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German Muslim communities' protests over El-Sherbini's martyrdom have been widely heard. |
Until recently, the political rhetoric was the giveaway of real opinions of German political actors in Germany's Muslim minority. While proclaiming openness, they found it sufficient to mention Islamic customs when referring to a case of honor killing in a Kurdish family or forced marriage among immigrants from Anatolia. German politicians too long equated Islam with what they saw as retrograde or dangerous characteristics of a whole group. Rare were those — mostly the Greens, partly the Socialists — who showed no unease about the immigrants' difference.
The upcoming elections mark a shift in Germany's policies toward German Muslims. Until the last elections, a clear cleavage existed between the conservative ChristianDemocrats suspicious of Muslims, on one hand, and the Social Democrats and the Greens advocating more openness and political solutions, on the other. The Conservatives' comeback in 2005 led nevertheless to the most active policy the German state has ever held in integration matters. The rhetoric itself has changed direction consequently.
Muslims Discovered
| Wolfgang Schauble made it officially clear that "Islam is part of Germany." |
Germany discovered its immigrant problem in the early 1990s; deindustrialization left many of the (often Muslim and Turkish) guest workers unemployed, ill-schooled, and on the margins. While working out the uneasy integration of East Germany into the new all-German state, three millions of Turkish workers appeared as a particular integration problem for German politics. They did not want to assimilate and cut themselves off from their origins. The 1990s witnessed also the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from ex-Yugoslavia, mostly Muslim, whom only Germany accepted in great numbers.
Questions of Integration
Controversies about the legal status of immigrants and refugees became suddenly overshadowed by questions of integration. Political Islam, 9/11, Theo van Gogh's murder, and London bombings turned difficulties of ethnic integration into what was regarded as difficulties of cultural integration. Many politicians and large parts of German public readily confused the multifaceted religion of Islam with some kind of retrograde culture incompatible with modern values, and with terrorism.
A number of regional conservative politicians from Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party made themselves known (and sometimes elected) by negative, suspicious, and anti-immigrant positions, mostly concerned with head-scarf ban in schools and with opposition to mosque construction and to double citizenship, by refusing Turkey's EU membership, accusing Muslims of unfitness for pluralism.
A Country of Immigration
| Germany discovered its "immigrant" problem in the early 1990s; deindustrialization left many of the (often Muslim and Turkish) guest workers unemployed, ill-schooled, and on the margins. |
The first greater openings came from the Red-Green coalition at the end of 1990s. The Socialists passed a major law in 2000 making access to citizenship easier, based not on ancestry but on birthplace. In 2005, they pushed through a new immigration law, encouraging integration and declaring for the first time Germany a country of immigration.
Symbolically, the Greens showed the least reticence, promoting Muslim personalities to leading party positions and openly accepting Muslims as part of the German society. Generally, Germany's politics have shown a degree of helplessness and defensiveness about the integration problem of its non-Christian minority of some four million (45 percent naturalized).
The Socialists, while more open to Turkish guest workers, have nevertheless actively pursued suspicious homeland security policies and strict application of progressive values especially in personal law.
Christian Democrats' Surprise
The turn came astonishingly from the Christian Democrats leading the Socialist-Conservative Grand coalition government after the 2005 elections. The Conservatives have always insisted on the Republican, Christian character of Germany, and expected foreigners to assimilate into the host culture. Having a sense of tradition, they distrusted liberal belief in multiculturalism.
Recent terrorist acts perpetrated by seemingly integrated immigrant youth in Europe seemed to confirm their position. Yet, a series of such events, occurring around the 2005 elections, moved the CDU to make questions of integration a government top priority — clearly in order to avoid similar attacks in Germany.
Unlike the Socialist government before them, who acted in a top-down manner and deplored Muslim political passivity, the CDU interior minister Wolfgang Schauble and the head of the newly created "office for integration" saw that criticizing Islamophobia alone could not bridge the distance between Muslims and the state.
Muslims were to define solutions themselves, in cooperation with the state, not in opposition to it. Between 2005 and 2009 a series of German Islamic conferences were organized by the Interior Ministry, three of them were plenary. They had a great symbolic impact, while also showing a harrowing degree of discarding views, mistrust, and ideological diversity among actors from both sides.
German Muslims' Representation
By the initiative, Schauble made it officially clear that "Islam is part of Germany." He sought to fill a serious gap, that is, lack of the communities' representative to the government who should be capable of formulating Muslim positions on questions ranging from swimming lessons for Muslim girls, German-based education for imams, to support for state policies.
Among the few tangible results are a new Coordination Council of Muslims, a decision about Islamic religious education in state schools, and an in-depth sociological study. It was shown that despite discrimination, Muslims do integrate and most of them are religious.
The conference's reverse side is a continuing absence of consensus about the principles of coexistence and the unclear role of the state. One example is the difficulty about who is to define Muslims. German Muslims are diverse — ranging from secularists, conservative Muslims, Islamists to independent intellectuals; from Turkish to Bosnian speakers — and so are their interests.
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The Socialists, bereft of initiative, accuse Schauble of giving too much places to conservative Muslims, while leaders of Muslim communities criticize the strong presence of Muslim secularist intellectuals representing no organized community.
Nothing Is Over Yet
Many things have changed, despite the ongoing awkward position of Germany's Muslims. A process is in place that gives Muslims more agency and more demanding power.
Political rhetoric follows the increased communication; it is expected that politicians express opinions on matters of their interest, from Obama's address in Cairo to condemning heinous acts. When Prime Minister Merkel failed to immediately react to the murder of Marwa El-Sherbini, Muslim communities' protests have been widely heard.
Germany's Muslims taking a more active part made at least the federal level politics more responsive to their views. Experts fear that smaller parties and regional level politics might pick up the old populist topics, a matter to be observed in upcoming elections.
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