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[G.ZZZ]

An interesting and somewhat long piece about that famous woman-led liberal mosque that has opened in Berlin. In particular, some comments in the arcticle pushing for ideas that i long championed (creating a semi-official islam church in europe, funding more liberal mosques and slowly outlawing Wahabbi-Salafite funded mosques). Feels like the world is getting it, 10 years later? Not hoping to actually see politicians acting on it for at least 10 more years, pushing the culture of fear and security is much easier to get votes.

Lots of comments from other german islamic scholars, which all sounds like assholes but w/e.

Somaya al-Thaar, a 37-year-old Yemeni-German, raised her eyebrows under her hijab. ”I'm not against women being imams," she said. ”This is Germany. Do what you want. But they don't have anything substantive."

The mosque ”is just for show," she added, scrolling through her Facebook feed, where her post about the woman-led prayers had already generated 700 comments, many with laughing or shocked emojis. Most dismiss the mosque as a Potemkin village of liberalism for the European media.

Among Berlin's Muslim population, it has raised controversial questions about the proper role of Islam in European society and to what degree it can or should be liberalized. Within a few weeks of the mosque's opening, Ateş received so many death threats that the police put her under 24-hour protection.

Islamic authorities in both Egypt and Turkey have strongly condemned the gender desegregation at Ateş' mosque — a position shared by many Muslims and newly arrived refugees in Berlin — but a small number of German Muslims have embraced it.

”Most of the mosques here are Muslim Brotherhood or Salafi," said al-Khutabi, 46, who moved to Germany in 2005 to complete a Ph.D. in history at the Free University of Berlin and has since become a citizen. Most people don't attend them, but refugees will go if the mosques give them help. She attended the opening sermons at Ateş' mosque to show her support, she said.

The danger is that most mainstream mosques also promote fundamentalist teachings, which can create parallel societies and discourage integration, she cautioned. ”If Muslims want to integrate, they have to liberalize," she said.

Unless liberal mosques like Ateş' can match the kind of social support offered by more mainstream, more conservative mosques, they won't be able to compete, she said. ”This mosque is tiny. It's just a symbol. There is no Gulf monarch helping the liberals."

Wahhabi mosques are a source of extremist ideology, agreed Ali Taouil, the 48-year-old leader of a Shiite mosque in Neukölln, a district known for its high concentration of immigrants. Taouil moved to Germany from Lebanon in 1990 and became a citizen 10 years later.

But although hard-line mosques ”brainwash youth with extremist ideas," Taouil said he has no qualms sitting with them for iftar, the meal eaten after sunset during Ramadan. Another cause of youth radicalization is alienation, he said, and a sense of exclusion from German society for being Muslims. That's why he believes in engaging mosques across the sectarian and political spectrum. ”The problems outside Germany should be left outside Germany. Let's be brothers here," he said. ”Our goal is to be together."

The founder of the liberal mosque, however, went too far, he said. She ”wants to bring a new Islam that's far from all our Islams. It's wrong. It's not about tradition. It's fiqh [jurisprudence]. It's theology."

Taouil agreed on the need for a debate on how to reform Islam, but he stressed that religious scholars with decades of authority should be the ones to initiate change. Ateş does not have the authority, he said, for the sudden, radical departure from the religion's core principles she preaches at Ibn Rushd-Goethe.

”We can't just choose whatever rules we want," he said, comparing the situation with walking down a Berlin street and respecting red and green traffic lights. ”Freedom is not without limits. Religion must have rules, just like the street needs lights."

Tucked away in an old, graffiti-covered building a few blocks from Ateş' mosque, Ahmad al-Hammoud manages refugee cases at Dar al-Hikma, or Haus der Weisheit, a cultural center and mosque that also acts as a help center for refugees.

Al-Hammoud, a 59-year-old Palestinian-German who moved to Berlin in the late 1970s, said he and many other immigrants who've lived in Germany for decades still feel like foreigners. His children are engineers who speak German better than Arabic, he said, but his family still feels ostracized.

”[Germans] say that integration just means respecting the law, but as Muslims, they will not accept us unless we leave part of our religion," al-Hammoud said. ”For example, homosexuality. They want us to accept it. I cannot."

Complete article here: http://www.politico.eu/article/berl...first-liberal-mosque-sparks-debate-in-berlin/

 

[brian577]

”[Germans] say that integration just means respecting the law, but as Muslims, they will not accept us unless we leave part of our religion," al-Hammoud said. ”For example, homosexuality. They want us to accept it. I cannot."

They're not asking you to date guys ffs. How is respecting another human being's right to exist against your religion? What do you want? The right to murder gay people?

 

[cameron]

Lots of comments from other german islamic scholars, which all sounds like assholes but w/e.

They are, in fact, assholes.

They're not asking you to date guys ffs. How is respecting another human being's right to exist against your religion? What do want? The right to murder gay people?

Generally, in regions like Germany (and Canada), it's not always that extreme. You can easily get most religious people to condemn hate crimes and violence against LGBTQ people, but it's the less overt hostility that's a major problem. They want to say it's a sin, morally wrong, etc and expect others to pretend that it's not at all homophobic. Tolerate my intolerance.

You can ask "moderate" religious people in these regions about how they would react to their children or close family members being gay, but don't expect to get a honest/direct answer if they know you support LGBT rights.

 

[ClosingADoor]

Al-Hammoud, a 59-year-old Palestinian-German who moved to Berlin in the late 1970s, said he and many other immigrants who’ve lived in Germany for decades still feel like foreigners. His children are engineers who speak German better than Arabic, he said, but his family still feels ostracized.

“[Germans] say that integration just means respecting the law, but as Muslims, they will not accept us unless we leave part of our religion,” al-Hammoud said. “For example, homosexuality. They want us to accept it. I cannot.”

At that point, who's fault is it that you feel like a foreigner then. Yes, if you move to a liberal country in Europe, you are expected to adapt to that. If you don't want to, it is hard to take your complaints about feeling like a foreigner serious.

 

[Miles Quaritch]

At that point, who's fault is it that you feel like a foreigner then. Yes, if you move to a liberal country in Europe, you are expected to adapt to that. If you don't want to, it is hard to take your complaints about feeling like a foreigner serious.

Unless he's openly advertising his bigoted beliefs about homosexuality, how would anyone know?

He might feel ostracized because of the colour of his skin?

 

[MisterFalcon]

At that point, who's fault is it that you feel like a foreigner then. Yes, if you move to a liberal country in Europe, you are expected to adapt to that. If you don't want to, it is hard to take your complaints about feeling like a foreigner serious.

As a deeply religious person you are expected to make those liberal countries more religious.

 

[G.ZZZ]

At that point, who's fault is it that you feel like a foreigner then. Yes, if you move to a liberal country in Europe, you are expected to adapt to that. If you don't want to, it is hard to take your complaints about feeling like a foreigner serious.

Let's be real, the people ostracizing muslims probably also aren't that cool with gay marriage either. The Venn diagram between progressive feminists and people who ostracize muslims because of their patriarchal trash beliefs is probably much smaller than bigots who hate brown people because reasons.
It's far easier for a progressive person to convive peacefully with people they think they're horrible than for bigots to do so. I mean, i had a friend of mine being refused hospitality from a nunnery because she was muslim. Those are good people who routinely host africans girls and women in need for free, but they simply don't see anything wrong with closing their doors to a muslim. They don't see the paradox or moral dissonance because religion is a powerful drug.

 

[Crema]

Won't someone think of the homophobes?

 

[ClosingADoor]

Unless he's openly advertising his bigoted beliefs about homosexuality, how would anyone know?

He might feel ostracized because of the colour of his skin?

He gives that specific example after talking about how he can't integrate like the Germans want. So yes, I'm thinking things like that play a role.

 

[Mimosa97]

Won't someone think of the homophobes?

" Please empathize with me I don't deserve to be marginalized for who I am "

" Gays? What gays? I will never accept gays. Fuck that. "

Fuck this guy. The problem is people like him are never called for their hypocrisy. I don't give a rats' fuck for who you are or where you come from. In 2017 when you're a racist or a homophobe or a sexist you damn well know what you're doing. You don't get a pass because you're supposedly a victim yourself.

 

[Messofanego]

Is there a way to support this mosque? If I knew my mosque was Wahhabi led, I'd do everything to stop that. Thankfully it's not.

Maybe German Muslims gotta do a bit of introspection of why they can't accept homosexuality. Hopefully it doesn't have to come to your own children realising they're gay for you to gain empathy for the plight of LGBT Muslims. If you're marginalised, don't marginalise others.

Hasan Minhaj and Reza Asian's open letter about this is worth a read for fellow Muslims:
http://religiondispatches.org/an-open-letter-to-american-muslims-on-same-sex-marriage/

You recognize the growing acceptance of gay rights, but personally you just can’t bring yourself to embrace the shift. You may feel okay with having gay acquaintances or coworkers. You may even agree that being gay doesn’t disqualify you from also being a Muslim. But privately, you still feel like the LGBT community is a living contradiction to what you were brought up to believe.

But here’s the thing. When you are an underrepresented minority—whether Muslim, African American, female, etc.—democracy is an all or nothing business. You fight for everyone’s rights (and the operative word here is “fight”), or you get none for yourself. Democracy isn’t a buffet. You can’t pick and choose which civil liberties apply to which people. Either we are all equal, or the whole thing is just a sham.

We Muslims are already a deeply marginalized people in mainstream American culture. More than half of Americans have a negative view of us. One-third of Americans—that’s more than one hundred million people—want us to carry special IDs so that they can easily identify us as Muslim. We shouldn’t be perpetuating our marginalization by marginalizing others. Rejecting the right to same-sex marriage, but then expecting empathy for our community’s struggle, is hypocritical.

Think about the way people look at your hijabi sister or your bearded brother when they walk through the mall. Think about the grumbles and stares you get at airports. Think about the vitriol that’s spewed on you by your own elected political leaders. That’s how your LGBT brothers and sisters feel every day of their lives. Are you okay with that?

We don’t know about you, but our faith teaches us to care for the weak and the marginalized, the poor and dispossessed, those who are trampled underfoot, those who are persecuted—no matter who they are, no matter what they believe, no matter who they choose to love.

"Believers, stand firm for God, be witnesses for justice. Never allow the hatred of people to prevent you from being just. Be just, for this is closest to righteousness" (Quran 5:8)

It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

You may think LGBT rights is a new conversation, something that’s only recently come into contact with modern Islamic thought, but trust us, it’s not. Challenging the status quo for the betterment of society is one of the very foundations on which Islam was built.

No one is asking you to change your beliefs. If you feel your faith tells you that homosexuality is haram, fine. We disagree with your interpretation, but you’re entitled to it.

Ain’t America grand?

But if you can’t find it in your heart to accept gays on principle, think about the country you want to live in. After all, the constitution that just ensured the rights of LGBT communities is the same constitution that protects our mosques and community centers, that keeps our Islamic schools open, that allows us equal rights and privileges in the face of overwhelming hatred and bigotry from our fellow Americans. You can’t celebrate one without the other.​

 

[Haunted]

Respecting the laws of the country you are living in is the very fucking least said country should be able to expect from its population and its citizens.


Peace, tolerance and freedom are the most important principles in Germany and if you cannot accept homosexuality and are bent on denying basic rights and freedom to homosexuals because of your religion, there should be no space for you in German society.

 

[Sarcastic Poster]

Fuck tolerating intolerance.

Also out of curiosity, what does the Qur'an, Hadith's etc. say about female imams?

 

[Replicant]

“[Germans] say that integration just means respecting the law, but as Muslims, they will not accept us unless we leave part of our religion,” al-Hammoud said. “For example, homosexuality. They want us to accept it. I cannot.”

So he wants to be accepted but won't accept and respect those who are different from him.

Fuck him.