A citizens' group in Berlin turned out this week for a candlelight vigil to protest plans for a new mosque in their neighborhood. It will be the first to be built in the former East Berlin, where almost no Muslims live -- but no one can quite explain why it shouldn't be there.| The problem isn't that no one can quite explain it, it's that the authors are a couple of disingenuous agenda bitches who select their "facts" and quotes with care and apply the bludgeon of guilt - works like a champ on the Germans. |
At the end of a rundown suburban street lined with bare trees and flaking apartment facades, a small group of people hold candles or colored Glo-sticks. A few hold signs -- "Democracy yes! Caliphate no!" -- and some carry German flags.
"The mosque is supposed to go up right here," says Günter Bronner, a blustery white-haired man with glasses pushed up on his forehead who's lived in the neighborhood for 42 years. He points to a drab piece of land at the end of the street where a defunct sauerkraut factory stands. "They want to have a minaret with a muezzin who gives the call to prayer five times a day. Can you imagine? Five times a day over our rooftops."
Officials gave the go-ahead last Friday for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association to build a new mosque in Heinersdorf, an eastern neighborhood of Berlin where very few Muslims live. It will be the first mosque on the once-Communist eastern side of the city, and an organization of locals turned out Wednesday to protest. "It was pretty brazen to hand this (approval) to us as a Christmas present," quipped Joachim Swietlik, head of the citizens' group, who claims that 90 percent of Heinersdorf doesn't want the mosque. |