By Stephen Peter
This action requires a lot of courage: A large rainbow flag was unveiled in front of the “Ibn Rushd-Goethe-Mosque” in Berlin-Moabit on Friday afternoon. After a similar action last year, there were death threats against parishioners!
For the past three years, the mosque has occupied a good 300 square meters in a brick building on Ottostrasse, just a few minutes from the Tiergarten town hall. Uniformed and plainclothes police officers secured the entrance on Friday.
Unusual for raising a rainbow flag in the Tolerance Capital – but dire necessity. The mosque represents a progressive Islam: women and men can pray together, homosexuals are expressly welcome. Which regularly causes hate attacks.
A rainbow flag was unveiled for the CSD in 2022. The result: “The hostilities were excessive,” says women’s rights activist and lawyer Seyran Ates (60), co-founder of the mosque. “I keep getting death threats, sometimes every day,” she tells BZ
She is under 24-hour police protection. She doesn’t give up: “I can’t stop!” The small mosque (around 700 members) attracts international attention and can help people all over the world.
At the action on Friday, some parishioners wore sunglasses or face masks in rainbow colors – so as not to be recognized by family members. Because: “The hostilities that we experience come mostly from the Muslim milieu,” says Ates. “It’s an inner-Muslim conflict that we have to resolve.”
That’s why Ates has no sympathy for the Senate’s new queer commissioner, Alfonso Pantisano. He denied that there is a particular problem of homophobia among Muslims.
“I would recommend him to show a little more empathy and, above all, to inform himself before he lets out such sentences,” says Ates. “I thought we had gotten over talking about migrant groups without knowing them. He should really get facts and figures.”
Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (50, CDU) addressed Ates directly: “What you are doing here with your team deserves full support. For that I want to express my respect and gratitude. You are doing Berlin good!”