(La Croix) Rarely has a project stirred up such controversy in the city of Erfurt, the capital of the German state of Thurngia.
On Nov. 13, the small community of Ahmadis, a Muslim reformist movement often denounced by Islam’s majority Sunnis, laid the first stone of its future mosque at a ceremony attended by the Thuringa’s prime minister, Bodo Ramelow.
The ceremony was extremely importan[t] for Erfurt’s 60-strong Ahmadi community and particularly symbolical for the region, which has some 7,000 Muslims but no mosque worthy of the name.
As Bodo Ramelow knelt to place the first stone, about 60 demonstrators close to the extreme-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party shouted “Shame on You” into a megaphone.
The place of Islam and its representation has become a central issue in recent years in an increasingly multicultural German society.
