Gaza War

German politicians and a Turkish group appealed for tolerance on Wednesday and condemned an anti-Islamic congress, planned by a nationalist group in the western city of Cologne.

The Pro-Cologne group fiercely opposes a decision by the city of Cologne to allow the construction of a new mosque which will include a dome and minarets.

"It is high time that people in Germany raise their voices to support dialogue and peaceful coexistence and take a stand against injustice, racism and extremism," Rafet Ozturk, of the DITIB Turkish-Islamic Union in a statement.

Leftist groups are planning counter-protests on Saturday and the Christian-Muslim Peace Initiative said it would put up 500 placards around Cologne with the slogan "dialogue and tolerance instead of aggression and fear!".

"The36in Cologne linked to the planned mosque — of which right-wing populists’ activities are unfortunately a part — will be watched across Germany and Europe," said Ruprecht Polenz, head of parliament’s foreign policy committee and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

The congress has also sparked anger in Islamic countries.

Earlier this month, Iran called on the French presidency of the European Union to stop the congress and summoned the French charge d’affaires in Tehran to the Foreign Ministry’s human rights department, according to the IRNA agency.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, Austrian far-right Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache and members of Belgium’s Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party are due at the congress on Saturday, says Pro-Cologne’s website. Media have reported between 1,000 and 1,500 people are expected to join the Pro-Cologne march on Saturday.

About 3.2 million Muslims live in Germany, more than half of whom are of Turkish origin.

Reuters
(worldbulletin.net)

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Is Mosque Hysteria Being Ginned Up to Bolster Support for the Disastrous Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

By Phyllis Bennis

(source: Alternet)

At its core, the controversy surrounding the proposed Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan is not about religion. It’s about war.

For some years now the fear factor that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001 and fueled public support for the “global war on terror” (or the onomatopoetic “GWOT”) has been diminishing. Along with the long and intense work of the antiwar movement and the rising levels of casualties, fear reduction has played a key role in building opposition to the wars. Part of that process has been the growing normalization of the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York. “Ground zero,” the site of the destroyed World Trade Center, is now a busy construction venue in the midst of a hectic commercial district that includes all the usual hodgepodge of convenient and useless, businesslike and tawdry aspects of Manhattan street life: Office buildings and food vendor carts, coffee shops and strip joints. There’s nothing hallowed about it.

That normalization hasn’t yet made possible the kind of serious national debate this country so desperately needs. That debate is not about September 11, but about September 12 – the day George Bush launched a war our country was now going to wage anywhere he chose against whomever he designated for as long as he wanted without any restrictions. The whole world – though most especially the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as those of Yemen, Somalia, Palestine and Kenya, and so many more places – as well as those of us here in the U.S. continue to pay the price.

Read More »Mosque hysteria