indo–asian news service
London, July 27: A Muslim feminist who founded a liberal mosque in Berlin, triggering death threats and fatwas, is planning to open an inclusive place of worship in the UK, saying a revolution in Islam is under way, the media reported.
Seyran Ates, 54, a Turkish-born lawyer and human rights campaigner, visited London this week to investigate potential sites for a liberal mosque open to men, women and the LGBT community on an equal basis, and people from all strands of Islam, the Guardian reported.
She hopes to establish such a mosque within a year, and says her aim is to create similar places of worship in every European capital. “I’m not alone with this idea. It is a movement, it’s a revolution,” she told the Guardian.
“I may be the face of the liberal mosque, but I alone am not the mosque. We have millions of supporters all over the world.”
However, the opening of the Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque, in a space rented from a Lutheran church in Berlin last month prompted a hostile reaction from conservative Muslims in Europe, Egypt and Turkey.
Ates received death threats via social media and was told “you will die” during a street confrontation.
Turkey’s main Muslim authority, Diyanet, said the mosque was an experiment “aimed at nothing more than depraving and ruining religion”, the Guardian reported. Ates also takes a tough line on headscarves. When she opened the Berlin mosque, she said women wearing burqas or niqabs would not be admitted.
