Turkish President Recep Tayyip Edogan said: “I strongly condemn the (German) police operation that completely ignores religious freedom and denotes Islamophobia and racism,” adding that these behaviors turn Europe into the dark Middle Ages, where freedom of belief is ignored, as he put it.
“Whatever its location, we will continue to confront racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia,” the Turkish president said in a post on Twitter, noting that Europe, “which was referred to for some time as the cradle of democracy and human rights, has turned into an entity that fights differences.”
On Wednesday, the German police searched the “Mevlana Mosque” and several facilities in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, where a large Turkish community lives. The public prosecutor announced the seizure of seven thousand euros and several documents and papers.
The operation came against the background of suspicions of fraud to obtain state support for companies to help them during the Covid-19 epidemic crisis, after monitoring a financial transfer to the mosque’s bank account worth 46,000 euros. The authorities suspect that three people have submitted an unjustified request for urgent assistance to compensate for losses of up to 70,000 euros.
The Turkish Foreign Minister also condemned the operation Thursday as a “discriminatory, disproportionate and prejudicial behavior,” and in turn, Fuad Aktay, Erdogan’s deputy, condemned the behavior of the German police, describing it as “extremist and irresponsible,” calling on it and the public prosecutor in Berlin to apologize.
The mosque belongs to the “Milli Görüş movement” monitored by the Constitution Protection Authority (German internal intelligence), a movement founded by former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan.
UAE / KS (AFP, DPA, German websites)
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
France
France is the country with the largest number of Muslims in Europe, with an estimated 5 million Muslims. Most of these Muslims belong to the countries of the Maghreb and North Africa. The number of Muslims in France increased significantly after the First World War, as the country was in need of manpower.
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
Germany
Germany is among the most important countries that Muslims have visited since the end of World War II. The number of Muslims in Germany is estimated at about 5 million. The percentage of Turks exceeds two-thirds. The number of Muslims in this country also increased, especially between 2010 and 2016, when about a million refugees visited it. According to studies, 86 percent of the refugees who went to Germany were Muslims. The country includes hundreds of mosques and dozens of religious centers.
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
Britain
Most of the Muslims in Britain are based in the capital, London. Their origins are divided between India, the Middle East and Africa. The most recent study on the subject indicated that the United Kingdom did not enter many Muslim refugees between 2010 and 2016, as their number was estimated at 60,000. In general, the number of Muslims who have arrived in the Kingdom since 2010 is approximately 43 percent of immigrants to Britain.
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
Spain
Part of Spain lived under Islamic rule for a long time, and some of its cities still have traces of this. According to 2012 statistics, more than one million 900 thousand people convert to Islam in the country. The majority of Muslims there are of Amazigh origins, especially from northern Morocco and some African countries. Muslims are distributed among many cities, the most important of which are: Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia, Valencia, Murcia, and Canarias.
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
Italy
According to a statistic dating back to 2016, Muslim Moroccans are estimated to be around half a million Muslims, out of more than 1,700,000 people who convert to Islam. Muslims in Italy are concentrated in the industrial sectors in the north of the country, and the capital alone includes more than 100,000 Muslims. As for the places of worship, Rome includes one of the largest mosques in Europe, as well as other mosques spread in cities and metropolitan areas.
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
Holland
In the last decades of the last century, the Netherlands attracted labor from “Muslim countries” such as Turkey and Morocco. Data indicate that the number of Muslims in the Netherlands exceeded 850,000 Muslims in 2006. The Dutch newspaper AD also recently indicated that Islam is widely spread within the country, and reinforced this with figures indicating the growth of Islam in Amsterdam, like other religions.
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
Belgium
Many Muslims go to Belgium, and there are more than 700,000 Muslims of Moroccan origins in the first place. Islam ranks second among the religions adopted in the country. According to a report by the Belgian newspaper, the Economist, earlier, half of the public school children in Brussels are from Muslim families. There are also more than 300 mosques in the capital. Belgium recognizes the Islamic religion and allocates a budget to teach Islamic education, and to pay the salaries of some imams.
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
Denmark
Islam recently arrived in Denmark, with the migration of Muslim workers starting in the mid-twentieth century. The number of Muslims is estimated at about 300,000 Muslims, or roughly 5 percent of the population of Denmark. Most of them are from Turkey and Arab countries. There are also among the Muslims Albanians, Pakistanis and Danes
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
Greece
The percentage of Muslims in Greece is estimated at about 3 percent of the total population. Greece is considered among the first countries to know Islam, as Muslim armies came to the island of “Rhodes” for the first time in 654 AD. There are five Muslim population groups in the country, divided into: Turks, Pomaks, Albanians, and others, in addition to immigrants. There are many mosques in the country, many of them dating back to the Ottoman era.
-
Photo file: Muslims in Europe .. Spread and numbers
Poland
The beginnings of Muslims in Poland go back to the fourteenth century AD. Currently, the number of Muslims there is considered small compared to other European countries. There are some indications that the number of these people reaches only 31,000 Muslims, which is approximately 1 percent of the total population. And there is the largest Islamic gathering in the city of Piautsnok. Some statistics indicate that, in 2050, the number of Muslims will double the number that exists now. Prepared by: Maryam Margheesh
Author: Maryam Margheish