Mosque construction in Erfurt is delayed

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If the fear were a building, it could be thought of as a domed building with turrets, located in an industrial park between auto repair shops and Red Cross branch. A mosque. Hardly anything seems to cause greater fear right now - at least in the inhospitable northwest of Erfurt.

There is this building actually, but so far without dome and tower. Mohammad Suleman Malik pawls in the muddy ground and points with his hand towards the gray concrete skeleton. "This," he says, "is my baby." He is smiling blissfully.

Malik is the local representative of the Ahmadiyya community, which is responsible for the first new construction of a Muslim temple in East Germany. The fact that the mosque in Erfurt-Marbach is actually built, the 32-year-old had not even believed, too bureaucratic hurdles seemed - and the Islamophobia too great.

But in November, a year ago, Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow actually laid the foundation - under police protection, while demonstrators across the street shouted crude conspiracy theories into their megaphones. On their posters were such slogans: "Here is a defensive fortress on the conquest of Islam!"

Meanwhile it has become quiet in the Marbach industrial park. Gone is the ugly resistance to the construction project but not. He only changed his face.

Community spokesman Malik digs out a note: an expression of the mail from a contractor who was supposed to lift the roof onto the mosque months ago. It says nothing, it says, because a crane company does not want to participate. This feared "attacks on their vehicle and hostility".

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Another company has responded similarly, it continues in the mail. And Malik says he has also received phone cancellations of this kind: "Some have said quite clearly that they do not want to have anything to do with a mosque." He could understand that, says Malik. According to his own information, an entrepreneur lost several orders because of his involvement in the mosque construction.

A kind of boycott against the church of a religious minority, in 21st century Germany? "That," says Malik, "results from the climate of fear that prevails here."

In the summer, due to the cancellations, the construction work almost came to a standstill for several months and since then the timetable has been thrown off balance: instead of this November, the mosque will be opened only in 2020, with at least four months delay.

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The case shows that it does not take manifest threats and assaults to intimidate minorities. Resentments and racism, irrationality and Islamophobia have long since poisoned the social climate in some places. Some hate Islam, the others fear the Islam haters.

Malik regards all this with concern - not only as a Muslim, but also as an Erfurt, as a German, as a committed citizen. The trained merchant is a non-partisan deputy and deputy district mayor in his district. "I just lack the sensitivity," he says, "and a social debate about Islamophobia."

The fact that the Ahmadiyya community has not found any businesses in the region for some contracts shows a fundamental problem, he says. Not only freedom of religion and social peace are threatened: "This shift in the right will harm the domestic economy."

"They endanger our democracy"

Malik now rummages his cell phone out of his pocket and wipes through the hustle and bustle of the past few months. They are screenshots of Facebook posts full of hatefulness and violent fantasies, Malik reads them one by one: they turn against the mosque and Muslims in general ("as a foundation, please a fragment bomb"), sometimes against him personally ("he can be glad that he still lives ").

According to Malik, such messages are reported daily. " These are the perils, they endanger our democracy," he says. "People do not want to have anything to do with us, but they constantly complain about us." Did he resign? Malik shakes his head: He bets on dialogue, on principle. In April, he led the AfD co-founder Bernd Lucke on the construction site, a few weeks later he argued with Thilo Sarrazin on a podium on Islam.

On Saturdays, he often stands in the city center and invites passers-by to a conversation. Especially young people were open-minded, but he had already been spit in the face. "You get insulted too," says Malik, "but at least we get into conversation."

Peter Maxwill / THE MIRROR

Municipal spokesman Malik on the construction site: This should be a "fortress of Islam"?

The rejection of the mosque and its visitors is also provoked on relevant portals: the self-proclaimed "Bürgerinitiative einprozent", a think tank of the intellectual intellectual journalist Götz Kubitschek, railed online against the "pompous mosque with minaret" and praised the "peaceful and creative protest of Erfurt citizens "against this" symbol of progressive Islamization ".

The alleged "pompous mosque" is within sight of grain silos behind a car repair shop, it should be at least 50 meters to the road, in the vicinity is only a single residential building to see. If there were a muezzin, hardly anyone would hear his prayer call. However, the eight-meter-high minaret is supposed to serve only for decoration anyway.

In addition, the protest in the past few years by no means only "peaceful and creative": Fully veiled Islam enemies marched through Marbach, staged in the downtown a right-wing mockery in the style of jihadist terrorists, on the mosque ground landed a skewered pig's head with blood and paws.

Self-proclaimed "citizens of Erfurt" even tried to stage their protest with wooden crosses next to the mosque site as a Christian resistance. The fact that the official churches are on the side of the Muslims did not bother the supposed West German defenders.

DPA

Wooden cross protest in March 2017 in Marbach: That should be Christian resistance?

The fronts in this cultural struggle run along the lines of conflict that seem to split society as a whole. In the immigration debate, in the Leitkultur debate, in the Islam debate.

The alliance of fear makers also includes the Thuringian AfD of ultra-right state chairman Björn Höcke. Malik gets angry when it comes to the party, he talks faster and more energetic. For him, she is the root of the evil.

The Thuringian AfD organized demonstrations, supported a referendum, later sued against its rejection. She also made mosque construction a topic in the state parliament, with a petition called "Regulation of Religious and Cultural Conflicts and Dangers in Sacred Architecture".

How should a few dozen faithful in a business park promote the Islamization of the republic? How can you keep a mosque between Bundesstraße 35 and the municipal hazard center for a "Fortress of Islam"?

Malik shrugs and goes into the shell. He prefers to talk about what he calls his baby: he walks slowly through the future prayer room, the library, the washroom - and he shows where the shoe rack should once be, the playground, an orchard. Malik now looks like a father who can not wait to watch his child grow.

"We're not scared"

Who wants to understand this pride, must know the history: As a young man Malik drove once a month by train to Berlin to pray in the local Ahmadiyya Mosque. Since 2004, he has been fighting to build a church in Erfurt, spoke to politicians, visited land - and repeatedly received cancellations.

When he was about to give up, so he tells it, suddenly offered the site in the Marbach industrial park. In the meantime, a crane company has found it, which has hoisted the roof onto the shell - but for four times the price, which was planned for it.

The construction site tour ends on the roof. Malik looks over the workshops and parking lots to the horizon. In the spring, he says, the mosque will be ready. If he was not afraid that something could get in the way again? Malik smiles broadly. "We are not afraid," he says. "We have our own engineers." The dome and minaret would be built by the parishioners on their own without the help of other craftsmen and companies.

The fear of others should not get in his way again.