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You are here: Home >> Economy & Law >> How does Germany treat minorities? By Abu Bakr Rieger

05.05.2010 How does Germany treat minorities? By Abu Bakr Rieger

Systematic Opposition?

(gm) Is Germany systematically opposed to Islam? Of course Germany is a constitutional state under the rule of law, or Rechtsstaat as the Germans call it, with a functional system for the protection of minorities, with a free press and all the concomitant possibilities for the free formation of opinion. And yet to understand the true state of a society it always pays to revisit its declared fringes and examine the true situation of the minorities in it. Since Germany is very partial to lecturing the rest of the world on human rights and the protection of minorities, there should in principal be no objection to a bit of critical self-reflection.

The Muslims living in Germany are perhaps its most important minority. Many of these citizens now have German citizenship, or were even born in Germany. Furthermore there are also a considerable number of German converts to Islam. And ever since the 11th of September, the Muslims in Germany have been the subject of serious controversy. The things motivating those involved with this significant minority could not be more different, and range from a general animosity towards religion by radical secularists, all the way to a genuine concern in some sectors of government that millions of Muslims could some day form a kind of parallel society.

And, sad to say, Germany is also witnessing the re-emergence of a new racism which seeks to deny these Muslims the description of being “German”, especially those of them born in Germany. One should bear in mind that the subject of Ausländerfeindlichkeit, or xenophobia, which was so widely discussed prior to 11.09.01, has now mysteriously disappeared from the public discourse. The way these new citizens are dealt with is of course determined to a large extent by political parties, media, the intelligence services, and a variety of NGOs.

One important question about how minorities are dealt with in practical terms is whether institutions and societal forces possess a minimum level of fairness and neutrality. Furthermore, the interplay between these societal forces can potentially bring about a kind of systematic approach which effectively dismantles a nation’s protection of its minorities – even if this approach is not what was originally intended.

Political Parties

Considered objectively, Muslims in Germany carry very little political weight in the capital, Berlin. From the Muslim point of view there are reservations especially about the current governing party, the CDU/CSU. And practising Muslims have hardly ever been promoted within the structures of other parties either, nor have prominent Muslims so far been able to secure any relevant seats in parliament. On a local and national level, the conservative party also profiles itself against the EU membership of “Muslim” Turkey. In this respect critics acknowledge that the CDU, itself undergoing an identity crisis, is attempting to reclaim its own conservative profile by adopting a rhetoric against Islam. On the other hand Wolfgang Schäuble, the former CDU Minister of Home Affairs, did organise the Islam Conference, a consultative body aimed at improved relations between the government and Muslims.

Media

Of course mass media has a key effect on shaping public opinion about a minority. The generality of Muslims inside Germany are regularly associated with extreme misfits (‘honour’-killers, terrorists), and sometimes with bizarre criminal acts. These associations have a devastating public impact. The contradictory term “Islamic” terrorism has been effectively established by majority media, and has never been corrected by the publication of surveys that prove that terrorism today has the greatest impact of all on the Muslims themselves. Furthermore, the major mass media offers a broad and regular forum for vehement and sometimes polemical critics of Islam, whereas Muslim or pro-Islamic authors gain nowhere near the same regular access to mass media. In the mass media, the clear balance of power between majority and minority enables a domination of terms and definitions, done by evaluating the nature of someone’s beliefs as “modern” or “conservative”, applying the problematic differentiation between Muslims and Islamists, and forming politically powerful terms such as “Islamism”.

The Verfassungsschutz

Like other citizens in Germany, Muslims also fear attacks and support the investigation of such intentions. As well as having national intelligence authorities, Germany also has a security branch for each federal state. The security apparatus which deals with the “Islamist” threat has grown enormously over recent years. The so-called Verfassungsschutz offices, which define themselves as protecting the constitution, liken Islamism to left and right-wing ideologies. In doing this the authorities barely differentiate between modernist, traditional or orthodox Islamic positions, although they do recognise such differentiating aspects when assessing Judaism and Christianity, expressing few objections to their orthodoxy or fundamentalism and subjecting them to little public scrutiny. The “broad” and “controversial” term Islamism is differentiated in terms of how willing certain groups are to resort to violence, and yet committed Muslims who do not see themselves as Islamists find themselves easily falling into dossiers that overlap with mass murderers and criminals. Publications of these details amount to a de facto expulsion of Muslim communities and individuals from the relevant sectors of public life in Germany. Of course, Muslims are also disadvantaged in Germany from other angles, the following of which are especially problematic:

The Debate on Terrorism

Of course, the discovery of terrorist plans by Muslim extremists has caused quite a sensation in Germany. It is regularly suggested that the “Islamist scene” that is defined publicly in such vague terms could descend at any time into terrorism and extremism. The state of Lower Saxony has been criticised for monitoring mosques about which no suspicions exist, something they declare to be a precautionary measure against potential terrorists. Civil liberty campaigners are now worried that the population will gradually become accustomed to a process leading up to a permanent state of emergency. Dozens of warnings against possible attacks also influenced the latest parliamentary elections. However, undercover informers operating on behalf of Western security services have been involved in numerous terrorist conspiracies. What is contentious in this respect is not the logical necessity to investigate conspiracies using undercover agents, it is the extent to which advanced conspiracies are only possible given the actions of undercover elements.

The Logic of Immigration

Many active and widely promoted critics of Islam in Germany insist that Islam is foreign and backward-looking, and negate the possibility that Muslim positions might develop and adapt in accordance with the changes of a technologically defined world. German Muslims, especially those Germans who have entered Islam, are described in public discourse not only as “confused misfits” and discredited as “radicals”, they are more and more frequently made responsible for a series of grievances in the Islamic world as a whole. In this way the idea that most Muslims are mere guests in Germany is reinforced in public. Sometimes it is even claimed that German Muslims ought not to be accommodated until minorities are given similar rights in all Islamic countries. The public confusion between culture and Islam is almost systematically propagated, in spite of the fact that a large number of Europeans are themselves Muslims. And all the while, the fate of Muslims who have been murdered in Europe, and the existence of significant Muslim civilisations inside the continent, are barely mentioned and are sometimes even denied. One well-known German sociologist was recently attacked as an anti-Semite because he compared stereotypes of Germany’s current public debate with the anti-Semitism of the 19th century.

Organisational Sovereignty

Of course, government parties possess an organisational sovereignty legitimised by elections. However, when it comes to the way Muslims are dealt with in Germany this right of the majority has certain difficult aspects. Muslims and their organisations have to date barely had any say in the composition of important consultative gatherings such as the Islam Conference. In the training of Imams, teaching posts are awarded to Muslims who are proven outsiders, so that the minority is effectively represented by a minority within the minority. Many important German organisational bodies such as Rundfunkrat (Broadcasting Council), one of whose tasks is to ensure that minority rights are protected in the media, contain no Muslim representatives at all.

Dialectic

Perhaps the most alarming intellectual phenomenon to impact on the way Muslims are accommodated in Germany is the active polarisation of the Muslim community. Muslims are by nature obliged to avoid extremes and not to gather on extreme positions. Today in Germany, idealised concepts of “especially good” and “especially bad” Muslims are widely promoted. “Bad” Muslims are what justify the burgeoning security apparatus and the latent mistrust of all Muslims, while “good” Muslims, beyond all suspicion, are required to make constant statements exposing their quasi-secular position. Under the pressure of extremism, more and more ordinary Muslims are avoiding the public eye. There is a danger that in Germany, in the long term, public debate, as well as academia, will only accept those who actively relativise that claim to truth which defines every religion. We must not overlook the danger of the majority society creating an Islam which it finds “pleasant”.

The public debate has led not only to a growing level of discrimination in everyday life, but also to a de facto professional ban on Muslim woman who wear a headscarf. There are also growing fears that the German public could be stirred up to a new kind of friend-and-foe way of thinking against the Muslim minority in the country.

There are many reasons to defend our nation against indiscriminate attacks – a nation which we, like all other citizens, acknowledge. But there are also good reasons to criticise loudly the way Germany treats its Muslim minority before an unintentional systematic approach mutates into a full-blown system.

(Abu Bakr Rieger is a lawyer and founder of the network "Muslim Lawyers")

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