A self-described feminist and lawyer of Turkish background called Seyran Ates has opened up what she calls a “liberal mosque” in Berlin. It is housed inside a Protestant church and she calls the so-called mosque the Ibn Ruschd-Goethe Mosque after the Islamic theologian Ibn Ruschd and the Christian born romantic poet and author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
It seems precarious for someone who is not an Imam of any sort to open a mosque and even more oddly that she is banning women in the mosque from wearing face coverings even if that is the wish of worshippers.
She claims that her facility will be a place for a “modern, peaceful, liberal, and tolerant faith”. She could possibly be well intentioned, but her manoeuvre which appears to be a kind of publicity stunt is an arrogant insult to all religious people.
First of all, Islam has been a peaceful faith long before Miss. Ates was born. To claim that it takes the anti-religious ideology of liberalism to ‘pacify’ Islam is an insult to the peaceful Message of the Prophet Muhammad and also to Jesus Christ, a Message which believers understand to be the word of God.
As two of the world’s largest religions, Christianity and Islam have brought meaning to people’s lives, solace in times of hardship, inspiration in times of need, power in times of weakness and have helped to turn warring tribes of men and women into healthy communities.
All religions should be respected and liberals has no right to tell religious people to water down their belief for the benefit of those who seek to turn religion into a meaningless fashion statement.
For decades, Christians in the overwhelmingly liberal west have been told not to talk about God, not to wear the crucifix and not to allow their faith to influence their politics. Some are even forced to work on Christian holy days.
Just recently, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party resigned due to being hounded by other liberals because he tried to live the life of a Christian believer.
READ MORE: British Liberal leader admits one cannot be a liberal and a Christian
The state should not order religious houses to live by the same rules as a private business or a public place. Religious places are not places of business nor of government, they are places of solace.
Many in the west feel that Christ must be taken out of churches and The Prophet Muhammad must be taken out of mosques in order to create a sanitised version of religion that isn’t really religion at all.
Western liberals want people’s relationship with God to be intellectual rather than visceral, clinical rather than emotional. It seeks to transform the mysteries of the sacrosanct into the sacrilege of the post-modern libertine gutter.
It is wrong whether it is done to Christians, Muslims or any other faith.
Most religious people are peaceful. Those who are not become violent not because of faith but because of those who manipulate faith for their own gain, whether it be liberals in the west or the apostate Wahhabist cult leaders in Riyadh.
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