The Hot Springs Are Getting Hotter

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Jaroslav Kubera, the 56-year-old chain-smoking mayor of the Czech spa town of Teplice, is a man who likes to live and let live. A bookshelf in his office, for instance, bears a SMOKING PERMITTED sign. But these days a dispute pitting Arab investors against local people is making him smoke even more than usual.

Kubera is in a tight spot. On one side are residents trying to stop a hotel and mosque from being built in the ancient resort town (pop. 53,000); on the other, private backers of the project who aim to invest up to $4 million to cater to wealthy Arab families fleeing the summer heat of the Gulf. The mayor, who can smoke a pack of cigarettes in an hour and has been in office since the fall of communism, hasn't yet taken an official position, though he says that he personally doesn't mind the project.

The town council initially backed the hotel and mosque proposal, but then the protests began. Almost 5,000 residents signed a petition arguing that "at a time of strengthening Arab terrorism in the whole world, it would be extremely irresponsible" to permit construction of the mosque. Local clergymen signed an open letter calling Islam "a strongly orthodox and militant religion whose principles ... are totally incompatible with [our] traditional values." The town council reversed course and voted to fight the mosque. "The only thing that it contradicts," Kubera says, "is public opinion, which holds that the Arabs should not increasingly make themselves at home here." He abstained from the council vote and admits the town may be fighting a losing battle — the project violates no zoning regulations. He agrees with the protesters, though, that the timing of the scheme is "totally unsuitable." Teplice's building authority, a state body independent of the town council, is expected to decide this week.

Tucked between two magnificent mountain ranges, Teplice's hot springs have attracted Goethe and Beethoven, among others. But in Freedom Square, talk has turned from the springs' curative powers to a debate over Islam, tolerance and public opinion vs. private property rights. "The whole thing is the result of the bad reputation Islam has these days," says Zdenek Vojtísek of the Society for the Study of Sects and New Religious Trends. "A simple man sees a terrorist in a Muslim and a center of terrorism in a mosque."

Since the mid-1990s, Czech society has grown somewhat more tolerant; two mosques and about six prayer halls have sprung up around the country, catering for the republic's roughly 20,000-strong Muslim population. But after 9/11, tolerance gave way to fears of militance, which the country's Muslims have worked to allay. "If there are any [militant] forces, they don't need the cover of a mosque," says Vladimír Sánka, chairman of the Center of Muslim Communities in the Czech Republic. Milos Kejzlar, the 41-year-old math teacher leading the petition drive in Teplice, remains unconvinced. "We worry that the presence of [mosques] will increase security risk the way it did in Germany, France or Britain," he says. "I consider myself a tolerant man, but I don't want to tolerate things like this."

Backers of the project are determined to proceed. Ali al Kaitoob, a 48-year-old investor from the United Arab Emirates who has been coming to Teplice since 1998, says: "We respect Czech laws, and if we have the right to build this, we will build. This is a private investment and we will not succumb to political pressures." The roots of the opposition may turn out to be commercial. A prayer hall has stood on the site of the proposed development for two years without causing offense. Arab visitors spend about $5 million annually at the spa, and project backers say the real reason for the protest may be that local people profit from renting out their properties — so the hotel would cut into their incomes. Mayor Kubera says this may be partly true, but suspects a mistrust of foreigners to be the overriding reason. "We spent 50 years in a plastic bottle and now have a problem with somebody looking or acting differently."