The sex industry, which is legal in Germany, is anticipating a bonanza of lonely customers from abroad, travelling to attend the World Cup soccer tournament taking place June 9 to July 9. So the Pascha Brothel in Cologne, which boasts of being the largest bordello in Europe and the only business of its kind to offer a money-back guarantee to dissatisfied customers, wanting to welcome customers from all 32 participating countries, placed a 9-story tall advertising poster on its high-rise building, featuring a smiling blonde removing her bikini, above the flags of all 32 countries, captioned with a paraphrased version of the official motto: “The World as a Guest Among Girlfriends.”

Well, the sons of the Prophet were not amused. The BBC reports that Brothel-owner Armid Lobscheid told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper that Muslim groups accused the brothel of insulting Islam:

He said they had accused the brothel of insulting Islam by using the flags.

First there were telephone threats of violence, then about 30 hooded protesters armed with knives and sticks turned up outside Pascha on Friday, the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper reported.

“The situation was explosive,” Mr Lobscheid told the paper.

“Some of the people compared our ad to the Danish Mohammed cartoons,” he said, referring to cartoons which sparked violent protests in several Muslim countries in February.

German brothel-keepers are no more courageous on the average than the management of Borders, of course, so the flags of first Saudi Arabia and later Iran were obligingly blacked out.