God loves beauty and goodness – this prayer hall leaves no doubt about that: the high ceilings of the Ditib Central Mosque in Cologne are decorated in Arabic with the so-called 99 most beautiful names of Allah. For example, “The Beneficent”, “The Noble” or “The Compassionate”.
But another calligraphy adorns the prayer hall. It quotes the 286th verse of the second sura of the Koran in Arabic. According to several translators, it reads: “You are our protector. So help us to victory over the unbelievers.” From the point of view of supposed unbelievers, that doesn’t sound quite so nice and good.
A group of Ditib critics discovered this Koran verse in the mosque association’s prayer room in Cologne and had it translated. Ali Ertan Toprak, President of the Federal Working Group of Immigrant Associations in Germany, is one of them. He expresses his horror at the find in the mosque.
“How does this fit in with Ditib’s multi-religious declaration of peace?” asks Toprak. “Ditib always emphasises that the place of worship is a place of togetherness. Why is this place decorated with a supplication that invokes victory over the infidels? This is a declaration of war on peaceful coexistence in Germany,” says the secular Muslim and Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Parliamentary candidate to the daily WELT.
He is also annoyed that Ditib does not translate the verse in question in the paper version of its German-language brochure “Central Mosque Cologne” (the brochure is available to WELT). Most of the other verses that decorate the mosque would be reproduced there in German – euphonious verses like “Peace be upon you!” or “We have made you peoples and tribes so that you may know one another”. “Why is there no translation of this problematic verse?” asks Toprak.
For years, Germany’s largest mosque association has been accused of preaching Turkish nationalism. Moreover, according to experts, Ditib is under the influence of the authoritarian Turkish government. And now this calligraphy, which has adorned the prayer house since its inauguration in 2017 -this should be evidence for all Ditib sceptics. But is the critics’ translation even correct?
Yes, says Abdel-Hakim Ourghi. The German-Algerian Islamic scholar at the University of Education in Freiburg is one of the most prominent campaigners for a secular Islam in this country. When asked by WELT, he declares this translation to be the “most literal translation”. Christine Schirrmacher, an Islamic scholar from Bonn, also translates the verse as “Give us victory over the people of the infidels”.
And Ourghi complains that the verse “always implies that Muslims should see Germany as a kind of enemy country. Such a verse has no place in a mosque in this country. Toprak also asks why the state of North Rhine-Westphalia “is entrusting Ditib, of all people, with the task of organising Muslim religious education in schools?