For the first time, Germany’s largest mosque will broadcast the call to prayer (Azaan) on Friday after authorities in Cologne city gave approval for a pilot project with certain restrictions.
Cologne’s Central Mosque, an imposing building in the western city’s Ehrenfeld district, is being allowed to make a single call to prayer over loudspeakers for up to five minutes but only on Fridays, between noon and 3pm. The volume of the loudspeaker, nonetheless, must not exceed 60 decibels.
The agreement which is the part of a two-year pilot project was signed by Cologne officials on Thursday.
Mosques in several cities in Germany have long been authorized to broadcast the call to prayer, but Cologne city only approved it in October.
In majority-Muslim countries, the muezzin (man who makes call for prayer) calls the faithful to prayer five times a day.
“We’re very happy,” Abdurrahman Atasoy, general secretary of the Turkish-Islamic Ditib organization which runs the mosque, told local media.
“The public call to prayer is a sign that Muslims are at home here.”
Cologne mayor Henriette Reker said allowing the call to prayer was “a sign of respect” for the city’s many Muslims.
But the project has not been without controversy, particularly because of the involvement of Ditib, which has close ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and manages more than 900 mosques in Germany.
Critics have accused the organization of spying on Turkish dissidents living in Germany.
Erdogan himself travelled to Cologne in 2018 to inaugurate the Central Mosque, sparking rival rallies by thousands of pro- and antigovernmental demonstrators.
The Central Mosque, a massive glass and concrete structure designed as a flower bud flanked by two minarets, has room for 1,200 worshippers.
Germany is home to more than five million Muslims, accounting for around 6% of the population.
The city of Cologne, famed for its towering Dom Cathedral, counts more than 100,000 Muslim residents.
