VIENNA,
April 9, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel is
planning to meet Muslim leaders in the country to foster and
facilitate integration of minorities into German society.
"The
meeting is expected to take place at the beginning of July before the
government's summer vacation," a spokesman for the German
Chancellorship said on Saturday, April 8.
He
said the Ministry of Interior and the Chancellorship are setting the
stage now for the meeting.
He
would not comment on whom the chancellor is going to invite from the
German Muslim leaders for the upcoming meeting.
Interior
Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said that immigration and integration
officials and Christian clerics will be invited.
In
statements carried by Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Schaeuble
also said Germans and immigrants should try their best to reach out to
one another.
He
said a successful integration does not only premise on learning
German, citing the recent wave of riots by the second and third
generations of immigrants in France.
Issues
like the Islamic education in schools, the Danish cartoons that
lampooned Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and
sparked a serious standoff between the West and the Muslim world top
the July meeting.
The
Merkel's initiative came after recent student violence in Berlin's
Ruetli school in the heavily Turkish and Arab Neukoelln district.
The
school crisis brought to the fore the lamentable living conditions and
educational levels of immigrants, who are basically located in areas
hit by unemployment, social problems and poverty.
Experts
said the violence showed that Germany had failed to integrate
immigrant children in its school system and pondered the abolishment
of this lowest school level.
They
said immigrant students in such low-level schools (known in German as
the Hauptschule) stand a slim chance of getting a pursuing a promising
career.
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"We
hope that it will be an all-inclusive meeting," said Ucuncu.
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Muslim
leaders welcomed the July meeting.
"It
is a gesture of goodwill; but this meeting should be followed by
objective and constructive programs initiated by the
governments," said Aiman Mazik, the Secretary General of the Supreme
Council of Muslims in Germany.
Oguz
Ucuncu, the secretary general of the Turkish Milli Gurus, said the
meeting is significant.
"We
hope that it will be an all-inclusive meeting," he said.
Süddeutsche
Zeitung newspaper, however, said the
meeting could exclude representative Muslim leaders in the country
because they are members in organizations designated by the state as
Islamist like Milli Gurus and Ditib, the largest Islamic group which
is financed by the Turkish Ministry of Religions.
"Islamist
organizations in Germany could not be seen as a partner in
dialogue," the paper quoted as saying Christian Democrats MP
Christine Koller.
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.
A
number of German states are considering a lengthy cultural quiz that
Muslim immigrants have to answer to get citizenship.
A
recent opinion poll showed that a majority of native Germans have
failed to answer many questions in the citizenship test.
Other
states like Bavaria have already made language and culture tests a
prerequisite for would-be immigrants.
