Last month, Germany’s first “liberal mosque” opened to much media fanfare. The woman behind the project, a lawyer named Seyran Ates, aspires to be Berlin’s first female imam and has proudly proclaimed that “there is no contradiction in being a Muslim and a feminist.” But, Vijeta Uniyal writes, the enthusiasm of the German and American media has not been reciprocated by Muslim groups in Germany or abroad:

German reporters and press photographers, eager to give glowing coverage, thronged to witness the mosque’s opening on June 16 and easily outnumbered the handful of Muslim worshipers. . . .

[What’s more], the media-driven PR campaign backfired, as the news of the opening of the Berlin liberal mosque reached Muslim communities in Germany and abroad. . . . Islamic fanatics from near and far started flooding the Berlin mosque with death threats. . . .

[According to] the British newspaper the Guardian, [Ates] said she had received “300 emails per day encouraging me to carry on,” including from places as far away as Australia and Algeria, but also “3,000 emails a day full of hate,” some of them including death threats. . . .

After countless death threats, the newspapers reached out to Aiman Mazyek, head of [Germany’s] Central Council of Muslims. He shrugged his shoulders and said there were 2,100 mosques in Germany and he “doesn’t need to comment on each and every one of them.” . . . .

This response, writes Uniyal, is typical for Germany’s major Muslim organizations whenever the government and press try to showcase a gentler side to Islam.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.