1st German Muslim Dialogue

Besides some critical concerns, the conference was widely regarded as a successful first step. Also the Muslim representatives called it a “historic moment” in their relations with the German government.

Schaeuble aims at “German Muslims”

A few days prior to the event, the German Minister built the bridge for dialogue by publicly stating that Islam is “a part of our country and a part of Europe”. After so many years of discussing Muslim migration and integration in Germany, it was indeed conducive to have the German government openly accepting Islam as a part of the German society.

To Schaeuble, the major concern is to “help Muslims in Germany feel like German Muslims”. They should be able see themselves as “citizens of a liberal German democratic state, which is religiously neutral but not free of religion.”

The Minister explained that Muslims in Germany become German Muslims “once they embrace the German state in its worldliness; once they don’t regard it as alien or hostile to their faith, but as a chance of freedom, which needs to be secured and realized also by Muslim citizens.” Schaeuble therefore saw the main aim of the conference “not only in the development of proposals for politicians and the government, but also as a call on all religious groups to understand the chance of freedom as a task which is given to them by their own faith.”

Muslims in Germany

According to a German intelligence agency, there are 3.2 - 3.5 million Muslims in Germany. Among those, some 1.8 million Turkish nationals have their matters of faith regulated by the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Religious Affairs Office in Turkey. This office writes all the Friday sermons; it also trains, dispatches and pays for all 600 imams in its 870 mosques in Germany. The Turkish influence has long secured a secular orientation in the Islamic administration of this large community in Germany. However, it has also become apparent that imams trained and dispatched from Turkey and using the Turkish language in their sermons do not facilitate the integration of Turkish Muslims into German society.

However, this is only one of many reasons for the lagging Muslim integration. Also, according to government’s figures provided to Parliament in the year 2000, only about 500,000 Muslims, i.e. 15% of the population are eligible to vote and can thereby impact legislation according to their specific demands. Moreover, while 1.5 million Muslims in Germany are organized in 69 Muslim associations under six Muslim umbrella organizations, the registered membership in these umbrella organisations reaches less than 400,000, i.e. about 12% of all Muslims. Muslims therefore do not have forceful representative organs vis-à-vis the German government. This was also felt during the German Islam Conference.

Conference organisation

The Conference on 27 September had set itself highly ambitious objectives: 30 permanent representatives went into three standing committees to meet six times a year on:
- German society and its values;
- religious matters in the interpretation of Germany’s constitution; and
- the economy and the media as intermediaries.
The committees will join plenary sessions once every six months. A previously constituted forum on “Security and Islamism” will also continue to discuss matters of internal security, Islamist resistance against the German liberal democracy, and the prevention of Islamist violence.

The 30 permanent representatives consist of 15 delegates from the German government and 15 Muslim representatives in Germany. 5 of them represent their respective Muslim umbrella organization, i.e. the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Religious Affairs Office in the Turkish government, the Islamic Federation Berlin, the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, the German Islamic Council, the Association of Centres for the Islamic Culture, and the German Alevit Community. However, since these organisations only represent 10-15 % of the Muslim population in Germany, the Ministry also invited 10 other Muslims who are not organised in Muslim associations and are supposed to represent the “silent Muslim majority”.

Difference in expectations

As stated at the beginning, all parties involved welcomed the government initiative and regarded the first dialogue session as a success. Many observed, however, that there were differences in the priorities of the German government and the Muslim umbrella organisations. The government primarily wants to achieve a consensus on social and religious standards based on the German constitution. This involves issues, like equal rights of men and women, joint education of girls and boys, headscarves, participation of Muslim girls in physical education and swimming classes, German language classes, as well as the integration of youth from immigrant communities into the German labour market.

Meanwhile, the representatives of Muslim organisations have reported their expectation to “strengthen the legal integration of Muslim representative organizations”. In more practical terms, they aspire to be legally regarded as representatives of a publicly acknowledged religious community, which would put them on the same level with, for example, the Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany. This legal status would allow them to co-organise Islamic religious instructions at German schools and the training of imams at public German universities.

German state-church relations

The matter of interest for the Muslim organizations refers to German legislation that provides religious communities with a limited level of interference in certain public policies. The German Constitutional Court once described this system as a “limping separation” between state and religion.

According to German laws, as soon as a religious community has been granted the status of a “public body”, i.e. an institution under public law, it gains a set of privileges. These include certain reductions of taxes and fees, the right to levy a religion tax, the right to say in public committees (e.g. the supervisory board of public broadcast and TV stations), legal protection for religious titles, consideration of religious interests in local development plans etc.

A religious community has to fulfill three major requirements to gain the status of a public body: it has to have a sufficient number of followers, and it must be evident that the community has permanently settled in Germany. Also, and this is the most critical condition for the Muslim community, it has to have a committee or body that represents the community vis-à-vis the German administration.

Muslim umbrella organizations would like to acquire the status of a public body, however, their umma is hardly as organized as the Christian community. Muslim representatives in Germany sometimes argue against having to undergo some kind of “church-ification” in order to be formally accepted as a public body.

Critique of the composition of the Muslim delegation

Given current laws in Germany, however, Muslim umbrella organisations have long understood that they have to get the umma organized in order to be heard. Being criticized for not representing secular Muslims, they claim that those who practice their faith should have the autonomy to represent themselves. They point to the example of the Catholic Church which is also not represented by secular Catholics or by their own internal critics when negotiating with the government.

The Muslim umbrella organisations have, hence, criticized the selection process by the German government for the composition of the Muslim delegation to the Islam conference. A joint press statement by the five invited umbrella organizations criticized the composition of the Muslim delegation for not adequately reflecting the organized Muslim umma. In their view, the five umbrella organizations, which maintain about 80% of the 2,500 mosques in Germany, serve the entire Muslim community.

Meanwhile, it can be assumed that the rationale of the German government for only inviting 5 representatives of Muslim organizations goes back to the fact that membership in those organizations reaches not more than 400,000 out of 3.2 to 3.5 million Muslims. Therefore, they invited another 10 unorganized secular Muslims, who play a prominent part in German public life.

Religious representation in the German state

Minister Schaeuble mentioned in his public announcement of the Islam conference that people have suggested to reform the German system according to Austrian, English or French policies of representation. In contrast to this, it is the Minister’s explicit intention to find a specifically German way, based on German laws and the core values of the German constitution. This means in more practical terms, that he does intend to maintain the “limping separation” of state and religion in Germany and to uphold the privileges of religious communities. This is not surprising, since he is a member of the explicitly Christian political party CDU.

A number of mosques in some German federal states have started last year to conduct elections choosing representatives for their negotiations with German state administrations. This might ultimately lead to elections for national representatives of all 2,500 German mosques.

It can be foreseen that Muslim organizations will ultimately represent active and organized Muslims. So, it is likely that more orthodox Muslims will negotiate with the German government for certain conservative privileges, while unorthodox Muslims, who put their liberal and democratic rights higher than cultural or religious traditions, want to be free to exercise their rights as German citizens. Many unorganized secular Muslims feel - as much as many unorganized secular Christians do – uncomfortable with the representation of churches and other religious communities in German public policies.

The question might therefore be, whether the separation of state and religion should lose its “limping handicap”, i.e. whether the influence of the churches should be cut, also in accordance with their reduced relevance in German society, instead of granting the Muslim community the same privileges as the churches. Now, there might be the time to revamp the system. The United States might stand as a model, where - without religious representation in any public institution – religion itself plays a major role in society and religious communities strive.

Instead, German Minister Schaeuble made it very clear that the legal basis is not to be amended; it is supposed to accommodate the Muslim faith. This leaves so-called “cultural Muslims” out of the equation, because they do not subscribe to representation that is based on their faith.

Immigrant cultures and Islam

Most of the 3.5 million Muslims in Germany are immigrants. They come from different countries and do often not have much in common, except their Muslim faith and heritage. Some agree to be identified by their faith, others don’t. Generally, the question arises whether they are well represented as Muslims. To put it into perspective, most Germans, even if they follow the Christian faith, would be unhappy if they were only to be represented by Christian representative councils. Likewise, many Muslims may be uncomfortable to be represented by Muslim councils. This, however, leads to a dispute between those who accept Islam as their common denominator, and the so-called “cultural Muslims”, who share some common cultural features, but do not want to be identified by their faith.

One even questioned the number of more than 3 million Muslims in Germany, because this only reflects the fact that they have a Muslim father. It is hence a statement of Muslim heritage and not of practiced faith.

Ultimately, it was for reasons of the complexity of the Muslim community that the conference in Berlin was not arranged between the Christian and Muslim faith, but between the German government and its Muslim citizens. And for the same reason, the government also invited some Muslim public personalities, regardless of the matter that secular or liberal Muslims are mostly unorganized.

After all, the conference treated both aims as two sides of the same coin: the mostly immigrant Muslim community shall be better integrated into the social and constitutional context of Germany. Meanwhile, their religious representatives shall have similar rights as the Christian representatives. To formulate it as a task for the German government: while negotiating the legal representation of the Muslim faith, the German government needs to ensure that secular Muslims can lead their life with all the rights and responsibilities of any German citizen.

Intra-Muslim dialogue

There should be exceptions considered for more conservative German Muslims, while all Muslims must have the right to equal standards as all other Germans. This needs to also come as part of a consensus within the Muslim community, in order to avoid peer pressure and social stigmatization.

Besides the government’s integrative efforts and the efforts for an enhanced legal representation of the Muslim faith, this also requires some level of intra-Muslim dialogue. The Muslim community needs to be able to organize their own Islam roundtables on how to win all circles of the Muslim community for their integration into the German society and its constitution. This requires prior acknowledgement of the heterogeneity of existing lift-styles within the community.

During the German Islam Conference, it was the Bavarian State Minister of the Interior who observed - with some surprise – the open exchange of arguments between the different groups within the Muslim community. This observation was also made during a conference organized by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in August 2005 in Berlin.

Friedrich Naumann Foundation Conference on Europe and Modern Islam

Last year, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation had invited the same Muslim umbrella organization for a dialogue, not only with politicians and leading representatives of the Protestant and the Catholic churches, but also with renowned Muslim leaders and experts from abroad.

During the conference, the German Muslim representatives engaged in discussions that were inspiring and constructive. They approached pressing social issues, like headscarves, the participation of Muslim girls in physical education and swimming classes, German language classes etc.

It can be assumed that after generations and decades of life in the liberal democratic German society, the Muslim communities possess the capacity to engage in a constructive dialogue with the German authorities as well as with themselves. A lot needs to be done. However, both conferences of the German government and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation showed that many Muslims in Germany feel like German Muslims. This should come as a relief to the German Minister.

Rainer Heufers
Bangkok, 04 October 2006

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