In many European countries plans to build new mosques have become a political issue. Intellectuals are taking sides and politicians are using the issue to boost their own image while citizens look skeptically at the plans of Muslim organizations to construct imposing religious buildings to demonstrate their newly found self-confidence. Michael Kaczmarek reports.
The State Department is turning to Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, to help burnish the country’s image in the Muslim world – despite Ellison’s outspoken criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. “I plan to talk to people in the State Department and anywhere I can to help try to improve…
The Muslim community of Spain and Andalusia is in halfway of a paradox. The so called garage Mosques portrait an image of clandestinely but at the same time every time that a temple construction project is submitted immediately the neighbours start to protest and the political forces erected obstacles.. However every Friday the 250.000 Muslims…
The newspaper headlines here have been astonishing. “So Far So Good,” read one banner headline; “Alliance of Faiths,” read another. And splashed across the front page of most papers Thursday was a picture of a smiling Pope Benedict XVI waving a Turkish flag. With gentle gestures and well-timed words, Benedict managed to charm the Turkish…
Concerned about Islam’s image problem in much of the Western world, some Muslims in Germany have come up with a solution — The Islamobile. But the mobile information station also raises new questions. The Islamobile stands next to the local Catholic church. The stand is “a mobile multimedia information point in the form of a…
