Khadija Mosque in Berlin of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

A collection of four inter-related articles bringing out a new political, social, religious and historic reality.  “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” according to Aristotle.

Collected by Zia H Shah MD

Demographics from Wikipedia

Owing to labour migration in the 1960s and several waves of political refugees since the 1970s, Islam has become a visible religion in Germany.^[1] As of 2009^[update], there are 4.3 million Muslims (5.4% of the population). Of these, 1.9 million are German citizens (2.4%).^[2] As of 2006, about 15,000 converts are of German ancestry.

Islam is the largest minority religion in the country, with the Protestant and Roman Catholic confessions being the majority religions. The large majority of Muslims in Germany are of Turkish origin (63.2%),^[3] followed by smaller groups from Pakistan, countries of the former Yugoslavia, Arab countries, Iran and Afghanistan. Most Muslims live in Berlin and the larger cities of former West Germany. However, unlike in most other European countries, sizeable Muslim communities exist in some rural regions of Germany, especially Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and parts of Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia. Owing to the lack of labour immigration before 1989, there are only very few Muslims in the former East Germany. The majority of Muslims in Germany are Sunnis, at 75%. There are some members of the Shia (7%) and mostly from Iran. Some members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community (1%), most of whom are of Pakistani origin,but it is to be noted that the Ahmadiyya are not considered as Muslims by the mainstream Islam. The Ahmadiyya comprise a minority of Germany’s Muslims, numbering some 60,000 members in more than 200 communities as of 2004.^[4] Most Turkish Muslims are Sunnis, but between a fifth and a quarter are believed to be Alevis. The Alevis are a heterodox religious and cultural community officially not recognized by the Turkish state, who account for between a fifth and a quarter of the population (more than 15 million people) in their native Turkey. Most Alevites embrace tolerance and secularism, which helps them to integrate into mainstream German society much better than other belief systems.

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Islamic success story at German universities

Source: DW

New Islamic theology courses at German universities are proving highly popular, even abroad. The courses were announced only three years ago, but they are already changing the German religious landscape.

Islamic theology is finding its place in German universities at a pace which is surprising many. German academics even speak of Germany acting as a magnet for talent from other European countries.

“There’s never been such a process before at European universities,” says Reinhard Schulze, who teaches Islam at the University of Berne in Switzerland.

Lecturers at German universities, speaking at a meeting of experts with the German parliamentary education committee, said they were convinced that there would be a rapid increase in the teaching of Islam.

‘A matter of justice’

Katajan Amirpur of the University of Hamburg said that setting up new theology courses had been “a matter of justice.” Mathias Rohe from the University of Erlangen felt that establishing the courses at universities had provided a “very big boost.” Bülent Ucar, a specialist in the teaching of Islam from Osnabrück, took the opportunity to thank the politicians at federal and state level for their commitment over the past years.

In Bremen, the state has signed an accord with the Muslim community

There was an unusual level of optimism and an unusual amount of praise for politicians, but there are still problems which are mainly due to the way in which religion is organized in Germany. Unlike with the Christian churches and the Jewish community, there is no formal arrangement for dealing with the Muslim community.

Only recently, the two city states of Hamburg and Bremen took a first step. But even there, the Muslim associations don’t have the status of “Corporations in Public Law,” without which they find themselves not entitled to cooperation with the state and financial support.

The need for academic training has been felt for a long time. The federal government estimates that 2,200 teachers will be needed for the planned development of Muslim religious education in schools. And there are over 1,000 imams in Germany, many of whom have never had any academic training, and who would provide a ready market for further education.

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Germany: Islam Becomes Campaign Issue

Source: The Galestone Institute

Germany’s opposition Social Democrats are courting disgruntled Muslim voters in a desperate bid to unseat German Chancellor Angela Merkel in federal elections set for September 22.

Peer Steinbrück, the 66-year-old chancellor candidate for the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), said at a campaign stop in Berlin on April 3 that he supported the idea of physical education classes in German schools being divided by gender as a courtesy to Muslims.

Responding to a question from the audience, Steinbrück said: “If schools are able to do it, then they should.” After his comment was greeted with silence, Steinbrück added that the measure should be taken “out of consideration for [Muslim] religious convictions.”

The reaction to Steinbrück’s comments was immediate and fierce from across Germany’s political spectrum, an indication that overt support for multiculturalism may actually be a political liability in this election cycle.

Barbara John, a politician with the ruling center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), said the debate over gender separation is outmoded and that “children and parents have to get used to the fact that genders here grow up together and live with the same rights.”

Maria Böhmer, a member of the Bundestag [federal parliament] for the CDU who also serves as Minister of State in the German Chancellery, said: “Peer Steinbrück is wrong! School, especially physical education, is a place of social learning. Here girls and boys learn from an early age to treat each other equally. And that race, religion and skin color do not matter! Shared learning and joint physical education promote integration in our country. Schools should be encouraged to continue along this path!”

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Professor Emeritus Katharina Mommsen: ‘Goethe – The Muslim’

Written by Dr.  Katharina Mommsen, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University

Original year of publication 1967.  The original title was The  Muslim.

The relationship of Goethe to Islam and to its founder is one of the most  astonishing phenomena, not only within Goethe’s own life, but within the  historical epoch in which he lived.

Goethe was only 23 years old when he wrote a  wonderful hymn in praise of the prophet Muhammad. But even when he was 70 years  old, the poet declared quite publicly that he was considering “devoutly  celebrating that holy night in which the Koran in its entirety was revealed to  the prophet from on high”. Between these two dates lies a long life, during  which Goethe testified in many forms to his veneration for Islam. This was  expressed primarily in that work which, alongside “Faust”, we today consider one  of his most essential poetic bequests: the “West-Eastern Divan”, a collection of  250 poems in an oriental style. In a pre-publication announcement of this  work-in which he came closer to the orient than any German writer before or  after him-we can even find the remarkable statement that the author of the book  would not deny the allegation that he himself was a Muslim.

It is hard for us to conceive of the  incredible boldness that lay behind such convictions and particularly of making  them public, and what a provocation they must have been to his readers, unless  we call to mind what Goethe’s contemporaries thought about Islam and its  founder. To understand this, however, we must first turn back even further into  the past.

The verdict of the Christian world on Muhammad and his followers, was from  the start anything but impartial or positive. This is not surprising when one  considers how many areas, which Christendom had won during a six hundred years’  struggle, had since been lost to Islam, once it began to spread outside of  Arabia by the power of the sword. It was particularly painful for Christian  Europe to see the cross thrown down where it had first been raised-at the Holy  Sepulchre and at the places hallowed by the Saviour himself. The victory of the  crescent over the cross in the countries of the Orient, and each triumph of the  new religion in the provinces of the Byzantine Empire were defeats felt bitterly  by the believers of  the older religion. Furthermore, the Christian  countries of Europe had felt seriously menaced, ever since the Arab invasion of  the Spanish peninsula in 711, when their victorious advance from the South-West  seemed irresistible. Then, South-Eastern Europe was threatened by the Islamic  Turks who laid siege to Vienna (for the last time) in the year 1683. In all the  hostilities between Islam and Christianity lasted with interruptions of course  for more than a thousand years. From the middle of the 7th to the end of the  17th century.

No wonder then that European Christendom for  hundreds of years looked upon Islam merely as a rival and dangerous enemy, and  that-true to human nature-all verdicts of the enemy were coloured by hostility  and prejudice. This was necessarily true of both sides: for both reaped the  harvest of slander and utter ignorance. Both parties accused each other of  paganism, idolatry, cruelty, crime, immorality, treachery and every conceivable  kind of vice. The cruder the ignorance of the writer, the cruder was the  slander. Let us leave behind as quickly as possible, this rather discouraging  period of history!

Until the end of the 17th century there were not even attempts made to  consider this relationship in an impartial and unprejudiced way. Up to that time  hardly anyone in Europe had concerned himself with the Koran, the essential key  to Islamic doctrine. Only after the threat of war had vanished, did a shift of  judgments slowly become apparent. Whereas up to that time the writings on Islam  and its founder were purely tendentious and clearly betrayed the confessional  and polemic intentions of their authors, efforts to establish more impartial  reporting and the securing of exact information, became discernible.

In the year 1698 the text of the Koran,  together with a translation into Latin, was published by the former Father  Confessor of Pope Innocent Xl, the Italian priest, Father Ludovico Maracci.  Here, too, however, this theological scholar was principally concerned with  refuting and combating Islam and its founder. He did this by means of a long  introduction and many notes commenting on  the individual Surahs. Nevertheless, we must consider it a step towards better  understanding that, for the first time, the whole text of the Koran was  available to Europeans in a Latin translation. (The first German translation of  this Latin Koran text was published as early as 1703, and opened up the world of  Islam to any interested German layman.)

The next phase is characterized by the fact that, from then on, not only  churchmen participated in the writing about the Islamic problem-who were, of  course, tempted to put their confessional zeal first-but also men from other  professions, Europeans who had travelled in the Orient, who knew the language  and were the forerunners of modern scholarship on the Orient, etc. Foremost  among these was the Orientalist and protestant scholar Hadrian Reland, from  Utrecht, whose book “De Relgione Mohamedica”, which appeared in 1705, attempted  the first honest appraisal of Islam. Islam could . never have attracted millions  of followers, Reland declared, had it been as senseless as European portrayals  time and again had claimed. It was absurd, he said to form a conception of a  different religion on the basis of the representations of its opponents.  Therefore it was necessary to have Islam explained by those who believed in it.  Mutual goodwill was the pre-requisite for a religious discussion.

Reland specifically avowed his faith in  Christianity, in order to protect himself against the suspicion that he was  trying to rehabilitate the religion of Islam. This was certainly the least that  was required of a scholar of that time, if he wanted to protect himself against  the difficulties which might have arisen from such a work and the way of  thinking clearly apparent in it.

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