Mosque in Germany to Honor Marwa El Sherbini

Cairo:  A group of Islamic and Arab leaders, as well as a group from the Egyptian community in Germany, have asked the German government to grant them a license to build a mosque in Dresden in honor of the Egyptian woman killed  in a courtroom in the same city. The original incident raised wide feelings of anger among Muslims,many of whom described the crime as a “hate crime” and have called Marwa El Sherbini, the victim, a “Martyr of veil”.

Sources from the Egyptian community in Germany told local newspapers that the German government agreed to build a mosque that would be named after Marwa El Sherbini, along with an attached center for child care, a Koran school and a medical center.

The sources confirmed that the site designated for the mosque has a space of 1,200 square meters in downtown Dresden and that the construction of the project would cost about €140,000. Project managers are now collecting donations from Muslim, Arab and Egyptian communities to start the construction process.

The sources said the cost of the project funded by donors across 3 stages of the project and that the managers of the project have nearly finished the first phase of the fundraising. The sources also confirmed that one of the Egyptian engineers in Germany donated the design of the project and that he sought and received the permission of the German government for the project. The sources also noted that this is the first time that the German government has agreed to the building of a mosque and an Islamic center in this large of a city Germany.

Organizers of the project proposed commemorating the momery of Marwa El Sherbini by naming the mosque in her honor and the child care center after her son, Mostafa. There will also be a memorial with her whole story, with the organizers hoping this memorial would become a symbol of the rejection of intolerance and Islamo-phobia in the West.