Fans of FC Schalke 04, which represents western Germany's Ruhr Valley in the country's top league, the Budesliga, can continue to support their team with a round of "Blue and White, how I love you".
The Gelsenkirchen club, which plays in Germany's top league, the Bundesliga, has confirmed yesterday they had no intention of outlawing fans from singing ther traditional song after Islamic scholar Bülent Ucar, who the club asked to study the lyrics, judged it was not offensive.
The third verse contains the line:
Mohammed war ein Prophet, der vom Fussballspielen nichts versteht/ Doch aus all der schoenen Farbenpracht hat er sich das Blau und Weisse ausgedacht.
(Muhammad was a prophet who understood nothing about football/ But of all the lovely colours he chose [Schalke's] blue and white.)
Since a reference to the ode to team's colours was carried in Turkish media, the team has received hundreds of complaints from Muslims.
Aiman Mazyek, the head of Germany's Central Council of Muslims, said his group would not call for a ban on the song but would like "an explanation of its background". He acknowledged that the line could anger some and noted that the area represented by the team had a large Turkish population. Germany has a Muslim population of over four million.
The German news website Deutsche Welle says the song was written in 1924 and it is not clear when the Muhammad reference made its way in.
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