.

Yep, and herman is right anyway. Even if they had a real mosque with a minaret, they wouldn't be allowed to wake up people at night. "Noise pollution" is a heavily fought crime in Germany. Some people will call the police if you use a lawnmower on a sunday (ok, in some villages maybe).


It's all crazy talk.

Seriously though, at what point does a countries liberal immigration policies and their own fear of being seen as xenophobic etc contribute to their own downfall?

If you were a very patient and prolific type group, wouldn't you just bide your time, use the country you were nonviolently invading, and slowly take over?
Our immigration policy isn't even that liberal. We only let in millions of Russians because they're somewhow German and have the right to live here.
Which is nonsense imho, but that's another story. The muslims who live here came in one big wave in the sixties and seventes as a workforce and now live here anyway. A the moment, a big immigration religion is judaism if i'm corrrectly since the German-Russians who come here are often jewish. So the conception of milions of muslims coming is actually wrong. They came at one point and now live here and get more by just having kids, but there's no big flow. Russians though still flood in.

[The Balkan]

Why? Germany has a muslim 'tradition' of maybe 40 years and a christian of nearly 2000 years - yes as long as the religion exists. In the middle ages the Holy Roman Empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire) (later) of German Nation pretty much created a christian axis. It's not an import religion, christian history was also made here. Protestantism is a German invention if you want. Why would you pick out Rome as a city?

So do alot of other European countries. Becuz Germany still isn't the center of that religion and especialy not in it's strictest form, not today. You get what I'm saying. Where as Saudi Arabia is like the strictest most anal Muslims on Earth and it's seen as such a holy place blah blah.

So Rome is kind of the Christian equivilent. You wouldn't build a minaret in Vatican city right?

[The Balkan]

And i was serious, the islamic center is quite, the African christians on a sunday though make me want to throw stones. Damn loud, thank god they don't have their big party every sunday. They often fly in reverents from England. Actually i do not really know whate they actually represent, but they're really loud.

I think you can thank Americans for bringing that loud ass Southern tradition to them lolz. HALLELUYAH!!!!!!!! PRAISE GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ABABDBABABABDBABAB ABACCUSS! WOOOOHHHHAAAA!!!!!! I FEEL-AH TEH POW-AH

[The Balkan]

Interesting. The photo was taken before the civil war between catholics, orthodox and moslems, or after it?

Both are after. http://flickr.com/photos/48643730@N00/90882425/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pddstudio/2402407355/


Don't put to much stock in the religious aspect of that war. There was way more at work there then "hey lets kill the christian/muslim".

Nationality > Religion.

[Macs.]

I see the problem the following:

First of all, we are talking for a part about complete Non-Sense Mosques. How does a community of 200 Muslims in a large part of a town need a Mosque for 1 Million Euro ?

And it's not just about the grotesque architectur of such a building. These Mosque are often operated in foreign languages, helping sealing off the Muslim community even futher.

I don't fear so much a "terror threat", but I see this one step more to seal off from their host country. They don't even need to learn German to live here without problems, their daily life can be managed in their mother language.

And that gets even worse when they send their children to be schooled at these places.

What we need is less Religion. With Islam being one of the worst Religions at the moment, IN MY OPINION.

[toki]

I think you can thank Americans for bringing that loud ass Southern tradition to them lolz. HALLELUYAH!!!!!!!! PRAISE GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ABABDBABABABDBABAB ABACCUSS! WOOOOHHHHAAAA!!!!!! I FEEL-AH TEH POW-AH

No, they're not African American or seem to be in this tradition, probably the opposite. They're just Africans and a Christian community. Still the really put up the volume in my backyard.

[The Balkan]

No, they're not African American or seem to be in any tradition, probably the opposite. They're just Africans and a Christian community. Still the really put up the volume in my backyard.

I know, But alot of the Christian traditions were brought to them by American Christians to Africa. BTW when I said Americans I didn't man Black Americans, I meant all lol. Most of the South seems to do it. Ever seen Borat? LOL.

[INAT]

Why is it that a German concerned about an invading culture that carries with it a backwards religion is considered a "right-wing xenophobe" that title seems a bit unfair.


Hey Bee they call Serbs that want to keep Kosovo-Metohija
and protest against the mushrooming Saudi mosques ultra-nationlists
backward and wrong same tactic used here in this story.

This is what seems will happen more and more and is the result of
(no offense to anyone) a foreign and alien religion.On the flip side Germans seem to be known for xenophobia and being serious (again no offense to anyone) I remember when Germany hosted the cup there was
a story about that(Not my personal opinion I am simply basing it from that story I read so I could be off point).

[INAT]

Both are after. http://flickr.com/photos/48643730@N00/90882425/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pddstudio/2402407355/


Don't put to much stock in the religious aspect of that war. There was way more at work there then "hey lets kill the christian/muslim".

Nationality > Religion.


Wow Balkan this is one of those rare times in which I agree with you 100%. Think of the label "Christian" "Muslim" and "Catholic" as more of a bulls eye so each side knew whom to target.Religion was not anywhere close to the main cause of that war.

[The Balkan]

Wow Balkan this is one of those rare times in which I agree with you 100%. Think of the label "Christian" "Muslim" and "Catholic" as more of a bulls eye so each side knew whom to target.Religion was not anywhere close to the main cause of that war.

Heh, yea basicly. It was just a convinient way to identify and split the 3 groups up, who each had their own goal. Since most who fought for Croatia goals were Catholics, most who fought for Serbian/RS are Orthodox and most who fought for Bosnia were Muslim.

I remeber this reporter asked a fighter in Mostar if he was fighting for a "a Muslim state", he looked like he wanted to laugh at first. "We're fighting for Bosnia". But when most of your ally is Muslim and most of your enemy is Christian, it's obviosly gonna become a factor eventualy. Then the next scene is a Serbian doctor helping out wounded Bosniaks in the Mostar hospital without really any real equipment or supplies.

[toki]

On the flip side Germans seem to be known for xenophobia and being serious

Since we're in a more or less serious thread: This is BS. Germans are just like other central/northern Europeans. Not worse, not better. Since you mentioned the cup: Before the wc i saw a report about the bigger European leagues, and the most xenophobic fans were Spanish and Italian. Xenophobia is definitely not the worst here.

[California Joe]

I know, But alot of the Christian traditions were brought to them by American Christians to Africa. BTW when I said Americans I didn't man Black Americans, I meant all lol. Most of the South seems to do it. Ever seen Borat? LOL.

Why don't you stick to what you actually know something about dumbf*ck?

[The Balkan]

Why don't you stick to what you actually know something about dumbf*ck?

Like I said in the PM...chill...wasn't meant to offend anyone. I just parodied the evangelists like the other guy did the Islamic stuff.

Jesus christ chill. Cuz if i respond in any "mean" way I'll be the one banned not you lmao we all know that. *looks at my name*

[Calanen]

Since we're in a more or less serious thread: This is BS. Germans are just like other central/northern Europeans. Not worse, not better. Since you mentioned the cup: Before the wc i saw a report about the bigger European leagues, and the most xenophobic fans were Spanish and Italian. Xenophobia is definitely not the worst here.

The German community has the right to decide what it wants in its community, and how it wants its community to be.

[Xaito]

I'd be angry too if they wanted to build one in my town.
there's freedom of religion in Germany but it's still a christian country.
I think its important that German customs and morals aren't changed to suit a foreign culture/religion.

[toki]

The German community has the right to decide what it wants in its community, and how it wants its community to be.
But you missed my point.
I see Xenophobia as a negative trait. Anything with -phobia is negative. It's a weakness. It has nothing to do with a right to decide. You should make decisions by ratio, not phobia.

That's why i disagreed with his point, "Germany is known to be Xenophobic".
It's not, even when I actually disagree with a minaret in my neighbourhood. You can make this decision and still accept foreign religions or just foreigners.

Macs made a good point about a further division in society. That is a rational thought compared to a phobic idea of being overrun.

[Kilgor]

Excuse me if im wrong, but a Phobia, is a unwarranted fear. Islamic immigration, radicalization and terrorism is not a irrational fear. Its real, and of course should be of concern.

[toki]

Excuse me if im wrong, but a Phobia, is a unwarranted fear. Islamic immigration, radicalization and terrorism is not a irrational fear. Its real, and of course should be of concern.

Xenophobia is an uncontrollable fear of strangers/foreigners. Not of terrorism or islamism. So it's negative. It's a blunt fear. And so in my book a weakness, since it blocks your ratio.

[quinsen]

there's freedom of religion in Germany but it's still a christian country.

There are places where they'd call you a muslimhater (or even a nazi) if you say that in public. After that you'll keep your mouth shut and everything will go on as planned.
That is the political correctness bullsh1t these days in germany.

[Arvin]

Germany will be a Islamic Republic.Many Germans are converting to Islam.

http://uk.youtube.com/v/0SpqpGKp7ts

[toki]

Germany will be a Islamic Republic.Many Germans are converting to Islam.

http://uk.youtube.com/v/0SpqpGKp7ts

And when we're all muslim we'll nuke Amerika! wootwoot

[Arvin]

I was watching a report that more people attend mosque daily in Germany then in Iran.

[quinsen]

Germany will be a Islamic Republic.Many Germans are converting to Islam.

http://uk.youtube.com/v/0SpqpGKp7ts

They sound REALLY convinced.

[toki]

I was watching a report that more people attend mosque daily in Germany then in Iran.

Why do you have an Iranian avatar?
You should know more about Iran then. It's not that small.

[Macs.]

Oh Arvin, your intelligent input was really needed here.

You "saw somewhere" that there are more mosque goers in Germany then in Iran ? Who are you trying to kid ?

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1151850,00.jpg

There are less then 200.000 Mosque goers in Iran ?

And while we are at it. Mr. Iran. You are one of the many "Iran is such a nice country, and only ruled by a few numbnuts" - "I post pictures of Iran, it's such a nice country, no need to hate, we are like you"-crowd, you guys are always trying to impress anyone with how Modern and Atheist Iran is.

The realit is: People get executed over religious ****, your President wants to wipe off Isreal from the face of the planet. You ARE a islamist Nation. Credit where credit is due.

We do have some problems here, but 200.000 people going into a Mosque (In a Nation made of 82.000.000 People) is nowhere near a problem to a country where young girls get executed, beaten up and that is runned by a man who believes he is the new Messiah and wants to nuke Israel.

[INAT]

But you missed my point.
I see Xenophobia as a negative trait. Anything with -phobia is negative. It's a weakness. It has nothing to do with a right to decide. You should make decisions by ratio, not phobia.

That's why i disagreed with his point, "Germany is known to be Xenophobic".
It's not, even when I actually disagree with a minaret in my neighbourhood. You can make this decision and still accept foreign religions or just foreigners.

Macs made a good point about a further division in society. That is a rational thought compared to a phobic idea of being overrun.


:roll: DEFENITION phobia -is an intense, unrealistic fear, which can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, that is brought on by an object, event or situation.

Sorry despite what you think it is not a weakness.It is a throwback to early man and our fight or flight response when faced with a potentially dangerous situation.I don't know if it is a language issue or an interpretation on your part of the language but I have noticed that you seem to take things in a rather rigid and serious manner and not just in this thread.The term is used just a bit differently than the actual meaning.Goggle the word xenophobia and any country name and you see that there is a level of this in just about every land now the level of accuracy varies but the perception is sometimes more important then the
fact.It is what it is.It is NOT an attack on German culture I sincerely have
a certain respect for German culture and progress.


Also what does "it blocks your ratio" mean?

[LaoSexMachine]

There's a Mosque near my house but there is no megaphone call to prayer. I keep my eyes on them and have DHS on speed dial.

[shocker1]

I would be an interesting event if such a Mosque with loudspeakers set up here. I do not think it would go over well. Street Preachers with Megaphones go to jail here in the Bible belt, a loud Mosque would cause a **** storm.

[toki]

:roll: DEFENITION phobia -is an intense, unrealistic fear, which can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, that is brought on by an object, event or situation.
.

Excuse me if im wrong, but a Phobia, is a unwarranted fear. Islamic immigration, radicalization and terrorism is not a irrational fear. Its real, and of course should be of concern.

i wrote: Xenophobia is an uncontrollable fear of strangers/foreigners. Not of terrorism or islamism. So it's negative. It's a blunt fear. And so in my book a weakness, since it blocks your ratio.


^^^
You didn't get me.I know what phobia means. I didn't say phobia translates to weakness. It translates to fear (intense, unrealistic as you write). A blunt irrational fear is a weakness in my book, no matter how you explain it sociologically or evolutionary.

A situational fear is something different.


Also what does "it blocks your ratio" mean?
That means that a phobia blocks rational thinking. "Ratio" in German means "pure reason; rational logic". In latin as well. In english though you might think of the other "ratio"... ok. That was maybe confusing.

[Macs.]

I would be an interesting event if such a Mosque with loudspeakers set up here. I do not think it would go over well. Street Preachers with Megaphones go to jail here in the Bible belt, a loud Mosque would cause a **** storm.

One of the most horrible offenses you can do in Germany is being too loud at certain times. People call the police over every ****. You still are mowing your lawn 2 minutes after the time-limit and the Police will be in your yard in 3 minutes.

[INAT]

Xenophobia is an uncontrollable fear of strangers/foreigners. Not of terrorism or islamism. So it's negative. It's a blunt fear. And so in my book a weakness, since it blocks your ratio.


^^^
You didn't get me. I didn't say phobia translates to weakness. It translates to fear (intense, unrealistic as you write). A blunt irrational fear is a weakness in my book, no matter how you explain it sociologically or evolutionary.

A situational fear is something different.


OK fair enough that most certainly is your opinion and you are free to hold it.

I still do not understand what the phrase blco you ratio means.Do you mean blocks you rational?

[johanness]

And when we're all muslim we'll nuke Amerika! wootwoot

It seems easy to make jokes about it, if you are responsible only about yourself.
I, for myself, don't want to see my children to grow up in a Germany, which is heading in for a civil war 'cause of religious friction.

[shocker1]

One of the most horrible offenses you can do in Germany is being too loud at certain times. People call the police over every ****. You still are mowing your lawn 2 minutes after the time-limit and the Police will be in your yard in 3 minutes.
One of the many factors that attracted VW here. Shared Values.:) At least that is what the newspaper said.

[toki]

OK fair enough that most certainly is your opinion and you are free to hold it.

I still do not understand what the phrase blco you ratio means.Do you mean blocks you rational?
i edited post #48 and added a sentence. There seems to be a misunderstanding.


It seems easy to make jokes about it, if you are responsible only about yourself.
I, for myself, don't want to see my children to grow up in a Germany, which is heading in for a civil war 'cause of religious friction.

Because Arvins posts made so much sense:
Islamic Republic Germany, more mosque goers than Iran... hmmmm sure.

How can you sleep, when you honestly think of an civil war on the horizon? Do you really believe that? Not ignoring problems, if you read my earlier posts i don't want a minaret in my neighbourhood, but why drowning in fear and "sensationalizing" everything? I will never get that attitude. That's what i mean with "irrational fear = weekness", how can you overcome problems when you think of the worst of the worst coming to you? Isn't it paralyzing?

[Calanen]

:roll: DEFENITION phobia -is an intense, unrealistic fear, which can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, that is brought on by an object, event or situation.
" mean?

I find it hilarious that the Islamic lobby has hijacked the term Islamaphobia from the successful gay lobby use of the term 'homophobia' during the AIDS crisis.

[Calanen]

How can you sleep, when you honestly think of an civil war on the horizon? Do you really believe that? Not ignoring problems, if you read my earlier posts i don't want a minaret in my neighbourhood, but why drowning in fear and "sensationalizing" everything?


Because otherwise people will just get another beer, and do nothing until it is too late.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

[johanness]

How can you sleep, when you honestly think of an civil war on the horizon? Do you really believe that?

Yes, I believe it.
It's not about the ethnicy of the people, but about the way they want to live.
In about 10-20 years the population will begin to change, and I'm not so sure that it would be accepted by the "western" thinking people.

[INAT]

Interesting approach Cal.

Good point johanness I agree.

This issue of Middle Eastern and African peoples moving westward and into a Europe is that for lack of a better general term "liberal" "open" and
Democratic is that the two have no commonality such as culture,language and custom.Assimilation does not occur (again generally speaking I know there is exceptions to every rule) and the host country is forced whether they like it or not to adapt their way of life to the minority because of its own liberal policies.They use the laws and rights enjoyed by the natives to use against them.This may occur directly or indirectly. Mix that with
Europe's low birth rate and the traditionally large birth rate of Muslims and in a few generations we have something to have a rational fear of
especially when you consider how Christians fair under Sharia law.

Thisis my personal take and you can think I am full of s**t.

[toki]

Because otherwise people will just get another beer, and do nothing until it is too late.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

And that's what we call "Totschlagargument". You can beat everything to death with it. So, the neighbours the house next to mine are actually planning to murder me. Great.

I know this poem, it is very flexible i would say.
The people who come up with this poem are often liberal, elementary school hippie teachers. They normally apply it against racism. Racism against muslims/foreigners normally. Because the bad Germans who are actually Neo Nazis want them foreigners out. Watch out for them. Today the foreigners, tomorrow you.

[Ordie]

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x105/newsbosnia/st-louis-bosnian-minaret.jpg

Although to an extent I understand their ..shall we say anxiety.

Alot of the Muslims in UK and such seem to think they can do whatever they want and when they build a mosque the whole area just magicly becomes little Arabia and they can do with it what they please.

The commercial signage in the foreground is more annoying than the minaret.

[Laworkerbee]

One of the most horrible offenses you can do in Germany is being too loud at certain times. People call the police over every ****. You still are mowing your lawn 2 minutes after the time-limit and the Police will be in your yard in 3 minutes.

I need to move to Germany.

[shocker1]

The commercial signage in the foreground is more annoying than the minaret.
Until the call to prayer over the loudspeakers. I will take a Biglots anyday over that crap. I hear enough yelling and loud hollering at Church.p-)


I need to move to Germany.
Man I have been telling you to move out here where it is green and peaceful.

[toki]

Yes, I believe it.
It's not about the ethnicy of the people, but about the way they want to live.
In about 10-20 years the population will begin to change, and I'm not so sure that it would be accepted by the "western" thinking people.

Before Germany turns into an Islamic Republic it will turn into Russia.
And that's a fact if you're such a believer in numbers. Look who came here in the last 20 years.

[Macs.]

Man I have been telling you to move out here where it is green and peaceful.

Yeah.

LAworkerbee, move to Chattanooga, work at the new VW plant and build some Tanks...

wat.

Cars. You build cars there.

[Ordie]

Until the call to prayer over the loudspeakers. I will take a Biglots anyday over that crap. I hear enough yelling and loud hollering at Church.p-)

I find church bells just as annoying. p-)

You can address such issues by simulcasting the call to prayers on the radio. Real simple, the clock radio goes on, and the call to prayer automatically goes on. I'm sure one can program thier cellphones throughout the day without the need for speakers on the minarets.

[nullterm]

It's all crazy talk.

Seriously though, at what point does a countries liberal immigration policies and their own fear of being seen as xenophobic etc contribute to their own downfall?

If you were a very patient and prolific type group, wouldn't you just bide your time, use the country you were nonviolently invading, and slowly take over?

Modern day UK comes to mind with all the recent British-Muslim new stories coming from there: kid getting suspended for not partaking in a muslim ceremony at his school, British law accepting elements of sharia law for resolving issues between individuals, that Christian church leader's recent comments.


No they don't. Your country, your rules.

Exactly. Each country decides who they want to let in. Their reasons are their business as well. Whether I agree or disagree with the criteria is irrelevant.

[toki]

Because otherwise people will just get another beer, and do nothing until it is too late.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
my last post tonight:
You brought up the Nazi analogy. Nazism was possible because of people drowned in fear. You accept all those little steps for the greater good if you see yourself in danger of being alienated, unite against communism and judaism. Also logic isn't it.

I try to avoid Nazi analogies, because you can turn them against anything and twist them in your way, but you went there. So i tried to show you that those smart analogies can be turned 180°. For me both versions are blunt.

[shocker1]

I find church bells just as annoying. p-)

You can address such issues by simulcasting the call to prayers on the radio. Real simple, the clock radio goes on, and the call to prayer automatically goes on. I'm sure one can program thier cellphones throughout the day without the need for speakers on the minarets.
You are such a nice guy. I would not mind the nice architecture and diversity so long as noise ordinances are followed. Muslims in this area have a few Mosques and live beside us with no problems.They live scattered around so no taking over a section of town. My favorite store is owned by a Pakistani, great guy and an asset to the community. How people relate to one another seems to work here in our area. So far, surprising to some being the South and all but your average person here will always help a neighbor. It is when radical folks with some kind of agenda to make the news who ruin it for us all. This goes for all people.


Yeah.

LAworkerbee, move to Chattanooga, work at the new VW plant and build some Tanks...

wat.

Cars. You build cars there.
So this is the new plan. Build your secret war machine here and then use it on us. Well done, damn fine plan and it creates jobs.

[kosse]

I find church bells just as annoying. p-)


x2. I hate those bells in the sunday morning. Sometimes when I have hangover and it wakes me up I can't help hoping there would be "accidental" fire there p-)

[nullterm]

All depends on how it's done. As shocker brought up, I know a bunch of muslims who are a valuable part of the community that run their own business.

Last summer when I went to Europe, I saw another end point. The place where I was staying in Amsterdam was right on the edge of a huge muslim community of what looked like North African immigrants. Problem was, during the day it looked like no body there had any jobs, everyone was just hanging out, so my guess was extremely high unemployment.

If you got high numbers of people (immigrants or otherwise) not integrating with the rest of the community, with no prospects/hope, compacted together in poor slum areas, you're asking for trouble.

A friend of mine from Paris (who was born in Algeria) told me the same thing about Paris when the North African youth's were rioting. Essentially all the people from North Africa immigrated to Paris. But without money or jobs, they could only live in the slums outside the city. So now Paris is surrounded by a huge ring of people in a bad situation waiting for the next who knows what to happen.

[Revolveri]

Too bad all continents have been discovered and colonized already. If there was another land like Americas the North Africans/any other muslims could board a ship and build their own dream country in the New World. They might even succeed in building a great country like the USA since they can start from a clean table. Unfortunate for them Europe is already settled. Okay, Americas were too, it's a pity what happened to the Native Americans. I wonder how they liked churches being built on their backyards?

Personally, Im not sure if Id like seeing mosques. I wouldnt like seeing churches either if the country wasnt secular. Now they kind of add to the history and architecture. Perhaps someday I wont mind mosques either, that is when most muslims in Europe understand that sharia law has no place here.

[gilgoul]

Why Saudi Arabia? I mean seems like you're trying to pick the extreme to make your point. That's like talking about putting a Mosque in the heart of Rome or Vatican City, not Germany. My country has churches, mosques and a old synagogue all in the same area, and Sarajevo is definetly a majority Muslim city now and historicly the center of Bosnian Muslims.


Mosque, Ashkenazi Synogoge, Orthodox Church and Sarajevo Cathedral ("Cathedral Of Jesus") all in the same pic.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/27/90882425_a9482de3cf_b.jpg



Here as well.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2351/2311461098_db7b6fe49c.jpg


Does the combination of all of these look "funky"? Lol.

Yeah, well, we remember the great "success story" of Sarajevo, and I don't know about the christians there, but as for the Jews, they are all gone, either in Serbia or in Israel, so I guess the legendary "bosnian tolerance" showed it's limits here.
No offense, but I remember the mess enough not to envy it at all.

[CPL Trevoga]

If the Muslim church is build with Saudi Wahabi money, it should not be allowed.

[ren0312]

Yeah.

LAworkerbee, move to Chattanooga, work at the new VW plant and build some Tanks...

wat.

Cars. You build cars there.

Who is the boss, Albert Speer?p-)

[The Balkan]

Yeah, well, we remember the great "success story" of Sarajevo, and I don't know about the christians there, but as for the Jews, they are all gone, either in Serbia or in Israel, so I guess the legendary "bosnian tolerance" showed it's limits here.
No offense, but I remember the mess enough not to envy it at all.

You really need to check your attitude and then check your history, and not judge so quick. Sarajevo had and has the reputation it has for a reason. It earned the name "Jeruselum of Europe" for a reason. Before you answer with any heated insult, try reading what I'm about to write and understanding it please.

What's underhanded of you is that for that one horrible time during WW2 where everyone from Serbs, Gypsies, Bosniaks and even Croat's who resisted were killed by the Croatian Ustasa, you're generalizing our whole history and existence, while the rest of Christian Europe litteraly presecuted Jews all through out their history almost. And how do you think those Jews ended up in Sarajevo in Ottoman times? They ran from Spain and other Christian countries, and in Ottoman Bosnia they were prefered over the Christians and ran shops and had their own quarters and more rights then most Christians. They lived very well by the standards of those times. Funny thing is I just finished reading a book which covered this very topic.

So while everyone else gets a pass for their presecution through out history and it's kind of forgotten cuz you're Christian, the presecution of Jews in Bosnia (that is to say Independant State of Croatia) during those few years is somehow categorized as worse over the rest simply cuz Bosnia has Muslims. Jews were presecuted in so many countries in WW2 yet nobody today will hold all those nationalities guilty for it forever, like they will us simply for being Muslims. Wtf. Croat's are Catholics in case you didn't know and the only real number of Muslims who joined them were Handzar which was at it's peak 20,000 men. And were mostly used to fight Partisans in the mountains. In other words, over 300,000 Serbs died, at least 80,000 Bosniaks (Muslims), 40,000 Gypsies, and 32,000 Jews from both Croatia and Bosnia. Bosnia had about 12,000 before the war. And guess what 90% of those people were killed by men of Catholic faith. And those men weren't even FROM Sarajevo. Deal with that. The majority of Bosniaks joined the Partisans who btw had a Jewish leader, Mosa Pijade, who my street was named after.


Now another example just to show you how easily history gets twisted as soon as someone throws the word "Muslim" in.

The Sarajevo Haggadah has survived many close calls with destruction. Historians believe that it was taken out of Spain by Spanish Jews who were expelled by the Inquisition in 1492.

During World War II, the manuscript was hidden from the Nazis by Dr. Jozo Petrovic (Croat), the director of the city museum and by Derviš Korkut (Bosnian Muslim), the chief librarian, who smuggled the Haggadah out to a Muslim cleric in a mountain village near Trescavica — there it was hidden in the mosque among Korans and other Islamic texts. During the Bosnian War of 1992-1995, when Sarajevo was under constant siege by Bosnian Serb forces, the manuscript survived in an underground bank vault.




And just to drive my point home further here is the website of American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and what they have to say about the Jews history in Bosnia.

http://www.jdc.org/p_ee_bos_history.html


Bosnia-Herzegovina provided a safe haven for Sephardic Jews that fled Spain and Portugal after the expulsion in 1492. In the 16th century, the Jews lived in a special quarter assigned to them, which they remained in until the late 1800’s. The Jews lived well under Muslim rulers because few restrictions were placed on trade. Many Ottoman rulers welcomed Jewish immigrants since they were educated and brought in specialized skills.
In 1878, the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina became a protectorate of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a change which led to an influx of Ashkenazi Jews.

In Sarajevo, there were a few organized forms of Jewish education. There was a Jewish elementary school and between 1928-1938, there was also a seminary for training teachers for secondary school.

The Holocaust
In 1941, Yugoslavia was partitioned amongst the allies of Nazi Germany. The Bosnian Jews who survived did so by fighting with the Partisans, going into hiding, or seeking relative safety in the Italian zone of occupation along the Dalmatian Coast. The Croat Fascists (Ustachi) who occupied Sarajevo, immediately set fire to the Sephardic synagogue. In September, mass deportations began. Of the pre-war Jewish population of 14,000, by 1942, 9,000 were deported and only 120 were left. About 1,600 escaped to the Italian zone.

After the war, JDC helped the Yugoslav Federation with welfare projects that included providing material needs for those who were returning to their homes and with rebuilding communal institutions.

JDC During the Communist Regime
A significant number of Jews aligned themselves with the Socialist regime of Marshal Josef Braz Tito. They reformed, as a mostly secular institution, the Federation of Jewish Communities, which maintained closed ties with JDC without interruption. The Federation often served as JDC’s link to the other Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe living under Communist rule.

JDC During the Civil War
Before the fighting began, JDC sent in reserve funds to enable the communities to buy food and medicine. Once violence broke out in Sarajevo, JDC sent in relief trucks with food, medicine and blankets, with the help of various communities and other Jewish and non-Jewish organizations. JDC helped over 2,000 evacuees, Jews and non-Jews, flee to a safe haven outside of Bosnia through airlifts and convoys, providing care and shelter in Croatia and Serbia.

Today
Ironically, the war in Bosnia from 1992-1995 has given impetus to a revival of Jewish life. Jewish communities now exist in the towns of Banja Luka, Doboj, Mostar, Tuzla and Zenica, in addition to the capital, Sarajevo.
These communities enjoy excellent relations with government authorities at all levels, regardless of the ethnic composition of their surroundings.




On the other hand I spent my childhood in basements, refugee settlements, ducking bullets and hiding under fake names cuz I was a Muslim. And it wasn't other Muslims persecuting me. So please, before you jump on us and judge us like we're all worthless criminals, when we're nothing of the sort, maybe you should inform yourself a bit better.

[Lt-Col A. Tack]

And when we're all muslim we'll nuke Amerika! wootwoot

Guess who owns all the nukes in Germany ;)

[annihilation]

As long as its architecture is respectful for its environment, its not very large, and they don't do their damn calls for prays 5 times a day (or any at all) then I really wouldn't have a problem with it at all.

[VPR]

i pity Germans

[Annihilator9112]

a few is ok but 180+ ???? that is insane, i would be pissed off, That is like a Christian country is turning in to a muslim country, over the 50 years there might be 500+ mosque's.
I understand why the germans are pissed.

[Herman the II]

In fact the number of foreigners in Germany is declining and those that immigrated are adopting to the German way of life (some slower than others however).
A number of 180 Mosques isn't really much for a country like Germany and if a city has a strong Muslim community they shall have their own Mosque.
But as Macs said: Its unacceptable that 200 Muslims build a unproportional huge mosque with petrodollars from SA and prey and preach in Arabic there.

[Calanen]

In fact the number of foreigners in Germany is declining and those that immigrated are adopting to the German way of life (some slower than others however).

Hah! You think that once everyone gets a German passport they are now committed to democracy, secularism, and infidel law? No stealth jihadis in Germany? Not even one or two?

[Herman the II]

Hah! You think that once everyone gets a German passport they are now committed to democracy, secularism, and infidel law? No stealth jihadis in Germany? Not even one or two?

No , I'm just saying that currently more foreigners are leaving than immigrating. Therefore the number of foreigners in Germany is declining.

I'm fully aware of the problems that come along with immigration and the integration of foreigners.
Still most of the foreigners that immigrated are in fact committed to democracy, secularism and our law.
I don't deny the problems with a certain group of immigrants but everything has to be seen in proportion.

Btw.
In general I share your view about radical Muslims...

[IDF_TANKER]

Yep, and herman is right anyway. Even if they had a real mosque with a minaret, they wouldn't be allowed to wake up people at night. "Noise pollution" is a heavily fought crime in Germany. Some people will call the police if you use a lawnmower on a sunday (ok, in some villages maybe).


I envy you. I have an Arabic village right next to my neighborhood and they make it as loud as they can (partly for us, I suspect). Not to mention the chavs yelling and honking at the midnight.

[Heinemann]

This is so typical of Islamics, they could opt to build one large hall to pray to their allah but instead they choose to build hundreds of these small capacity mosques just to send a message of their "dominance" to the non-Muslims. I have not come across any Islamic scripture which sheds any details on how a mosque should look externally so theoretically they could worship in a wine celler.

[The Balkan]

Roflmao @ chavs

[Carnifex]

"The Balkan",

Thank you for your interesting post (#74). That's an subject one doesn't read about very often.

[JoaMei]

DOMES AND MINARETS?
Not in My Backyard, Say an Increasing Number of Germans

By Jochen Bölsche
The planned construction of over 180 mosques in Germany is mobilizing right-wing xenophobes but also an increasing number of leftist critics. They fear the Muslim places of worship will facilitate the establishment of a completely parallel society.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1244477,00.jpg
Responding to public pressure, architects reduced the size of a controversial mega-mosque planned for the city of Cologne.

The issue at hand wasn't the construction of a missile base or a new nuclear power plant. Yet the media reported "turmoil" and an "enraged" audience in a school auditorium in Ehrenfeld, a district of the German city of Cologne. The mood was almost comparable to that of the protest gatherings once held against nuclear missiles or reactors.

Instead the outrage was directed at a huge mosque planned for the area. Still, the words used by the project's opponents called to mind the protests of earlier times. "The minarets even look like missiles," railed one woman. A man said the mosque's dome reminded him "of a nuclear plant."

Ill will over mosques like the one being built in Cologne is spreading rapidly throughout Germany, often to the surprise of local politicians. For a long time the establishment of Muslim prayer rooms provoked little protest, housed as they were mostly in residential buildings, shops and back courtyards. Recently, though, there has been an increasing number of acts of protest, some violent. Molotov cocktails were thrown through mosque windows in the Bavarian town of Lauingen; Christians set protest crosses inscribed with "Terra christiana est," or this is Christian land, on the grounds of a mosque in Hanover; and construction trailers went up in flames in the Berlin district of Pankow.

The anti-Islam protest movement has also begun to spill over into city politics. In Cologne, for example, the extreme right anti-mosque initiative Pro Cologne captured five local government seats in recent elections. Now the group is aspiring to enter the national scene as Pro Germany, together with other like-minded organizations, some from the far-right fringe. Their approach follows the example of populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, whose anti-immigration party garnered a surprising degree of support before he was murdered in 2002.

In Germany there is also a market for these "single-issue parties," suggests trend researcher Adjiedj Bakas, who himself emigrated from Surinam to the Netherlands. In the populous Ruhr Valley region of western Germany the Voter Initiative Recklinghausen (whose acronym "WIR" is the German word for "we") has found resonance with its message. The group claims it is fighting against "creeping Islamization," and is allied in the local government with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), one of Germany's major political parties. WIR members say they aren't alone in their opposition to Islam and their concern "that in 20 years in Recklinghausen, as in all large German cities, the majority of the residents under the age of 40 will be Muslims." "Discomfort is already spreading in some parts of the city," says Georg Schliehe, a WIR representative on the local city council, "but policy, public authorities and scholars downplay the problem."

Pictures:

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,33417,00.html

This burgeoning sentiment against mosques has no doubt been strengthened by the Islamist murders and suicide attacks that have also afflicted European cities in recent years. Some Muslims like Imran Sagir, director of a property development company specializing in mosques, say they can understand German citizens' fears. When you hear on the news about crimes committed in the name of Islam," he says, "who can blame people who don't want a mosque in the neighborhood?"

Wolfgang Huber, the head of Germany's Protestant Church and bishop for the states of Berlin and Brandenburg, names what he sees as one important cause for the increasing unease. He says there is an "obviously large-scale initiative" on the part of Islamic organizations to show their presence in as high-profile a way as possible and in as many places as possible. No fewer than 184 new mosques, some with domes and minarets, are currently being built or planned throughout Germany. That's considerably more than the 163 existing traditional mosques (along with around 2,600 prayer rooms mostly hidden within secular buildings).

And that appears to be only the start of an expected wider European mosque-building boom. One organization alone -- Ahmadiyya, a movement seen as an outsider community within Islam that the respected German weekly Die Zeit described as "something like the Jehovah's Witnesses among Muslims" -- has introduced a "100 mosque plan" for Germany. Currently 25 percent of these projects have been completed.

More often than in the past, Muslim communities nowadays are trying to include Middle Eastern style minarets in their building projects. It's an addition that is rousing greater protest -- no matter where the mosque is getting built in Germany. "As soon as the foreignness is cemented in a structure like a mosque, the problems just multiply," says Christoph Dahling-Sander, the Protestant church's representative in the city of Hanover for matters concerning Islam.

There have been some notable exceptions, though. Residents in the far northern town of Rendsburg in the state of Schleswig-Holstein kept their famous northern German composure and a majority accepted the construction of a large mosque. But as a rule, when building plans for mosques become public, neighbors immediately mobilize with a laundry list of concerns about why they will be bad for the neighborhood. They fear parking shortages, plunging property values and noise pollution. Hoping to maintain a veneer of political correctness, local politicians with the traditional parties play down these concerns. But by doing so, they just create even greater opportunity for grassroots groups like the citizens' movement Pro Germany.

"Where this kind of gaudy Middle Eastern building goes up, with a dome and minarets, the next thing will be an application to the authorities for permission to do the call to prayer," a passage on the Pro Germany Web site reads. It's visions like this that are leading more and more Germans to see the construction of mosques as the expression of a "kind of land grab," observes Claus Leggewie, a political science professor at the University of Giessen in the western state of Hesse.

This impression is aggravated not only by right-wing agitators but also, according to Leggewie, by careless or sometimes even deliberately provocative statements by Muslim builders. Many seem to think like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In words spoken in 1997, Erdogan made mosque construction seem like part of a strategy of Islamization: "The minarets are our lances, the domes our helmets, the believers our army."

The names of some of the newly built mosques aren't exaclty in harmony with the reassuring "Islam is peace" slogan. Religious scholar Ursula Spuler-Stegemann at Germany's University of Marburg, among others, criticizes the fact that mosques are named after warlords like Fatih Sultan Mehmet, conqueror of Constantinople. "That can only be an agenda," she believes. "These Muslims don't just want to show their presence here, but also to strengthen and expand it."

Statements made by intellectuals like Spuler-Stegemann, who has also said that, "Islam has a problem with violence," underscore the fact that criticism of mosque construction is no longer exclusively the domain of mindless xenophobes. And it would be a mistake, offical representatives on immigration issues from Germany's states warned a recent joint convention, to sweepingly dismiss mosque critics as being right-wing extremists.

In the case of the controversy over the mosque planned for Cologne's Ehrenfeld neighborhood, the right-wing Pro protesters have indeed been pushed into the margins. Their complaints have been drowned out by more high-profile statements coming from prominent leftists and liberals including German Jewish journalist Ralph Giordano, women's rights activist Alice Schwarzer and investigative reporter Günter Wallraff, who have all spoken out against the mosque. Representatives of Germany's large churches have increasingly added their voices to the criticism as well. The "dishonest dialogue" with Islam described in SPIEGEL's pages in December 2001 -- in which church representatives simply ignored scandalous and unbearable aspects like persecution of Christians, discrimination against women, toleration of terror and "honor" killings for the sake of harmony -- is now a thing of the past.

In place of the "fairy tale that we're all 'children of Abraham'," in the words of Leggewie, the churches are now making an effort not to entangle themselves in finding contrived common ground with Islam. Instead they are trying to find areas in which they differ -- and this applies particularly to the construction of mosques.

Of course the Protestant and Catholic churches stress unanimously that Germany's more than 3 million Muslims have the same constitutional right to build houses of worship.

But agreeing to a mosque, German Protestant leader Bishop Huber said at a national church meeting in 2007, should in no way preclude the opportunity for an open and critical discussion about the location, size and number of such buildings.

Location, size, number -- at least one of these factors seems to be out of proportion in some of the 184 new mosque projects. There are plenty of examples out there.

In Berlin the local Ahmadiyya congregation, just 200 members strong, is pushing construction of a mosque at a cost of around €1 million ($1.6 million) in Berlin's suburban Heinersdorf district, which is home to a paucity of Muslims. Feeling left out of the process by local politicians, furious residents quickly began to gather at numerous, often overflowing and sometimes tumultuous protest meetings. "No to the mosque" or, as in the time around the fall of the Berlin Wall in this former East German district, "We are the people." They demanded that their quiet neighborhood not be allowed to be transformed into a "second Kreuzberg," a reference to a downtown Berlin neighborhood known for its massive Turkish immigrant population. "Why?" one of the speakers asked, drawing applause, "Why would you build a mosque in an area where no Muslims live?"

Graphics Gallery:

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,30661,00.html

Meanwhile, in populous Cologne in western Germany, the locally based Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) -- which has close ties to a sister institution in Ankara -- has plans to build what it is describing as "Europe's biggest mosque." The construction is designed for thousands of visitors and slated for Ehrenfeld, an overburdened neighborhood that already suffers from a serious parking shortage. It's not just the mosque's location that has local residents seething, though, it's also its gigantic scale. Once built, the mosque will have a surface of 22,000 square meters (236,800 square feet) and 55-meter minarets standing as tall as an 18-story office tower. The enormous Ottoman style building, ****ounces author Dieter Wellershoff, is as strange for some residents as it would be "if it were some object that suddenly landed there from another planet."

And in Frankfurt's village-like Hause district, already home to two mosques, a 300-member association wants to erect the third Muslim community center in a 400-meter radius at a cost of €3 million. Local residents are afraid the concentration of mosques might cause their area to "tip." A typical statement made by local residents at protest meetings goes like this: "It wouldn't feel like home anymore if more come here."

The resentment fomenting amongst the mosque's opponents, who have already collected well over 1,000 signatures, was further fueled when the local Green Party's spokesperson on integration policies, Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg, pointed out that 40 percent of the city's population are immigrants. "If that doesn't suit you," she said, "then you need to move somewhere else."

Local mosque critics did manage to find support from the Protestant Church, whose leader in the local state of Hesse dismissed the Green Party politician's statement as "tasteless." Although state church leader Peter Steinacker says he has no personal objections to the construction project, he says the issue of whether a third mosque should be built in an area like Hausen is a "question of political prudence."

These conflicts often come to a head following the same pattern. Persuaded by the argument that Germany's constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion requires them to authorize any proposed mosque, city administrators are often keen to come to an arrangement with builders early and behind closed doors, coming to comprehensive agreements.

But with this strategy, which political scientist Leggewie describes as "paternalistic," local governments tend to make "the mosque association's demands their own" and to inform the public of "too little, too late." And because the Muslim communities "often don't display the necessary openness" when residents find out about the sometimes enormous projects, they feel they're being presented with a done deal and taken for fools.

Often it is only then, when the local conflict is taking on traits of a clash of civilizations, that the fundamental questions avoided by city planners at the beginning of the process are discussed. They include, for example, topics such as how the organization behind the project deals with issues like terrorism and women's rights, whether the project is aimed at integration or separation and whether plans that go to architectural extremes are really covered by the constitutionally protected right to freedom of religion.

And it is often in this phase that local media and local politicians raise the issue of how the planned mega-mosques differ from Christian or Jewish holy buildings. "Whether a mosque can even be called a house of worship at all," says Middle East scholar Spuler-Stegemann, "is contested even within Islam."

In Islam expert Leggewie's opinion, mosques are "definitely not churches." He says they can be better described as multipurpose buildings. In the same way, Islam itself is "not just a religion," emphasizes Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Green Party politician and long-term representative for multicultural affairs in Frankfurt. It is "also a theocratic vision," in which politics and belief are inseparably bound and "democracy and human rights are subordinate and conditional values." Islamic associations are not officially recognized religious communities, points out Necla Kelek, a Germany-based sociologist and feminist of Turkish descent. Granting building permits for mosques, she says, is "not a question of freedom of religion but a political question." She says Germany's laws governing construction and associations are ill-equipped for dealing with the issue.

The great dissimilarity between these mosque centers and churches is evident in the original plans for the Cologne mosque, in which only one-fifth of the 22,000 square meters was set aside as an area for prayer. The remaining space, according to a Turkish-language appeal for donations, was intended for a TV studio, pharmacy, doctor's office, legal practice, bakery, hairdresser, supermarket, bank, preschool, library, restaurant and jewelry store. The mosque's size was only later reduced as a result of public protest.

Large mosques like the one in Cologne often offer even more: Koran schools and kickboxing studios, computer and TV rooms, travel agencies and funeral homes -- all services provided under one roof or in the immediate vicinity. "It's everything a Muslim needs outside the apartment," claims Kelek, "If he wants to, in addition to praying, it also allows him to have nothing to do with Germany society." She describes the mosques as "breeding grounds" for a parallel society and an "obstacle to integration."

Under the pretext of religious privilege, the DITIB strategists in Cologne have in truth claimed the rights to a commercial center that also happens to include the opportunity to pray. A Muslim community in Berlin's Neukölln district also wanted to take its cue from Cologne and construct an immense commercial and cultural center. But at least the planners there, as the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recognized, only described the structure as being a "semi-mosque."

That plan, however, failed in the face of the strong opposition of Deputy Mayor and District Councilwoman Stefanie Vogelsang of the conservative Christian Democrats. Her awareness of the issue had been heightened by a conflict with DITIB a few years earlier, when the organization deliberately violated its building permits during the construction of a new mosque in the same neighborhood.

By the time construction had been completed, the mosque's two minarets rose 37 meters into the Berlin skyline rather than the approved 28 meters and the dome measured around 22 meters instead of the permitted 18. For Vogelsang that was cause enough to slap the Muslim congregation with the highest fine ever imposed in her district, €100,000. "Whoever lives here, whoever builds here, needs to follow our laws," she said.

The local Berliner Kurier newspaper praised her as the "councilwoman who doesn't let people walk all over her," but the Muslim community had a totally different opinion. It would have been perfectly fine if the illegally erected minarets had been "a little bit bigger," a reporter overheard in the mosque. Another congregation member complained that "every mosque in Turkey" is bigger. "They must be laughing themselves silly at us," he grumbled.

Reactions like that reinforce the impression on the part of critics like Spuler-Stegemann that for some building associations mosque construction is, more than anything, a show of power and an effort to establish Muslim enclaves. "Where you can hear the call of the minaret," she says, "from a certain Muslim perspective, that's Islamic ground."


End of the first part.

[playtym]

Posted yesterday... (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=137985&highlight=backyard+germans)

[JoaMei]

After her experience with the mosque on Columbiadamm, Vogelsang appeared determined "not to allow herself to be tricked" and not to allow further Muslim communities to massively violate building code. Later, she successfully blocked an association called Inssan, which had plans to build an immense mosque center in Neukölln, which is already home to 15 official mosques and 31 other prayer rooms. The proposed structure violated "all zoning ordinances," she claims.

The 8,000-square-meter complex had been planned for a strictly residential area with no bus service or parking lots; and it would have been located near the Rütli School, which became infamous throughout Germany in 2006 for its high level of student violence. The building was designed to sit along the street on a strip of land 73 meters wide, rather than the prescribed 13 meters, with an area 40 percent greater than that permitted in the area.

Financing for the project also seemed dubious to Vogelsang. After the builders "almost snottily" rejected requests for disclosure of their sources of funding to district authorities. She eventually found out through the Berlin state government's Interior Ministry that "Saudi and other Arab foundations" were behind the project -- countries ranking at the bottom of the list on the global scale of religious freedom.

The building lot had been purchased by Ibrahim el-Zayat, a representative of the Islamic Community of Germany organization. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, claims the group has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups. Vogelsang doesn't believe the Inssan Association's assertions that there are no strings attached to the donations from the Middle East. "You find someone who is willing to give me €15 to €20 million with no strings attached," she says.

Vogelsang considers herself lucky "that the mosque could be rejected because of construction ordinances," but the Inssan Association is already pursuing a new strategy. It now wants to build the mosque center in a commercial zone in western Berlin's Charlottenburg neighborhood. The site first chosen in a residential part of Neukölln was zoned for chuches, but not meeting places of the mass scale of the mosque center.

The organization has also been taking great pains to publicly position itself as being moderate in its approach to Islam. It arranges PR training for its members, criticizes forced marriages and runs blood drives and environmental campaigns. In this, diehard opponents see less a sign of liberalization than a camouflage intended to deflect attention from the group's dubious funding sources and Islamist backers.

"To get in good with the Berlin elite, you meet with members of the dialogue industry and put on some politically correct events," says Ian Johnson, an American author, Pulitzer Prize winner and Islam expert living in Berlin.

Instead of putting all their cards on the table when they meet with adjacent property owners, leaders of an association wanting to build will strike a deal with "the usual clique of politicians and officials in charge of immigrant issues," says Johnson, and then put "a mosque right down in the middle of the neighborhood." This approach carries the danger that "through the lack of a democratic outlet," residents will be pushed into the arms of right-wing populists who reject the construction projects for "nationalistic or racist reasons."

Public opinion polls generally show that the predominant view in Germany's major cities is that Muslims should have a right to places of worship beyond those hidden behind courtyards -- as long as the plans comply with building laws and fit their surroundings. At the same time, a majority supports the position of journalist Giordano, who suggests there is "no fundamental right to building a mega-mosque," especially if it disrupts the look of the city around it. A balance, says Giordano, must be found "between the back courtyard and the centrally located grand mosque."

The group that is dead set against the construction of any type of mosque is a relatively small minority. But in addition to affected residents and xenophobes whose views cannot be changed, this group of opponents also notably includes Islam experts from the Muslim world.

There are "more than enough mosques in Germany," says Mina Ahadi, co-founder of Germany's Central Council of Ex-Muslims. Ahadi has been under police protection since she publicly renounced Islam -- a crime punishable by death according to radical interpretations of sharia law."

"When a mosque is built," Ahadi says, "the result is that greater pressure is placed on women, and even more children are forced to wear a headscarf to school, which leads to isolation." She accuses German politicians of "boundless naiveté" in their dealings with Islamic organizations that, she argues, "ultimately want to instate sharia law."

Meanwhile, among those local politicians who have no general objections to mosques being built, there is an increasing willingness to investigate the true ambitions and financial backers of the builders more fully than in the past. This is not always easy, however, given the complexity of the situation as well as the fact that imams' sermons are mostly delivered in languages other than German. Moreover, some groups are adept at strategies for concealing intentions that run contrary to the German constitution, using what the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution calls "legality tactics" -- in other words, using government means to get around government laws.

Even DITIB, the comparatively moderate organization behind the mosque project in Cologne, arouses mistrust. DITIB is the long arm of a religious institution in secular Turkey. "What will most likely happen," ask the residents of Cologne who take part in the protests, "if the feared Islamization of Turkey happens? Will DITIB bring it over here?"

Cologne's Archbishop Joachim Meisner is already warning people about of areas in Germany "where sharia law is increasingly spreading." In the case of DITIB, this warning might be premature or simply inaccurate. At the same time, however, the association is remotely controlled from Ankara and has a reputation for being more concerned with helping to maintain the identity of Turkish immigrants than with helping them integrate in their new homes.

The worldview of Ahmadiyya, the organization that currently wants to build one of its planned 100 mosques in Berlin's northern Pankow district, also causes some unease. Every now and then, rumors escape the mosque walls claiming that many of the group's leaders consider not only women and Jews to be second-class citizens, but also homo******s. In 2007, an Ahmadiyya Web site stated that the "increasing tendency toward homo******ity" could be traced to the consumption of pork.

Widespread protests against Ahmadiyya by residents of Schlüchtern in the western state of Hesse led the town to change its zoning laws so as to prevent a planned mosque that would have included minarets from being built. In other locations as well, politicians are becoming more and more inclined to use city-planning laws as a way of limiting or completely prohibiting dubious projects by questionable developers.

This is exactly what Bonn did when the city voted against the construction of a cultural center with minarets on the grounds that the project would further aggravate the "uncontested and ongoing formation of ghettos" in a specific Muslim-influenced neighborhood. In Munich, the city government rejected a proposed mosque project because its "disproportionate mass" would have allegedly impacted a square whose buildings are on historical-preservation lists.

Cologne wants to prevent two associations from building a mosque in the district of Mülheim because they have contacts with the Islamic organization Milli Görüs. Norbert Fuchs, the district's mayor, certainly sees it as a "problem (when) political questions are dealt with by using building ordinances." For his part, though, Cologne's Deputy Mayor Guido Kahlen is convinced that: "In those cases where we have room for administrative discretion, we have to use it."

Seeing that this mindset appears to be catching on in other places, builders are apparently becoming more and more willing to exclude minarets from their architectural plans. As they see it, people living near these mosques view the minarets less as symbols of integration and more as demonstrations of power.

When Leggewie gives out advice, he says that mosques should be built without the classic soaring towers -- on practical grounds. "As soon as a mosque differs from the look of the city around it through its ‘foreign' form," Leggewie reasons, "you can count on greater resistance, which often necessitates more involved authorization procedures."

"The traditional style underscores, even unintentionally," Leggewie adds, "the orientation of Muslims toward the areas most important to Islam and toward their homelands." And lastly, he points out, the Middle Eastern style of a mosque with minarets is "by no means compulsory."

Indeed, a counterexample is the mosque of the Turkish parliament in Ankara, built in 1989, which doesn't have minarets. And than there's a "mosque for the future" planned for London's East End. Plans for the mosque envision space for 70,000 worshippers in a high-tech structure with a glass roof instead of a dome and wind turbines instead of minarets.

For the proposed Ahmadiyya mosque in Hausen, near Frankfurt, architect Mubashra Ilyas has designed a simple building with "Bauhaus elements" and one symbolic minaret that people passing by can only see from a certain angle. As Ilyas explains it, this is "because it's certainly easier for native Germans living in the area to live with it that way."

In any case, minarets are no longer needed for the muezzin's call. A call to prayer is redundant, according to Fazlur Rehman Anwar of the Ahmadiyya mosque in Eimsbüttel, Hamburg: "After all, there are watches."

On the other hand, when Muslim builders with financial backers in the Middle East insist on enormous, showy multipurpose centers in Turkish or Arab style, they must accept a high degree of political risk. The openly Middle Eastern style may lead to a flare up in the already smoldering debate about religious freedom in the countries that back these projects financially, since some are countries in which Christians are violently persecuted and prevented from building churches.

Representatives of both the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany continue to emphasize that they have in no way made their approval of mosque construction contingent on Muslim countries' allowing Christians to build churches there. At the same time, however, they let it be known that they can't accept the status quo in the long run.

While Protestant Bishop Huber calls for "Muslims' unrestricted right to convert," his Catholic colleague Archbishop Meisner has appealed to the DITIB, who are building the mosque in Cologne, "to support a project in Turkey." As Meisner explains: "The Pope has declared 2008 to be the Year of St. Paul (as) we are celebrating of the 2000th birthday of the apostle Paul. Yet at his birthplace in Tarsus, we Christians have nothing … We need to campaign to be allowed to build a pilgrim center and a small church there. In return, that would be taken into account here in Cologne."

Less elegant than the cardinal's approach – which, admittedly, met with no success -- is the direct method used by some representatives of the CDU. While representatives of the Christian Social Union (CSU) the CDU's Bavarian sister party, were satisfied with the stipulation that minarets could not rise higher than church steeples, local CDU members in Castrop-Rauxel, a city in western Germany, recently agreed to a disproportionately radical resolution on the topic.

Of course mosque construction should be allowed, the CDU members say, but land usage must be strictly restricted: "We suggest applying the standards that are in effect for the construction of new Christian religious buildings in Turkey."


http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,565146,00.html

[digrar]

Look down half a dozen topics. Repost. Merged.

[Invisigoth]

Reposts? Not on my MP.net!

[JoaMei]

Oh, sorry didnt see it. :roll:

[kosse]

There was an article maybe a week ago in the biggest newspaper of Finland that educated Germans are already fleeing the country and moving to Switzerland, Norway and other such places.

[Invisigoth]

There was an article maybe a week ago in the biggest newspaper of Finland that educated Germans are already fleeing the country and moving to Switzerland, Norway and other such places.

The only Germans that move to Switzerland are those that make enough money to make it worth running away from the Finanzamt (German IRS) :) Dirty traitors.

[toki]

The only Germans that move to Switzerland are those that make enough money to make it worth running away from the Finanzamt (German IRS) :) Dirty traitors.

*cough* Schumi *cough*

[Bushranger]

Im glad there is nothing like that in the area i live in.

[perdurabo]

Mosques can look good "european*" not "arabic"
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Bohoniki_meczet.jpg/240px-Bohoniki_meczet.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Kruszyniany_Mosque.jpg/240px-Kruszyniany_Mosque.jpg
XIXth century ones from Poland

*in this region this type of architecture was dominant, churches, synagouges etc where build in this style.

[kosse]

The only Germans that move to Switzerland are those that make enough money to make it worth running away from the Finanzamt (German IRS) :) Dirty traitors.
One woman in the article claimed that she made 2000€ more per month in Switzerland than in Germany as a psychologist. The other reason, as she put it, was "hostile social atmosphere".

It was stated in the article that 165 000 Germans left the country in 2007 Switzerland being the most popular destination.

[johanness]

Before Germany turns into an Islamic Republic it will turn into Russia.
And that's a fact if you're such a believer in numbers. Look who came here in the last 20 years.

Maybe you would like to check the numbers of nationalities who go to school first time...

In Stuttgart they have about 60% with immigration background, not included the number who have allready the German citiezenship.
And maybe you can figure it out, who is the fastest growing "minority" in Germany...

...I'll guess you know it

[CPL Trevoga]

I envy you. I have an Arabic village right next to my neighborhood and they make it as loud as they can (partly for us, I suspect). Not to mention the chavs yelling and honking at the midnight.

Jews for Germans. :)


I just remembered that Arabs that murdered people at Word Trade Center planned their attack while living Germany. Why do Germans allow third world scum in their country?

[The Balkan]

Jews for Germans. :)


I just remembered that Arabs that murdered people at Word Trade Center planned their attack while living Germany. Why do Germans allow third world scum in their country?

That's a little overboard. Not everyone who comes from a poor developing country is "3rd world scum". I'd speculate there's more "scum" in rich countries then poor.

[LaoSexMachine]

. I'd speculate there's more "scum" in rich countries then poor.

Guess immigrants are fond of "scums" then.

[The Balkan]

Guess immigrants are fond of "scums" then.

So in your mind poor people are scum?

And as an immigrant, I'd say we're fond of opportunity and places that aren't war zones, slums or projects.

It's interesting you took offense to me saying that, but to what he said.

I just wasn't aware that poor people = scum.

[LaoSexMachine]

So in your mind poor people are scum?

And as an immigrant, I'd say we're fond of opportunity and places that aren't war zones, slums or projects.

It's interesting you took offense to me saying that, but to what he said.

I just wasn't aware that poor people = scum.

I quoted your "speculation". Please spare me. I'm an immigrant to America. I lived in refugee camps in N.Thailand . You said developed countries are more 'scum'. If it were then why would poor people want to go to a 'scum' country?

[CPL Trevoga]

Guess immigrants are fond of "scums" then.

Balcan hates Amarica. That's all, Devil Dog. While we were bleeding for America, he was living off welfare.

[The Balkan]

I quoted your "speculation". Please spare me. I'm an immigrant to America. I lived in refugee camps in N.Thailand . You said developed countries are more 'scum'. If it were then why would poor people want to go to a 'scum' country?

As I quoted him. And no I didn't say that. He said "3rd world scum". That didn't offend you even a little?

All I said back was "there's probly more scum in rich countries". And what I meant by that, isn't ir more logical criminals and that sort would be where the money is? lol. Plus plenty of people who are rich get rich in shady ways. Organized crime is usaly highest in richer countries not Iraq.


Balcan hates Amarica. That's all, Devil Dog. While we were bleeding for America, he was living off welfare.

.....where did anyone mention America at all. I don't hate America at all, in fact I'm greatful to them for a few things.

Plz don't insult me cuz when I insult you back, some sissy will report me and I'll get banned or an infraction. And only me cuz of my name lolz

[m.i.t]

The only Germans that move to Switzerland are those that make enough money to make it worth running away from the Finanzamt (German IRS) :) Dirty traitors.


it will lil bit out of topic...

my ex steuibuerat (accounter) had told me German Tax law has over 42.000 articles...according to my accounter everybody in germany is tax evader because no one knows whole that most sophisticated tax sysytem...

l would not call schumi as traitor...

[Macs.]

Jews for Germans. :)


I just remembered that Arabs that murdered people at Word Trade Center planned their attack while living Germany. Why do Germans allow third world scum in their country?

Ehm, mabye because they didn't openly say "Hello, I am a Terrorist and planning a attack".

Why did the US allow them to go to a flight school ? Why did the US allow them to enter and live there ? Why did the US allow them to board their final fly ?