BERLIN // Muslims in the German state of Bavaria are seeking funding from Qatar for an ambitious project to build a mosque and Islamic institute in Munich, which they say would "build a bridge between Islam and Europe".
The plan was initiated by Benjamin Idriz, a Macedonian-born imam. He said he had "high hopes" that Qatar would provide financing after he met the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, last year and received a Qatari delegation to discuss the €40 million (Dh180.47m) project.
"It's not just a mosque but a meeting place and a museum with an Islamic academy for scholarly work, and a research centre for Islam in Europe," Mr Idriz said. "It's important because there is a lot of uncertainty in society with many prejudices against Islam, with people getting a picture of Islam that doesn't come from Germany but from other countries."
Germany has about four million Muslims, the majority of Turkish descent. Even though Muslim immigration dates back half a century, many are still struggling to be accepted as equal citizens, even if they and their parents were born in Germany.
Volker Kauder, the parliamentary floor leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrat party, said this year that "Islam doesn't belong to Germany". It is a sentiment shared by many Germans.
Nevertheless, the Munich mosque has cross-party support from the city council and is also backed by the German government. Cornelia Pieper, the state secretary in the foreign ministry, recently wrote a letter to the mayor of Munich in which he said building the Islamic centre was "in the interest of our country".
Mr Idriz said he did not want backers to exert any influence on the centre, and that he wanted to keep it free of interference from religious associations such as the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), which runs about 900 mosques in Germany.
He said he had been wooing Gulf states for funding because he had good experiences with his own mosque in the town of Penzberg, 50 kilometres south of Munich, which was financed by the emirate of Sharjah and opened in 2005.
"The emir of Sharjah financed the mosque here in Penzberg, without demanding anything of us. That is the best argument for me," said Mr Idriz.
"We started out by asking the UAE and had talks with the emir of Sharjah and with the authorities in Abu Dhabi.
"I was in Abu Dhabi last August and had meetings with people and institutions there, and all of them expressed their support in principle. But nothing concrete has happened since then.
"I don't take that as rejection but things went a bit slowly. Then we tried Qatar in the meantime and the fact is that Qatar answered more quickly."
Munich city officials and Mr Idriz plan to meet Qatari Embassy officials in Berlin in September in the hope of securing an invitation to Qatar to discuss the project.
A visit to the emirate scheduled for late last year had to be cancelled because the Munich city representative, Hep Monatzeder, had a traffic accident.
Qatar has embarked on a foreign investment drive, signing deals in France worth as much as €750m last month to buy the Concorde Lafayette and Louvre hotels in Paris, and two five-star hotels in Cannes.
London's new skyscraper, the Shard, which was inaugurated last week, was majority-funded by Qatari investors. In Germany, Qatar's interests include a major stake in Volkswagen AG.
Munich, the biggest city in predominantly Catholic Bavaria, does not have a representative mosque in its centre, even though the city has 100,000 Muslims - seven per cent of the population - and attracts many thousands of tourists from Muslim countries.
"Thousands of tourists come in the summer and many complain that they don't have a clean, open, good, modern mosque in the centre, so this will, of course, also cater to tourists from Gulf countries," said Mr Idriz.
He added that he would also seek donations from local Muslims and from firms based in Munich, such as BMW and Siemens.
No land has been found for the mosque yet. Architects will be invited to submit designs once the funding is in place.
There has been little opposition to the project, unlike a DITIB mosque being built in Cologne that was resisted by a far-right citizen's group, which gathered 20,000 signatures against it.
ZIEM, the Munich organisation campaigning for the mosque, has been at pains to involve German authorities from the start.
"We Muslims are called upon to contribute our share to a free and equal society in modern Europe, in accordance with God's message and in accordance with the universal principles of human rights, democracy and the rule of law," it said on its website.
Süddeutsche Zeitung, a newspaper published in Munich, commented this week that the city should not refuse Qatar even though "the potential financiers aren't democrats".
"The investment is needed. It's not just Arab tourists but Munich's Muslims who are waiting for a representative mosque and who deserve better than prayer rooms in back yards," the paper stated. "ZIEM has good chances of becoming a beacon project for a modern, western Islam."
