Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume I — Page 140
! ! 140 The Berlin Mosque ’s Scheme for F unds It is my desire that the German mosque be built with funds collected from women because Europe ans believe we regard women to be animals. When Europeans discover that at this moment Muslim women have donated funds to build a mosque for their newly converted Muslim brothers, in a city which is quickly growing to be the hub of the world, they will be quite astonished and embarrassed at their preconceived notions of Muslim women. When they pass by the mosque , a kind of death will pass over them. Th e mosque itself will be a silent manifestation , persistently chall enging those priests who lie that Muslim women hav e no status in Islam. They believe that women are regarded and treated as animals in our country , and they perceive Muslim women to be animals. When this mosque is built wit h funds raised by women, they will realize that these women recognize that there exist people in this world , who would worship a man. On the other hand , it is quite common among them that a husband and wife would begin to quarrel with each other only a month after being married and t he husband then goes off in search of another partner and the wife begins her search for another spouse. It is considered strange if a couple is still happily married a mo nt h after the wedding. They are un aware of the sort of genuine relationship which exists between a husband and a wife here. This is a case of the enemy wielding th e pen. They hold fast to the pen, and they write what they wish about Islam and Muslims. Maulvi Mubarak Ali wrote me a letter stating that an architect gave an estimate of two hundred thousand rupees to b uild the mosque, assuming that the nation planning to build a mosque with in their country must be very wealthy. But Maulv i Sahib told him that we do not have so much money, at which he revised his estimate to fifty thousand rupees. Five thousand rupees for the land and forty - five thousand rupees for the building , his viewpoint being that a large city of affluent people requires an impressive ly large building to draw people’s attention. An ordinary building will not impress pe ople. It would be similar to a house which is mostly built of concrete yet has a section that remains built of mudbricks , thus the house appear s