For the first time in the Great Mosque of Cologne, DITIB will be heard today (14.10.) the first call to prayer at 13:24, this after an agreement with the city hall.
Many Muslims see it as a complement to integration in Germany, many Germans say that if the church bell is allowed, there is also a place for calling the ezan, but quite a few are critical.
According to critics, this means showing more tolerance than necessary. According to a survey, about 76% of respondents reject the call of the muezzin and do not see it as equal to the echo of the church bell.
The Cologne DITIB mosque agreement with the city hall is a model project has strong limitations. Thus, the call to prayer should not be higher than 60 decibels for residents. The call is heard only 100 meters away from the mosque.
The call to prayer will not be heard from the minarets, but from megaphones placed in the courtyard. It should be remembered that this is not the first call to prayer in Germany. In Dyren, for example, it has been heard for 30 years and does not now cause more than a shrug of the shoulders.
Abdurrahman Atasoy, the vice-president of the DITIB General Association, said that “this is an important step in the perception of the Muslim community as part of society.”
Support for the call to prayer comes from the Catholic Church. The head of the Cologne diocese, Robert Kleine, told that the basic right to exercise religious freedom also applies to Muslim communities in the form of calling a muezzin. “This is about a constitutional right, which should not be relativized with reference to religious intolerance or the political instrumentalization of religion in other parts of the world.”