Come, come, whoever you are.

June 25, 2017 7:43 AM

Last week in Berlin, in a rented room at the Protestant Johanniskirche, Seyran Ateş, a 54-year old lawyer, women's rights campaigner and imam-in-training, opened Germany's first inclusive place of worship for liberal muslims, the Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque.

Open to Shia, Sunni, Alevi, Sufi and all other interpretations of Islam, the mosque does not separate men and women for prayer, and welcomes LGBTQ muslims. (Only the niqab and the burqa, which Ateş sees as "political statements", are not permitted.)

So far she has been receiving 300 mails per day supporting the intitiative, and ten times as many intimating her to close the mosque. Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyyah has strongly criticized the project, and 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”.

Ateş survived a gun-attack early in her career protecting immigrant women's rights and has been an engaged critic of the naivety of some German multiculturalist policies.

“The pushback I am getting makes me feel that I am doing the right thing,” said Ateş, “God is loving and merciful – otherwise he wouldn’t have turned me into the person I am.”

posted by progosk (5 comments total)

Ateş is a true hero.

She's trying to catalyze a period of enlightenment for Islam, similar to what brought Christianity from the middle ages into modern times. Of course, those parts of the Islamic world that are still stuck in the middle ages (i.e. >80%, including all large Islamic organizations in Germany, such as Ditib) are not too happy about that.

Apparently, she receives death threats all the times. In addition, Turkey is accusing her to be an agent of Gülen. This is a particularly sinister threat, since it means that her relatives in Turkey can be put in jail and detained indefinitely without trial at any time.

Anyway, I hope she has the strength to continue this project and that the mosque is not eventually attacked by some lunatic.
posted by sour cream at 8:43 AM on June 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

That's amazing. Congrats to her and thanks for posting, OP. Full disclosure: I was the publicist for an all-inclusive women's-led mosque in Berkeley that was dedicated in April. I'm not religious, I just wanted to support an inclusive place of worship for muslims. Everyone of all faiths (and none) needs a place where they feel welcome.
posted by Bella Donna at 10:20 AM on June 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm not certain what the authors mean by the first "all-inclusive mosque" but there have been non-sectarian mosques in the United States before—Muslims for Progressive Values have opened several mosques/meeting groups in the United States, including in California.
posted by koavf at 7:05 PM on June 25, 2017

"If we don't stop the political-religious movement, I'm sure we have much more Islamization in Germany in next five to 10 years," she says. "If we are going to stop that movement and separate politics from religion, then we will have chance for Islam to be compatible with democracy."

Very insightful and should-be-obvious point.
posted by From Bklyn at 10:43 PM on June 25, 2017

Oh dear, it seems one of the seven founding members of the congregation has declared he merely infiltrated the group in order to better denounce what he is calling their "islamophobia". (There is speculation as to whether this is in respinse to threats received.)
posted by progosk at 1:22 PM on June 27, 2017