In Cologne, besides ringing church bells, calls of the muezzin will soon be audible – the German-Israeli psychologist and critic of Islam Ahmad Mansour calls the fact that this will be the case in Cologne’s central mosque a “demonstration of power of political Islam” in an interview with the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. The Turkish-Islamic Community Ditib, which runs the mosque in the Ehrenfeld district, plans to call a muezzin to prayer on Friday, possibly for the first time.
The organisation is under the leadership of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has transformed the country into an Islamist autocracy. For Mansour, it is explicitly this circumstance that is a problem: “It is devastating if this organisation, of all things, is now being given such public recognition,” he says.
The fact that the city wants to allow muezzin calls is part of a model project. Before the project is approved, however, conditions must be met: These include a noise survey and that the call be limited to five minutes. The project is limited to two years. The background is the fundamental right to freedom of religion.
In Islam, the muezzin call is the equivalent of church bells in Christianity. Mansour sees this differently: “The ringing of bells is about sound, the muezzin call is about concrete religious messages. The muezzin call translates as “There is no God but Allah!” and “I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah!”. Mansour accuses Cologne’s mayor Henriette Reker of being “criminally naïve” in justifying the muezzin call with freedom of faith.