STUTTGART, Germany, December 31, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A German state has said that Muslims applying to immigrate would be singled out for tougher questioning from January 1, in a decision blasted in Berlin as discriminatory.

The interior ministry of the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said in a statement Friday, December 30, that potential Muslim immigrants would face a lengthy interrogation including 30 questions on their political and cultural views, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Subjects would include their opinions on equal rights for men and women, religions freedom, honor killings and the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001.

The ministry said that Germany's 16 federal states must be permitted to learn whether potential new citizens truly accept the country's Basic Law, to which they are required under federal law to deliver an oath.

"There have been findings that Muslims can face a conflict and deliver an oath that does not correspond with their personal beliefs and thus does not fulfill the immigration requirements," the statement said.

"Eliminating these doubts is the aim of a conversation that the immigration authorities will conduct with immigration applicants from January 1, 2006 from the 57 states that belong to the Islamic conference (some 60 percent of all immigrants to Baden-Wuerttemberg in 2004)."

The statement said that while most Muslims accepted the German system, recent "honor killings" of Muslim women in Germany by family members were evidence of a conflict between the rule of law and an interpretation of Islam.

It added that other applicants who are "known to be" Muslims would face the line of questioning, as would any people whose oath did not appear to be credible.

There are some 3.4 million Muslims in Germany, two thirds of whom are of Turkish origin.

Islam comes third in Germany after Protestant and Catholic Christianity.

Berlin Interior Minister Ehrhart Koerting said that he understood his counterpart Heribert Rech's concerns about integration of Muslims but slammed the policy for fostering prejudice.

"That is a serious danger to internal security and intolerable," he said.

Germany's states are given a wide berth to determine their own immigration and security policies under the federal system.

The Netherlands endorsed a law earlier in the month requiring would-be immigrants to pass a special integration test on Dutch language and culture before they can enter the country.

German researcher Jurgen Micksch, founder of a multi-cultural center established after 9/11, has said that Muslims in Germany have integrated effectively despite several challenges on the way.

He said members of the Muslim minority have shown an inclination to abide by the German constitution and the separation of religion and state.

The number of restrictions have hampered their tendency, including discriminating against women with the imposition of the hijab ban, Micksch told Frankfurter Rundschau daily in an interview published last April.

Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations – unlike the symbolic Christian crucifixes or Jewish Kappas.