Source: The Local
Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Raed Saleh wants to create a contract with the Muslim community similar to the one between the town hall and Christian and Jewish groups that grants them official status.
Categories: Europe, Europe and Australia, European Union
A good idea in right direction.
I can see this as a very good thing. While symbolic in nature, not official, it would help, I think, to bring Muslims more into the overall community of Berliners and Germany in general, i.e. not so much ‘outsiders’ but potential citizens that will embrace their new nationality and think of themselves as Germans, firstly.
Therein lies a solution to secularism and the separation of church/mosque and state.
I was glad to read the article as I learned of a sect of Islam, Alevism, which I had not known about before. I then researched them and my personal knowledge base has expanded. That is also a good thing as understanding and excepting ‘The Other’ is the key to harmony between all peoples as long as there is no compulsion in belief or forced major changes in culteral practices that may lie within the reapective nation’s law, e.g. banning hair coverings. (Numerous Christian sects here in the US require that their women do that very thing – the Amish and Mennonites, for example – no one thinks anything of it here other than considering it ‘quaint’).
American Muslim women and teens wearing hijabs is rapidly becoming no more noticable, as I’ve observed in the Detroit, MI area. They are merely part of the diversity of peoples in the region and accepted as such. They are just as American as any other.
I can’t say that that attitude is the same in other areas of the US, indeed I recognize that there are Americans who fear and mistrust Muslims. Again, those Americans haven’t taken the time to learn and understand. But, I can say that things are much better here than in many European nations in that regard and continues to improve.