Prominent mosque in Germany sounds 1st public call to prayer

COLOGNE, Germany — The Islamic call to prayer was sounded in public for the first time from one of Germany’s biggest mosques on Friday, but at limited volume, as part of a project agreed with authorities in Cologne, which has one of the country’s largest Muslim communities. Authorities in Germany’s fourth-biggest city last year cleared the way for mosques to apply for permission for the muezzin to call for a maximum five minutes between noon and 3 p.m. on Fridays, with a noise limit being set for each mosque according to its location. “That Muslims have arrived and been accepted with their representative mosques as a visible part and with the call to prayer as an audible part of society is the core message of this long process,” he said — one that, he added, has taken Muslims “out of unseen and unpleasant backyard mosques into the fold of society.” Mayor Henriette Reker said last year that Muslims, many of them German-born, are a firmly established part of society in Cologne, a city whose main landmark is its imposing Catholic cathedral. Susanne Schroeter, director of the Frankfurt Research Center on Global Islam think tank, told public broadcaster WDR she worries that the muezzin call at the Central Mosque could be viewed as a “win on points” by “Islamist hardliners,” and “that this signal also goes to the Turkish president.” ___ Geir Moulson reported from Berlin.