The 48,000-square-foot mosque will cost £15-20 million to build

Submitted by anon (United States), Apr 16, 2008 at 21:30

A bit of a counterpoint to my own post.

The 48,000-square-foot mosque will cost £15-20 million to build,[3] aiming to house 2,000 to 4,000 worshippers.[2][4] The proposed mosque will be funded by Diyanet İşleri Türk İslam Birliği (DITIB), a branch of the Turkish government's

According to other sources, the 48,000-square-foot mosque, will be funded by Diyanet İşleri Türk İslam Birliği (DITIB), a branch of the Turkish government's religious affairs authority, bank loans, and donations from 884 Muslim associations, and Cologne's St. Theodore Catholic Church. The architect of the mosque is Paul Böhm, who specializes in building churches. It will house 2,000 to 4,000 worshippers.

The planned mosque would be in the Ottoman architecture style. It would have a concrete and glass dome, and two 55 meter high minarets. The mosque will have the bazaar and entrance on the ground floor, lecture halls in the basement, the prayer area on the upper floor and include a Muslim library. A well is intended to be placed in the center to connect the two levels and to create a pleasant atmosphere. The mosque consists of flat-like wall screens which form a dome in the center.

It will also have glass walls to give visitors a feeling of openness. According to the architect, openness is further enhanced by an inviting staircase from the street, and the structure symbolizes "a place where religions could meet". The developers have required that the secular areas of the mosque (e.g. the restaurant, event halls and stores) be a forum open to people from all confessions.

DITIB said it took many steps to "avoid touching nerves". The organization agreed to various stipulations, including a ban on broadcasting the call to prayer over loudspeakers outside the building. The mosque is not taller than any of its neighbors; it is flanked by office buildings, and dwarfed by a nearby television tower. The height of the minarets is about a one-third the height of the cathedral's spires. According to Mark Landler, Cologne's skyline, featuring the greatest Gothic cathedral in Germany and more than a dozen Romanesque churches, would not be altered by adding a pair of fluted minarets.The mosque will be situated two miles from the Cologne cathedral.

Although initially DITIB it was reluctant, it later planned to shorten the minarets, a compromise welcomed by Cologne mayor Schramma. However, the plans were dropped after the architects said the plan would leave the minarets out of proportion with the rest of the building and surrounding structures.

Jörg Uckermann, the district's deputy mayor, has criticized the project saying that "We don't want to build a Turkish ghetto in Ehrenfeld. I know about Londonistan and I don't want that here." Local politician Markus Wiener, of the right-wing group Pro Köln, expressed his fear that the Cologne mosque will empower the Muslim population too much. Pro Köln, which holds 5 of the 90 seats in the city council, collected 23,000 signatures on a petition demanding the halting of the project. The city, however, says only 15,000 of them were genuine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_Mosque_project

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".