Germany's first 'liberal mosque' to open in Berlin.

[Odin]

Turkey says German mosque were men and women pray side by side “incompatible” with Islam.

Looks like they're giving the Erdogan fanboys over there, their instructions to attack it. Of course until these Muslims realize that, if this mosque blows up then so do their mosques.

[Odin]

The founder of a new liberal mosque in Berlin that allows men and women to pray side by side has vowed to press on with her project even though the institution has been issued with a fatwa from Egypt and attacked by religious authorities in Turkey within a week of its opening.

“The pushback I am getting makes me feel that I am doing the right thing,” said Seyran Ateş, a Turkish-born lawyer and women’s rights campaigner, who does not wear a hijab. “God is loving and merciful – otherwise he wouldn’t have turned me into the person I am.”

The Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque, named after a Muslim philosopher who defended Greek philosophy and a German writer fascinated by the poetry of the Middle East, opened its doors in Berlin’s Moabit district a week ago on Friday.

Housed in the side-building of a Protestant church, the mosque is open to Sunni, Shia, Alevi, Sufi and other interpretations of Islam but rejects visitors wearing the burqa or the niqab, which founder Ateş has describes as a “political statement”. On its opening day, a male and a female imam jointly led Friday prayers to a crowded room.

A week later, the white-walled prayer room was noticeably emptier, with the seven-strong congregation almost matched by the number of security staff who guarded the exits and entrances with blue plastic covers over their boots.

Ateş, 54, said many of the previous week’s worshippers had decided to stay away because they feared incrimination against themselves or their families. Her own relatives in Turkey had asked her to drop the project because they worried about arrests.

The lawyer, who is currently training to become an imam, said she had received “300 emails per day encouraging me to carry on”, including from as far away as Australia and Algeria, but also “3,000 emails a day full of hate”, some of them including death threats.

Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyyah, a state-run Islamic institution assigned to issue religious edicts, issued a statement on Monday declaring that the Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque’s practice of men and women praying side by side was incompatible with Islam, while the legal department of Egypt’s al-Azhar university reacted to news from Berlin with a fatwa on the foundation of liberal mosques per se.

Turkey’s main Muslim authority, Diyanet, said the new mosque’s practices “do not align with Islam’s fundamental resources, principles of worship, methodology or experience of more than 14 centuries, and are experiments aimed at nothing more than depraving and ruining religion”.

A social media post circulated among Germany’s Turkish diaspora community showed a photograph of a foot hovering over three copies of the Qur’an scattered across the floor at the mosque, claiming that they had been placed there by “Ateş and her accomplices”. One visitor at the inaugural event told the Guardian that she saw the books being placed on the floor by a man purporting to be a journalist.

Some Turkish media have even accused the project of ties to the movement of Fethullah Gülen, subject to a crackdown in the country after the attempted coup of 16 July 2016.

“In my darkest dreams I wouldn’t have expected that Turkey would try to portray us as Gülenists, claiming that I had praised Gülen in my speech,” said Ateş. “I have nothing to do with their movement. On the contrary: they represent an interpretation of Islam that is too conservative for us.”

She started Friday’s prayer session with an appeal for those critical of the mosque’s mission statement to say so in the open, saying: “I hope that this time people are brave enough to show their true face. Allah knows their true face anyway. And it is Allah to whom they are accountable, not us.”

Ateş, who moved to Germany as a child and came of age during Berlin’s counterculture scene of the 1980s, narrowly survived a shooting at an advice centre for Turkish women in the city’s Kreuzberg district when she was 21.

Describing the founding principles of Ibn Rushd-Goethe, she said: “Our idea of liberal Islam is that unlike orthodox and conservative practitioners, we do not believe that the written records of the Qur’an should be transferred word-for-word to the 21st century. We ask ourselves what the intentions were at the time and which parts can translated and explained in the 21st century.

“We want to work together with conservatives to do something against Islamist terror, to show that Islam is also a very peaceful, mystical and spiritual religion. Many people adhere to the Muslim faith not because of Isis or the Taliban or whatever, but also because it is a beautiful religion.”

One of the worshippers at Friday’s prayer was a British Sufi called Umar, who is usually based in south-west England but was visiting Berlin for the weekend and decided to visit the mosque after reading an interview with Ateş.

The 30-year-old said he did not have a problem with men and women praying side by side: “It’s dangerous to say there are definitive rulings,” he said. “We do not have the prophet anymore. These are confusing times for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Anything we can do to improve accessibility is a good thing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...wa-burqa-niqab

Someone is going to attack it. I have to say that Abdel Sisi's Egypt is a bit of a mixed bag, on one hand he is openly calling for religious reforms, on the other: fatwas, killing of local Christians.

[Dandelion]

I wonder whether liberal muslims like these would be allowed to perform the Hadj. If I were that homosexual imam I read about in another article I wouldn't risk it myself.

[Rumata]

I wonder whether liberal muslims like these would be allowed to perform the Hadj. If I were that homosexual imam I read about in another article I wouldn't risk it myself.

I wouldn't too. I'm guessing, soon, they'll find a 'liberal Kaaba' for that matter.

[Óttar]

“We want to work together with conservatives to do something against Islamist terror, to show that Islam is also a very peaceful, mystical and spiritual religion. Many people adhere to the Muslim faith not because of Isis or the Taliban or whatever, but also because it is a beautiful religion.”

Islam spread largely through the missionary work of Sufis who rebelled against strict legalistic interpretations of Islam. They spread their brand of Islam through blending it with traditions and customs of the new lands they entered. Many parts of Afghanistan, present-day Pakistan, and India weren't Islamized until quite late in history. Using the terminology of the field of religious studies, "traditional Islam" consisted of ritual dancing and singing at the tombs of honored sheikhs and holy men. Most people were illiterate, so the sheikh wielded spiritual authority and 'interpreted' the Quran and the Hadith for the people. This assimilation of local traditions and customs under the superstructure of Islam had the unfortunate effect of taking these otherwise "pagan" peoples into Islam's ugly bosom, where now they are at the mercy of Salafis and Wahhabis, who, because they can actually read and write (ironically thanks to the proliferation of printing after European colonial occupation), are practicing their ugly religion the way their murderous and bloodthirsty Quran actually commands.

It was much the same situation in medieval Europe. Most of what is good in Abrahamic religions come from external sources; practices, rituals, beliefs, and customs which existed for hundreds of years prior to the advent of Abrahamic religion itself. Tradition is potent. Scripture is bankrupt. This reveals the inherent bankruptcy of Abrahamism.

[Odin]

This assimilation of local traditions and customs under the superstructure of Islam had the unfortunate effect of taking these otherwise "pagan" peoples into Islam's ugly bosom, where now they are at the mercy of Salafis and Wahhabis, who, because they can actually read and write (ironically thanks to the proliferation of printing after European colonial occupation), are practicing their ugly religion the way their murderous and bloodthirsty Quran actually commands.

I have read somewhere that some obscure mosque in the Middle East cannot unilaterally issue a fatwa against anyone or anything, which would be fine, if every tom, dick, and Muhammad didn't take any old fatwa seriously.

[Dandelion]

Islam spread largely through the missionary work of Sufis who rebelled against strict legalistic interpretations of Islam. They spread their brand of Islam through blending it with traditions and customs of the new lands they entered. Many parts of Afghanistan, present-day Pakistan, and India weren't Islamized until quite late in history. Using the terminology of the field of religious studies, "traditional Islam" consisted of ritual dancing and singing at the tombs of honored sheikhs and holy men. Most people were illiterate, so the sheikh wielded spiritual authority and 'interpreted' the Quran and the Hadith for the people. This assimilation of local traditions and customs under the superstructure of Islam had the unfortunate effect of taking these otherwise "pagan" peoples into Islam's ugly bosom, where now they are at the mercy of Salafis and Wahhabis, who, because they can actually read and write (ironically thanks to the proliferation of printing after European colonial occupation), are practicing their ugly religion the way their murderous and bloodthirsty Quran actually commands.

It was much the same situation in medieval Europe. Most of what is good in Abrahamic religions come from external sources; practices, rituals, beliefs, and customs which existed for hundreds of years prior to the advent of Abrahamic religion itself. Tradition is potent. Scripture is bankrupt. This reveals the inherent bankruptcy of Abrahamism.

So through this liberal Islam an orthodox Islam might arise centuries later. I personally reject all Islam, no matter how they dress it to be like. Never gonna convince me with a fake Islam that doesn't follow Islam yet insists on calling itself Islam. Better not follow the religion if you don't agree with it rather than pick-and-choose and turn it into a New Age religion.

[Bosniensis]

Wicked People
Wicked Culture

That church is a mockery and joke.

[Wadaad]

I wonder whether liberal muslims like these would be allowed to perform the Hadj. If I were that homosexual imam I read about in another article I wouldn't risk it myself.

you dont have to wonder...you could ask and the answer given: NO

These are benchmark Murtads/Apostates according to sharia.

[Wadaad]

Islam spread largely through the missionary work of Sufis who rebelled against strict legalistic interpretations of Islam. They spread their brand of Islam through blending it with traditions and customs of the new lands they entered. Many parts of Afghanistan, present-day Pakistan, and India weren't Islamized until quite late in history. Using the terminology of the field of religious studies, "traditional Islam" consisted of ritual dancing and singing at the tombs of honored sheikhs and holy men. Most people were illiterate, so the sheikh wielded spiritual authority and 'interpreted' the Quran and the Hadith for the people. This assimilation of local traditions and customs under the superstructure of Islam had the unfortunate effect of taking these otherwise "pagan" peoples into Islam's ugly bosom, where now they are at the mercy of Salafis and Wahhabis, who, because they can actually read and write (ironically thanks to the proliferation of printing after European colonial occupation), are practicing their ugly religion the way their murderous and bloodthirsty Quran actually commands.

It was much the same situation in medieval Europe. Most of what is good in Abrahamic religions come from external sources; practices, rituals, beliefs, and customs which existed for hundreds of years prior to the advent of Abrahamic religion itself. Tradition is potent. Scripture is bankrupt. This reveals the inherent bankruptcy of Abrahamism.

dumb revisionist history made by someone who did not bother reading the vast material on how Islam spread to those regions, and what Sufism is, and the extent sufism played a role in the spread of Islam.