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An attempt by German Academia to provide outreach to moderate Muslims may have significantly backfired, with its leading light becoming an apostate. Muhammed Sven Kalish has written a paper asserting that the prophet Mohammed never existed at all, and that Islam started as a Christian heresy. Needless to say, the same people who threatened death on editorial cartoonists merely for depicting Mohammed are not pleased: Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany’s first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn’t like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam,...

Cologne - Far-left protesters set up the first road blocks in Cologne to prevent a scheduled far-right anti-Islam rally in the city on Saturday. Elsewhere in the city, police secured access to the site where the demonstration is planned. However, the scene was dominated by peaceful demonstrators streaming into the city in large numbers to protest against the right-wing rally. Several hundred police forces were deployed across the city ahead of the controversial "Anti-Islam Conference" organized by a city group, Pro Cologne. Pro Cologne which won 5 per cent of votes at the last city-council elections, has invited 1,000 to...

A young female form lying crumpled on a sidewalk. Blood flowing from multiple stab wounds. Police cars. Ambulances. Flashing lights. Emergency personnel working frantically to save an innocent life that had barely begun. It is a scene that is becoming all too common in Western Europe with its growing Muslim population, as the northern German city of Hamburg experienced in May yet another horrifying honor murder of a young female.

In the past four months, six Muslim women living in Berlin have been brutally murdered by family members. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. How can such a horrific and shockingly archaic practice be flourishing in the heart of Europe? The deaths have sparked momentary outrage, but will they change the grim reality for Muslim women? The shots came from nowhere and within minutes the young Turkish mother standing at the Berlin bus stop was dead. A telephone call from a relative...

After a Moroccan thug was stabbed to death in self-defense by a German man he was trying to rob, Muslims in Cologne took to the streets in protest. Apparently, they believe it’s their right to mug Germans, and the Germans should just accept it. And Spiegel Online seems to agree, in an article dripping with sympathy for the demonstrators: ’We’re Sitting on a Powder Keg’: Immigrants Protest Death of Moroccan Teenager in Cologne. Following the violent death of a Moroccan teenager in Cologne, hundreds of immigrants have taken to the streets in nightly demonstrations to protest what they see as...

BERLIN — Six men whirled faster and faster in the center of the nightclub, arms slung over one another’s shoulders, performing a traditional circle dance popular in Turkey and the Middle East. Nothing unusual given the German capital’s large Muslim population. But most of the people filling the dance floor on Saturday at the club SO36 in the Kreuzberg neighborhood were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and of Turkish or Arab background. They were there for the monthly club night known as Gayhane, an all-too-rare opportunity to merge their immigrant cultures and their sexual identities. European Muslims, so often portrayed one-dimensionally...

A new study commissioned by Germany's Interior Ministry warns of a growing threat from the radicalization of Muslims in the country. Six percent of Muslims in Germany support violence in the name of Islam, the authors write. A new study released by Germany's Interior Ministry has added new fuel to the debate about integration of Muslims in Germany, with the report warning about the danger of radicalization of Muslims. According to the study, which was published Tuesday, around 40 percent of Muslims surveyed had a "fundamentalist orientation," which the authors defined as a strongly religious worldview and moral values.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's biggest synagogue, a century-old landmark which was torched by the Nazis and left to fester in communist East Berlin, reopened its doors on Friday in the latest sign of the country's Jewish revival. Located in the German capital's now trendy district of Prenzlauer Berg, the 1,000-seat synagogue has been returned to its former glory thanks to a painstaking 7-year restoration project that cost 7 million euros (4.7 million pounds). The restoration of the blue-domed temple follows last year's opening of a new synagogue in Munich and ordination of Germany's first rabbis since World War Two. But...

Mosque stirs racial passion in Germany While Muslims see a £20m building for Cologne as test of a nation's tolerance, critics fear the rise of a parallel, repressive society Jason Burke in Cologne Sunday July 15, 2007 The Observer (UK) Anti-mosque protest in Cologne. Photograph: Henning Kaiser/AFP/Getty This weekend the mosque is overcrowded, the cafe grubby, the social centre and offices scruffy and uncomfortable. Not for long, hopes Kilic Iqbal, 27, who works for the Turkish religious and cultural association that runs the complex. 'It will be beautiful, but much more too,' said Iqbal. 'The Muslims of Germany have been...

Huge mosque stirs protests in Cologne By Harry de Quetteville in Cologne Last Updated: 12:39am BST 25/06/2007 The construction of one of Europe's biggest mosques near to a globally famous Christian landmark has sparked a furious row in Germany. Immigration and integration are hugely sensitive questions in Germany, which is home to a Turkish community of several million. But almost within the shadow of Cologne Cathedral, political correctness has now been replaced by bitter confrontation as the city's Muslims begin to build a 2,000-capacity mosque with twin minarets that will reach 170ft. "Muslims have been here for 40 years, yet...

Wednesday, August 23, 2006 German Muslims: It's a Protestant Crusade Spiegel Online notes that the discovery of the failed Islamic terror plot to bomb German trains has given rise to the usual pathological denial and anti-logical conspiracy theories among the Muslim community of Hamburg: What Terror? The Protestant Crusade Conspiracy. This just in: The Lebanese men suspected of having deposited bombs on German trains last month were hired hands — in the employ of the German government itself. That, at least, is what one 27-year-old from Saudi Arabia believes. “It’s all a Protestant crusade,” the man explains. “All of northern...

SOEST, Germany – More and more Germans are converting to Islam. Last year approximately 4,000 persons became Muslims. According to the Central Islam-Institute in Soest, the numbers have been rising since the turn of the century. Up to the year 2000 the annual number of conversions stagnated at 300, but it has been rising ever since. The institute’s director, Salim Abdullah, has no plausible explanation for this trend, as he told the evangelical news agency "idea." In the past, converts were chiefly women, who married Muslims, or academics with an "affection for the Orient."

German authorities may have thwarted suicide bomb attacks in Iraq by German women. According to intelligence sources, three women were prevented from travelling to Iraq after one of them had announced she planned to blow herself up in Iraq. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that German intelligence agencies have prevented three German women from travelling to Iraq in recent weeks. The women, who have close contacts to the Islamist scene in Germany and at least one whom has converted to Islam, came to the attention of intelligence agencies after one of them had announced on an Internet site that she intended...

BERLIN - Germans are growing increasingly negative over Islam and concern is rising over the country's Muslim minority, a recently released poll shows. "If one looks at this from a pessimistic viewpoint it could be seen as the start of a downward spiral toward conflict," said the Allensbach polling agency who conducted the survey for the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper. Asked if they though Christianity and Islamic could co-exist peacefully, 61 per cent of those surveyed said they believed there would always be "major conflicts" between both faiths. Some 91 per cent said they associated Islam with oppression of women, up...

BERLIN: Nearly 17 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, eastern Berlin is about to get its first mosque but the news has provoked an outcry from some residents who say they do not want Muslims in their neighbourhood. The local council has received threats to burn down the mosque, which will stand on a piece of land that belonged to a sauerkraut maker in communist times, said the left-wing mayor of the district of Pankow. The community’s main argument is that here in the neighbourhood of Pankow Heinersdorf there are no Muslims and therefore there is no need...

The cafe Fleck und Speck is as cosmopolitan as Stuttgart gets. During an evening there, I meet a Kurd, a Serbian Jew, and a German whose curly black hair betrays his Mexican heritage. This is the multicultural dream that Germany's Left has promoted for decades - but which not everyone shares. The Christian Democrat-led government of Baden-Wuerttemberg, of which Stuttgart is the capital, has just introduced new "discussion guidelines" which have sparked national controversy. They consist of 30 questions which can be put to applicants for German citizenship to see if they share democratic values. But they have been strongly...

Two German newspapers on Wednesday reproduced controversial drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammad, with one of them arguing that a "right to blasphemy" was anchored in democratic freedoms. The drawings were among several published in a Danish paper in September that sparked outrage and boycotts in Islamic countries. The pictures were also shown in a Norwegian magazine last week. Palestinians in Gaza burned Danish and Norwegian flags this week in protest of the caricatures. The caricatures offended many Muslims both because of their critical content and because Islam forbids representations of Muhammad out of concern they could lead to idolatry. In...

Germans to put Muslims through loyalty test By Kate Connolly in Berlin (Filed: 31/12/2005) Muslims intent on becoming German citizens will have to undergo a rigorous cultural test to gauge their views on subjects ranging from bigamy to homosexuality. Believed to be the first test of its kind in Europe, the southern state of Baden-Württemberg has created the two-hour oral exam to test the loyalty of Muslims towards Germany. It is to be taken on top of the standard test for foreigners wishing to become German citizens, which includes language proficiency skills and general knowledge. It also requires applicants to...

On the night of Feb. 7 2005, Hatun Surucu, 23, was killed on her way to a bus stop in Berlin by several shots to the head and upper body, fired at point-blank range. An investigation showed that months before, she had reported one of her brothers to the police for threatening her. Now three of her five brothers are on trial for murder. According to the prosecutor, the oldest of them, 25, acquired the weapon; the middle brother, 24, lured his sister to the scene of the crime; and the youngest, 18, shot her.[...] Ayhan Surucu, the youngest brother,...

Five cars set ablaze in Berlin Monday, November 7, 2005 Posted: 1103 GMT (1903 HKT) YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- Five cars were set on fire overnight in a working-class district of Berlin, and police said Monday they were looking into whether those responsible were inspired by violence in neighboring France. The vehicles were set alight in the inner-city Moabit district, and police said as they investigated the incident that they would step up their presence. No one was injured.