Bavaria’s conservative leader Edmund Stoiber won thunderous applause in his farewell speech for saying mosques were getting too big. . “When the mosques in our cities are bigger than cathedrals and churches, then we must tell our Muslim fellow citizens: ‘No, that is going too far.’ the leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), sister…
Most of the nation’s churches and buildings of worship are owned by state and local authorities; they are also responsible for the costs of maintaining them. The poor conditions of many of these properties have led authorities to consider demolition. Though the fate of one church in Valanjour (Maine-et-Loire) will not officially be decided until…
In our neighborhood, the churches are empty but the mosques are full,” a priest participating in an training session in Orsay admitted. Organized by the Office for Islamic Relations in the French Bishops Conference, this training session allowed this priest a week to explore the historical, spiritual, social, cultural and religious aspects of Islam. At…
(Mosque construction has proved a contentious issue for German society. For more information on mosques in Germany, see the Germany country profile). In a city with the greatest Gothic cathedral in Germany and no fewer than a dozen Romanesque churches, adding a pair of slender fluted minarets would scarcely alter the skyline. Yet plans for…
The Central Council of Muslims in Germany (ZMD) harshly criticized the Christian churches after high-ranking German clergyman Cardinal Karl Lehmann last week spoke out against Islam enjoying equal status to Christianity. “The (Christian) churches would like to ban Islam to the lower leagues,” Aiman Mazyek, general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany,…
