Mosques Become Catalyst for Conflict Across Europe

[Mike Ellis]

Amazing - the European people begin to realize that grovelling to Islam leads only to more Islam.

The West is on the verge of committing cultural and ethnic suicide.

Muslims out of Western lands - NOW!

The rise of mosques becomes catalyst for conflict across Europe | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

The rise of mosques becomes catalyst for conflict across Europe
A minaret planned for a Swiss village has prompted the latest of several disputes over new places of worship

Ian Traynor in Wangen, Switzerland
Thursday October 11, 2007
The Guardian

North of Berne in an idyllic Alpine valley cowbells tinkle, a church steeple rises, and windowboxes tumble with geraniums. It has always been like this.

But down by the railway station the 21st century is rudely intruding and the villagers of Wangen are upset.

"It's the noise, and all the cars. You should see it on a Friday night," complains Roland Kissling, a perfume buyer for a local cosmetics company. "I've got nothing against mosques, or even against minarets. But in the city. Not in this village. It's just not right. There's going to be trouble."

The target of Mr Kissling's ire is a nondescript house belonging to the region's Turkish immigrant community. The basement is a prayer room where hundreds of Muslims gather every week for Friday rites.

And in a case that has gone all the way to Switzerland's supreme court, setting a keenly watched precedent, the Turks of Wangen have just won the right to erect a six-metre-high minaret.

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This opposition is on a collision course with an Islam that is now the fastest-growing religion in Europe and which is clamouring for its places of worship to be given what it sees as a rightful and visible place in west European societies.

"Islam is coming out of the backyards. It's a trend you see everywhere in Europe," says Thomas Schmitt, a Bonn University geographer studying conflicts over mosques in Germany.

Estimated at about 18 million and growing, the Muslims of western Europe have long worshipped in prayer rooms located in homes, disused factories, warehouses or car parks, hidden away from public view. Their growing self-confidence, though, is reflected in plans for the Abbey Mills mosque, Britain's biggest, in east London, which is intended to have a capacity of 40,000

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