New mosque planned for Cologne

18 months ago: Catholic priest Franz Meurer holds a collection basket as he stands 12 March 2007 in front of his St. Theodor church in Cologne, western Germany. Meurer announced that he wants to donate his church's Sunday collection to the construction of a mosque



22 August 2007

The new Mosque with room for 2000 of the faithful is a controversial project at Cologne's Ehrenfeld district



On Muslim holidays, hundreds of faithful hoping to pray at the city's Ditib Mosque are forced to spread their prayer rugs in a nearby parking lot and follow the service on loudspeakers. The mosque only holds 600 people. Yet plans to replace the flat-roofed storefront mosque with a new house of worship, complete with dome and two 54-meter-tall (177-feet-tall) minarets, have triggered an angry response from right-wing groups and, most recently, Cologne's Roman Catholic Archbishop.