EU:Proposals for 'mega-mosques' raise issues about how Islam fits into notions of identity in Europe, writes Mary Fitzgerald
When Nourredine Cheikh walks around the grounds of Marseille's old abattoirs, he doesn't just see graffitied walls, overgrown weeds and a hulking run-down building most recently used to store stage sets for the city's opera. Instead, he imagines what the 8,000sq m site might look like when it houses what will be Marseille's largest mosque, with a minaret pointing high above the Mediterranean port. For Cheikh, a retired Algerian-born businessman and president of the association responsible for the mosque project, it has been a long time coming.
Although Marseille's 200,000-strong Muslim community makes up a quarter of its population, the city's 62 mosques - mostly converted basements, warehouses and garages - provide room for little more than 13,000 worshippers. But, for Cheikh, the need for a grand mosque goes beyond the issue of accommodating the faithful.
"We need a symbolic place which truly represents the Muslim faith, a place where we can greet other denominations on an equal basis," he explains. "People in Marseille now realise that the Muslims living here are just as French as they are, and they're here to stay."
Four years ago, a poll found that more than half the city's population was in favour of the project. Last year the mayor announced he had allocated the former slaughterhouse site in north Marseille to the mosque association.
However, the plan has been challenged in court by an assortment of far-right groups. Similar lawsuits have been brought against planned mosques in the Paris suburbs of Montreuil and Creteil. Some of those involved claim the city councils are violating French law on the separation of church and state by leasing the proposed sites at a token rent. Others cast their opposition in starker terms, describing it as a battle against "the Islamisation of France".
Such controversies are not confined to France, home to Europe's largest Muslim population. Plans for bigger purpose-built mosques that Muslims say will reflect their faith's status as Europe's second religion are meeting resistance in several cities, prompting protests, court cases, petitions and, in east Berlin last July, violent clashes.
In several cases, the mosque projects are supported by city councils but opposed by residents' associations who cite security fears, or groups that talk of "creeping Islamisation" and argue the mosques' domes and minarets are incompatible with their city's architecture.
Critics of a proposed Ottoman-style mosque in Cologne claim it will jar with the city's cathedral, one of the most imposing Gothic structures in the world. Opposition has widened beyond the far right. Cardinal of Cologne Joachim Meisner says he feels a little "queasy" about the plan to build a large mosque with two 55m (180ft) minarets. "A mosque would give the city a different panorama," he said. "Given our history, there is a shock that Muslim immigration has brought a cultural rupture in our German and European culture."
Similar debates have unfolded over mosque projects in Spain, Italy and The Netherlands. In Switzerland and Austria, politicians on the right have called for a ban on the construction of minarets.
"Muslims have, of course, the right to practise their religion, but I oppose erecting mosques and minarets as centres to advertise the power of Islam," controversial Austrian right-winger Jörg Haider said last month.
In Britain, the debate has hinged on proposals to build a so-called "mega-mosque" - with space to accommodate at least 12,000 worshippers - close to the 2012 Olympics site in east London.
Critics, led by a local councillor from a Christian group, argue that such a large mosque would unfairly dominate the area's ethnically and religiously mixed population.
They also claim that Tablighi Jamaat, the conservative Islamic missionary movement behind the plan, poses a security risk because two of those who carried out the London bombings in 2005 attended the group's mosque in Yorkshire. The controversy made headlines in late July when a petition against the mosque was posted on prime minister Gordon Brown's website, attracting more than 275,000 signatures before it was taken down.
Jytte Klausen, a professor at Brandeis University in the US and author of a book on Islam in Europe, says opposition varies in each case.
"Some of the arguments against the mosques are legitimate in terms of things like planning regulations, others are not. Some of the German opposition has been very unpleasant, with people saying Islam does not belong in Germany or a minaret has no place in the European landscape."
Klausen believes the growing number of ambitious mosque projects says much about how the continent's Muslims now see themselves. "This building boom of mosques reflects the increased affluence of the Muslim community and their wish for integration and acceptance. In many ways, it's a reflection of how well they have done," she says.
This chimes with comments made by Bekir Alboga of the Turkish Islamic Union, the body leading efforts to build the Cologne mosque, earlier this year. "The desire of Muslims to build a house of worship means they want to feel at home and live in harmony with their religion in a society they have accepted as theirs," he said.
Riem Spielhaus, a Berlin academic who recently took part in a research project on the city's mosques, points out that while mosque construction faced some challenges in the 1990s, it has provoked stronger reactions since 2001. She believes the controversies point to deeper issues related to how Islam fits into notions of national identity, given the increasingly visible presence of Muslims in Europe.
"As long as prayer rooms were located in backyards, they were not an issue. But building a mosque is a statement of self-confidence," says Spielhaus. "It is a question of symbolism. The debate surrounding the building of new mosques these days is not mainly turning about the mosque itself but about everything concerning Islam and Muslims in each country.
"This debate is more and more about the identity of Britain, France, Germany, and Europe in general. What should Europe look like? What does religious freedom mean in a multireligious society? Can we really accept Muslims as members of society, shaping politics and the cities?"
Controversies will go on until these issues are teased out, agrees Klausen. "At the moment, it is unavoidable," she says. There will be more mosques and there will be more protests."