KEY POINTS:
Petitions in London, protests in Cologne, a court case in Marseille and a violent clash in Berlin - Muslims in Europe are meeting resistance to plans for mosques that befit Islam's status as the continent's second religion.
Across Europe, Muslims who have long prayed in garages and old factories now face scepticism and concern over their plans.
Some critics reject the mosques as signs of "Islamisation" while others say minarets will scar their city's skyline. Given the role mosques have played as centres for terrorists, others see them as potential security threats.
"The increasingly visible presence of Muslims has prompted questions in all European societies," Tariq Ramadan, one of Europe's leading Muslim spokesmen, said when far-right groups wanted to ban minarets in his native Switzerland.
The issue hit the headlines in Britain in late July when a petition against a "mega-mosque" next to the 2012 London Olympics site was posted on Prime Minister Gordon Brown's website, attracting more than 275,000 signatures before being taken down.
In Germany last month, anti-mosque protests took place in Cologne and Berlin and a local council voted against one in Munich. A French group also vowed to sue the city of Marseille for a second time over a "grand mosque".
Bekir Alboga, of the Turkish Islamic Union in Cologne, said critics who saw the mosques as signs of separatism missed the point.
"The desire of Muslims to build a house of worship means they want to feel at home in a society they have accepted as theirs," he said.
Riem Spielhaus, an expert on Islam in Europe at Berlin's Humboldt University, said the tensions arose because houses of worship had a high symbolic value in Europe - usually being the centre of town.
"A mosque symbolically retraces the changes that have been made in society," she said. "It reopens the debate on whether these changes are good, whether Muslims should live here, even whether Islam is a good religion."
However, that was rarely discussed openly. Disputes about mosques tended to focus on other issues, such as terrorism, the role of women or the availability of parking spots.
Critics of the London mosque say such a large building with room for 12,000 worshippers will turn the integrated neighbourhood into a "one-faith zone", driving out followers of other faiths.
They also said Tablighi Jamaat, the Islamists building the mosque, were a security risk because "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid and two suicide bombers in the July 2005 London attacks followed the publicity-shy movement.
In Cologne, the Islamic union's plan for an Ottoman-style mosque has met charges it will be too big for a city housing one of the most imposing Gothic cathedrals in the Christian world.
"I have a queasy feeling," Cardinal Joachim Meisner said. "A mosque would give the city a different panorama. Given our history, there is a shock that Muslim immigration has brought a cultural rupture in our German and European culture."
A mosque project in Pankow, an eastern Berlin area with few Muslims, sparked violent clashes last month between supporters and opponents. Neo-Nazi groups have joined the protests and a truck was torched at the construction site in March.
France, whose five million-strong Muslim minority is Europe's largest, has a longer history of mosques in its cities and many mayors provide land at low cost for them.
The far-right National Republican Movement unexpectedly won two court cases this year against these subsidies in the Paris suburb of Montreuil and in Marseille, where a quarter of the population is Muslim.
Marseille Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin was so set on seeing a "cathedral mosque" built after decades of debate that he quickly got approval for a new contract at slightly higher rates.
"Everyone has a right to a significant house of worship," he told the city council. Most Marseille Muslims now pray in neighbourhood mosques too small for their congregations.
In Switzerland, two right-wing parties have launched a petition for a referendum to ban minarets on mosques there.
Last month, Italy's anti-immigration Northern League called for all mosques there to be closed for security checks. In December 2006, protesters left a severed pig's head outside a mosque being built in the Tuscan town of Colle di Val d'Elsa.
Concern about Islam has deep roots in some countries. In Greece, which had four centuries under Ottoman Turkish rule, Muslims got their first purpose-built mosque in Athens only in June.
In Spain, which endured eight centuries of Islamic rule until 1492, Catholic leaders turned down a request from Muslims to pray in Cordoba Cathedral, originally a mosque. A local Muslim group wants to build a half-scale replica of the building but has yet to submit plans.
- Reuters
