• Saudi Arabian King Salman will fund construction programme in Germany
  • Politicians say the offer is ‘cynical’ because of the nation’s foreign policy
  • They argue that Saudi Arabia should help by taking in some migrants
  • Also say that they are creating refugees with military campaign in Yemen 

Conservative politicians in Germany have attacked an offer from Saudi Arabia to build 200 mosques in the country for the ‘spiritual needs’ of the Syrian refugees arriving daily in their thousands.

Andreas Scheuer, general secretary of the CSU party in Bavaria which is Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ally in the state, called the offer ‘cynical’ given that the Kingdom is making thousands of refugees of its own in its military campaign in Yemen.

‘No, it is more than cynical. This is no Muslim Brotherhood. Where is the solidarity in the Arab world?’ he asked, given that the Kingdom has not offered to take in refugees fleeing from the civil war in Syria.

Stephan Mayer, the domestic policy spokesman of both the CSU and Merkel’s CDU in parliament in Berlin, agreed with him, adding: ‘Germany does not need a cash donation to build 200 mosques but solidarity with the refugees.’

The offer comes as tens of thousands of migrants head to the Hungarian border, many of them on their way to Germany, which is expecting 800,000 migrants this year alone

Many newspapers expressed outrage that Germany would ever consider such an offer from a country which practiced an extreme form of Islam which includes punishments such as stoning, flogging and limb mutiliation.

The offer was apparently made through diplomatic channels and surfaced in Lebanese newspaper al diyar towards the end of last week.

According to the report, the mosque construction programme was the idea of the absolutist Saudi monarch King Salman. He is content to give the asylum seekers a wide berth in his own land, fearful as he, and the other arch conservatives who assist him, of them importing a form of political dissent that they believe would threaten the auotcracy.

CDU Deputy Chairman Armin Laschet said: ‘Instead of talking about funding mosques, Saudi Arabia should be thinking about taking refugees and ending financing of ISIS.’