The founder of a Liberal mosque in Germany has vowed to continue with her activism. The founder Seyran Ates has been receiving an estimated three thousand emails full of hate per day over the new liberal Mosque but is determined to keep the building operational.
Fatwa
Speaking to the Guardian, Seyran Ates said that despite receiving death threats and massive criticism over her new liberal Mosque in Berlin, she does not plan to cave in. The mosque admits Men And Women to pray side by side instead of the standard practice of segregating the genders.
The fifty-four-year-old Ates says that despite the threats and intimidation, she feels that she is doing the right thing.
The mosque is open to both Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Members of the LGBT community are also welcome. The mosque shares space with a Protestant church. However, people wearing a niqab or burqa are not allowed in because Ms. Ates believes that the garments are a political statement.
Egyptian state-run Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyyah Islamic Organization condemned the mosque's practices. According to the foundation, Islamic laws prohibit men and women from praying together. Egypt's al-Azhar University reacted to the new Islamic institution by issuing a directive banning the founding of Muslim liberal mosques.
Turkey's top religious authority, Diyanet, also criticized the German progressive mosque. The Turkish religious leaders said that the mosque's traditions do not conform with Islam's fundamental resources and rules of worship. The authority also accused the Germany-based mosque of not adhering to Islam's experience of more than fourteen centuries.
The leaders also accused the mosque of conducting experiments that will only serve to smear and ruin the Islamic religion. The association went on to link the mosque to Fethullah Gulen and his network. Turkish authorities have accused Gulen, a Muslim cleric based in the United States, of having masterminded last year's failed coup.
Ates has however denied any links to Gulen. Sabah newspaper, a pro-government Turkish newspaper said Ates' liberal mosque practices what it described as the prayer of the perverse.
Support from the German government
Ates moved from Turkey to Germany as a child. She has been a vocal critic of the oppression of women in certain Muslim societies. She wants liberal values introduced and upheld in Islam. Germany has said that Turkey's criticism of the new liberal mosque is an interference in the freedom of religion and opinion. Germany's Foreign Ministery spokesperson Martin Schaefer stated that the government rejects any comments that could seek to deny German citizens of their right to freely exercise their religious beliefs. Germany is home to more than four million people of Turkish origin.
