Islamic Religious Education in Western Europe

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Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs

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Islamic Religious Education in Western Europe: Models of Integration and the German Approach
Albrecht Fuess Online Publication Date: 01 August 2007 To cite this Article: Fuess, Albrecht (2007) 'Islamic Religious Education in Western Europe: Models of Integration and the German Approach ', Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 27:2, 215 - 239 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/13602000701536166 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602000701536166
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Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 2, August 2007
Islamic Religious Education in Western Europe: Models of Integration and the German Approach1
ALBRECHT FUESS
Abstract European nations vary in their attitudes towards the integration of Muslims into their respective societies. Thus, on the level of nation states, there have appeared different approaches, or models, to deal with these communities. The relations of the states with the Muslim communities follow mainly the existing example of the state-church relations, which emerged over the centuries in the interplay with the Christian churches. Nevertheless, by sticking to their respective models of state-church relations, European states tend to ignore that Islam is organized quite differently from other religions that they dealt with in the past. This national approach is also applied to Islamic religious education and therefore many different forms of Islamic religious education have sprung up across Europe. This article will therefore outline the current practices of Islamic religious education in state schools across Western Europe and will describe the training of future teachers of Islamic religious education and of future imams at secular state institutions in Western European countries with large Muslim communities. A special section will be devoted to the situation in Germany because of its central position in the current discussion. Introduction Seek knowledge even as far as China is a popular saying attributed to Prophet Muhammad.2 The Quran also encourages learning, for example, in the famous Sura 20: Lord! Let my knowledge increase!.3 In the Islamic world, learning and teaching are often based on religious beliefs. Numerous public and private educational institutions are open to the general believing public. The Muslim migrants who came to Western Europe mainly in the 1960s failed to nd the same infrastructure for instruction in their religious faith. Moreover, few of these migrants had previously received academic training in Islam and therefore many of the rst educational circles of Islam in mosques were founded by religious autodidacts, i.e., persons who taught themselves the religious principles of Islam. Higher levels of Islamic education spread slowly due to the lack of trained personnel and poor funding. In the rst period, most Muslims gathered together in a single mosque of a town, until the steady increase of the Muslim community led to a split along ethnic and confessional lines mirroring the plural and heterogeneous structure of Islam as a whole. Since there were not enough imams and religious instructors available in Europe, they were often recruited from the Islamic countries. The European host states did not initially see a necessity to cater to the basic religious needs of their local Muslim communities. This lack of interest is surprising considering the growing Muslim populations in Europe. Current estimates indicate 25 million Muslims in all of Europe, including 15
ISSN 1360-2004 print/ISSN 1469-9591 online/07/020215-25 # 2007 Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs DOI: 10.1080/13602000701536166
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million in Western Europe and 10 million in the Balkans who have been living there for centuries. Due to this large increase in numbers, especially in Western Europe, Muslims became increasingly self-condent and assertive and are now publicly demanding legal equality in matters of religious practice and education. European nations vary in their attitudes towards the integration of Muslims into their respective societies. The headscarf issue has thereby become the most visible symbol of public debates on religious freedom versus assimilation. It seems that most European nations try to t Muslim communities into their existing framework of rules concerning religious denominations, which evolved in the context of the Christian churches.4 Today, four main approaches exist in Western Europe in dealing with the Muslim com munity. First of all, the model of Lacite (religious neutrality of the state), calling for a strict separation of church and state (Model I), is to be found almost exclusively in France and some Francophone cantons of Switzerland. Model II is the Religion for All approach taken in Great Britain and the Netherlands, where the constitution does not foresee an ofcial recognition of religious communities; instead, these countries provide the subjects Religion for All in schools and facilitate the establishment of separate religious private schools. Most Scandinavian countries and to some extent Ireland follow this model as well. It is quite remarkable that this model emerged in a context where the majority of the population still belongs to one distinctive Christian denomination. In most of the mentioned states, this is Protestantism. Therefore, it seems that the religious tolerance of these states is also based on the assumption that on the one hand, the dominant church has become more tolerant towards other religious denominations, but then on the other hand, the leading role of the former or actual state church is not really at stake. Given this background, it was perhaps easier to endow a theoretical equality between religious communities in Model II states than in other European states, as the leading church did not really fear the loss of its prominent role. Model III may be termed Ofcial Recognition and is to be found in Belgium, Austria, Spain, Germany and some German -speaking cantons of Switzerland. The constitutions of these countries allow the ofcial recognition of new religious communities and consequently there is the possibility of specic confessional religious education taught by believing teachers to believing pupils in state schools. However, this model has not yet been applied in all of the above-mentioned countries to the Muslim community. Whereas Belgium, Austria and Spain have recognized Islam through ofcial agreements, Germany is still in the process of searching for the real meaning of its constitution in order to deal with Islam.5 Model IV is termed Total Disregard and is restricted to Italy, where Catholicism still dominates the public discourse concerning the attitude towards religions. Nevertheless, by sticking to their respective models of state-church-relations, European states tend to ignore that Islam is organized quite differently from other religions they dealt with in the past. This national approach, as I would call it, is also applied to Islamic religious education, and therefore many different forms of Islamic religious education have sprung up across Europe. In addition to the training of teachers of Islamic religious education at public universities across Europe, there is a tendency in several European countries to include the education of Muslim imams (leaders of prayers in a mosque) into the curriculum of public universities. This is in order to prevent young Muslims from being taught on the black market of dubious Quran schools in the backwater of urban slums. This paper will outline the current practices of Islamic religious education in state schools across Western Europe and describe as well the training of future teachers of
Islamic Religious Education in Western Europe
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Islamic religious education and of future imams at secular state institutions in West European countries with large Muslim communities. A special section will be devoted to the situation in Germany. Germany is of central importance in this context because of the high numbers of Muslim pupils who are already taught Islamic religious education in state schools and current projects in this domain indicate that in a foreseeable period there will be Islamic religious education for almost all Muslim pupils in German state schools. Nevertheless, within the Federal structure of Germany, there is no unied approach regarding this question; therefore, the different attitudes towards Islamic religious education in the various Federal states of Germany will be analyzed in this article. In examining the variety of different European approaches regarding Islamic religious education, the aims of this paper are to provide arguments for further discussion and outline possibilities for a more coordinated approach among West European states.
Model I: Lacite France The largest group of West European Muslims lives in France, which houses about 5 million Muslims, mostly of Maghrebinian origin. Comprising approximately 8% of the total population, France has the largest percentage of Muslims in Western Europe. As is commonly known, a strict separation between state and church prevails in France, the Lacite (religious neutrality of the state). Accordingly, there exists no religious education of any kind at state schools; even the wearing of religious signs like the headscarf, the Jewish kippah (slightly rounded cloth skullcap worn by observant Jews) and oversized crosses is forbidden. Islam is taught in private Islamic institutions only, which are often nanced and staffed from overseas. It is no wonder that foreign imams then lack fundamental language and cultural skills compatible with their new environment. But publicly funded religious schools do exist in France as a result of an agreement between the Catholic Church and the state at the beginning of the twentieth century. Therefore, large numbers of Catholic so-called free schools exist in France, besides a few Protestant and Jewish ones, educating almost one-fth of the school age population and permitted to also teach religion at school.6 So far no Islamic school has met the expectations of the French authorities like a high standard of learning or clear operating times and minimal sanitary requirements in order to qualify for similar public funding. There are, however, several privately funded Islamic schools.7 There is no theological state education for French imams, although there have been ideas to establish an Islamic theological faculty at the University of Strasbourg in the Alsace region similar to the existing Catholic and Protestant ones. The Alsace is the only region in France where there are theological faculties at state universities, as the 1905 law on church-state separation is not applied there, since Alsace was under German rule at the time.8 But to my knowledge nothing concrete has yet emerged concerning an Islamic theological faculty in Strasbourg. French authorities plan instead to teach imams in France the democratic and cultural values of the Republic. In this context they tried to inaugurate brush up courses on French Language and Civilisation for imams starting in September 2005 at French universities.9 The original plan stated that the theological side of the training of imams in France should still lie in the hands of Muslim associations. The best-known centres for private imam training in France to date are the Institut Musulman de la Grande Mosquee de Paris (Islamic Institute of the Great Mosque of Paris), with its clear ties
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to Algeria, and the Institut Europeen des Sciences Humaines (European Institute of Human Sciences), Chateau Chinon, which is run by the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (Union of Muslim Organisations of France) and is said to be close to the Muslim brethren. The more profane side of the education like French law, history and an introduction to French institutions was planned to take place at the University Paris IV. Although the above-mentioned Muslim imam training centres were clearly in favour of such an arrangement with a French university, the University Council of Paris IV then voted against such a programme because it would be against the principles of the Lacite. Future imams should study other subjects within the normal university curriculum instead.10 If we add to this deadlock the recent quarrels within the Muslim organizations which hinder the centrally elected French Muslim Council (Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman, where the last elections took place in 2005) to work effectively within the French society, then there is still a long way to go in order to train imams in France at state universities. Regardless, under the Lacite model there will be no introduction of Islamic religious education in French state schools whatsoever.
Switzerland The only other regions in Europe where the Lacite model is practised towards the Muslim minority are Francophone cantons of Switzerland. Approximately 321,000 Muslims live in Switzerland and represent 4.3% within the total Swiss population of 7.4 million. So far, Swiss law has made very few concessions to the Muslim presence. Furthermore, in Switzerland the relations with religious communities are very much in the hand of the legislation of the particular cantons. In the French-speaking cantons, such as Geneva and Neuchatel, there is a complete separation of religion and state based on the French model. Other Swiss cantons, mainly the German-speaking ones, have legislation under which religious communities can obtain the status of ofcial recognition. The Christian churches are recognized in such cases, and an ofcial recognition would give the Muslim community the right to provide Islamic religious instruction during school hours, but nothing has been achieved so far. Although there is no Islamic education in state schools and there are no Muslim schools in Switzerland so far, there is an ongoing public debate on this topic.11 For example, the University of Fribourg organized a well-attended conference on Islamic Religious Education and Imam Training in Switzerland in April 2005.12 But such plans do clearly not include the Lacite-cantons, where there will hardly be any Islamic religious education in the future.
Model II: Religion for All Great Britain In contrast to France, Great Britain, with approximately two million Muslims among its total population of 60 million, has never strictly separated the state from the church; after all, the queen is head of state and head of the Anglican Church. The discrimination of other churches, especially the Catholic Church, formally ended at the turn of the twentieth century.13 State schools in Britain follow a liberal approach towards religious education and there exists a general school subject Religious Education for all pupils. It contains information on various religions, but the curriculum does take into account that most pupils are Anglican. However, within the British system it is far easier to
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establish private schools than in other European countries. Already in 1966 British Muslims, mainly of South Asian origin, fearing that their children would lose touch with Islamic values, founded the Muslim Education Trust.14 According to the British Association of Muslim schools, approximately 110 full-time Islamic private schools have sprung up since then.15 Most of them are privately nanced, but since the Labour government came to power in May 1997, at least four of them have been granted public funding, along with over 2,000 Church of England and Catholic schools, as they meet the necessary requirements concerning curricula and organizational structurea recognition which previous Conservative governments had denied them categorically.16 However, Muslims are still campaigning for nancial aid for the training of imams in Britain, which is still in private hands or done in Islamic countries. I want the government to help me in training better imams, said Zaki Badawi, one of the veterans of organised Islam in Britain in 2003, elaborating, Governments plead poverty. That is their mantra. But my argument is that it is cheaper than having to combat the effect of bad imams.17 Ireland Turning to another British Isle, we can recognize that the situation in Ireland is slightly different. The number of Muslims in the Republic of Ireland has quadrupled over the last decade, but still absolute numbers are rather low; estimates of 2006 mention about 26,000 Muslims in Ireland representing 0.5% of the population. What makes looking at the situation in Ireland worthwhile is the fact that the Irish government funded a Muslim primary school long before this was done in Great Britain. In Ireland education is generally undertaken by the state in combination with the Catholic Church, as most schools in Ireland are Catholic schools whose teachers are paid by the state. Anyhow, other religious communities can apply for this funding as long as they teach the Irish primary school curriculum as well. The rst Muslim primary school was inaugurated in Dublin as early as 1990, and it is currently serving 271 students who travel from all over Dublin in order to reach the school. Since then, Muslim part-time schools have sprung up in accordance with the Irish Department of Education in order to provide religious education for pupils who cannot attend the Muslim primary school.18 The majority of Muslim pupils in Ireland, however, attend non-Muslim schools, and although experiences have been good so far, one has to wait and see what will happen in the future as the Muslim community continues to grow and perhaps quadruple again in the coming decades. Larger numbers of Muslim pupils might pose more mutual challenges as happened in the larger European states with a higher percentage of migrant communities. Scandinavia Most Scandinavian countries follow to a certain extent the Religion for All model. For example, in Denmark, with a population of 5.5 million inhabitants and 2% Muslim population, the religion of the state is Evangelical Lutheran, but the freedom of religion has been incorporated in the constitution since 1849. Growing numbers of nonChristian pupils in schools have led to the fact that the teaching of Christianity in state schools, which is required by the constitution, has developed over the last decades into a broad religious education with space for the teaching of Islam and other world religions. In organizing this form of religious education, ofcials have apparently been inspired by
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the British model. In Denmark it is quite easy for parents to found a so-called free school, which may be subsidized up to two-thirds by the state. The parental right to organise the education of the children on a private basis is thereby a keystone of the Danish constitution of 1849. According to Nielsen, this has led to circumstances that provide Muslims with probably the most favourable institutional circumstances of any European country. In the year 2000 there were seventeen of such partly state funded Muslim private schools in Denmark.19 Sweden represents another Scandinavian country with a former state Church, i.e., the Lutheran Church of Sweden. Not until 1951 did the law guarantee full freedom of religion. Church and state were nally separated in 2000. How many of the nine million Swedes are Muslim is difcult to estimate as the acquisition of Swedish citizenship does require only ve years of residence. Therefore, it is not possible to estimate the number of Muslims only by looking at the gure of the non-Swedish communities living in the country. Estimates suggest around 2% of the population, which would mean that approximately 200,000 Muslims live in Sweden. Since the 1960s, religious education is non-confessional, including extensive reference to Christianity, but to other world religions like Islam as well. As in Denmark there are publicly subsidised Muslim Free Schools. In contrast to the situation in Denmark, the Free Schools opened their gates quite late. The rst one was inaugurated in the mid-1990s in Malmo and by the year 2000, there were already about 20. These schools have to follow the national curriculum but receive 85% of their budget from the state.20 Norway, with a total population of 4.6 million, counts approximately 1.7% of its population as Muslim. By this estimate, there are around 80,000 Muslims living in Norway. Like Sweden and Denmark, Norway is a predominantly Lutheran country and until 1997, religious education in schools was taught according to the Lutheran tradition. It was after 1997 that a new syllabus was introduced, which takes a more general approach towards religious education and covers all world religions, but Christianity is still given priority. In contrast to Sweden and Denmark though, the Free School option is more tightly controlled, and it is harder to obtain this status for a respective religious community. There has been only a single application for a Muslim school so far, but it was turned down in 1995.21 The Netherlands In the Netherlands, members of the Muslim minority community (approximately 800,000 to 900,000 Muslims among 16 million inhabitants) have established around 30 Islamic private schools funded completely by the state. The growth in the number of Islamic private schools in the 1980s led to a backlash through the education law of 1992, which rendered the establishment of these schools more difcult.22 In the Netherlands, the relations between the state and the confessional groups were organized for centuries along the lines of four traditional parallel pillars. However, in addition to the four traditional religious communities found historically in the Netherlands, there exists now a secular/humanist column as well.23 Nonetheless, this system has apparently weakened considerably in recent decades and the construction of an Islamic pillar has failed so far, since the Muslim community is not homogeneous enough in the eyes of Dutch authorities to build this system. The Muslims do not want to be treated as one unied group as well. As in Great Britain, a general religious school subject called Spiritual Currents, which deals with religion in general, is compulsory in state schools. On a local level, Islamic religious education can be taught in
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the classrooms of state schools if a local Muslim community provides the teacher. The school can support the instruction, but is then entitled to set the rules; for example, the school can request that the language of the Islamic religious education be Dutch.24 In addition to this, an Islamic university was founded in Rotterdam, supported by private businessmen, but with limited resources.25 In recent years, the Netherlands has made considerable effort to introduce training for imams at public universities. This development was mainly triggered by the horrible killing of the Dutch lmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004. Dutch politicians stated after the murder that no more foreign-trained imams should have the right to preach in Dutch mosques after the year 2008. The Parliament decided that mosques were only entitled to employ imams that had been trained in the Netherlands from 2008 onwards. Although it seems that the date 2008 will prove to be far too ambitious, the rightist Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has allocated several million euros to state universities in order to train future imams. The rst E1.5 million went in 2005 to the Protestant Free University of Amsterdam, where currently 40 students are enrolled to become Muslim hospital and prison pastors. E2.35 million were received by the state University of Leiden to start the subject Islamic Theology, and the University of Applied Science Inholland received a further E375,000 to start a Bachelors degree program for Islamic pastors. The problem with all these programmes lies in the fact that the Muslim community in the Netherlands was not asked to participate in their planning or was only included in some consultations; therefore, the religious legitimacy of these projects is highly questionable as the outline was drawn mainly by non-Muslims. The umbrella organization of the Sunni Mosque associations heavily objected to the snubbing of the local Muslim associations.26 Clearly, there will have to be talks between the Muslim associations and these projects as the future imams trained at Dutch universities will have to be employed by the local mosques and will need their approval; otherwise they will be instructed for unemployment. Nevertheless, the Dutch example shows how sensitive this eld is and that it is not always good and promising to intervene in a dirigiste and actionist manner from above instead of cooperating with the local Muslims in the eld. One crucial point will be how the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Isleri Baskanligi) will respond to the whole process as they are currently sending religious experts from Turkey to the Netherlands and are providing imams for 30% of the Dutch mosques. So far, the Department of Religious Affairs has shown no sign of willingness to cooperate with the current Dutch projects and the year 2008 is approaching fast.
Model III: Ofcial Recognition Belgium Belgium, with its approximately 400,000 mainly Moroccan and Turkish Muslims in the total population of around 10 million, went on a different path. Islam has been legally recognized as a state religion since 1974. Therefore, Islamic religious education in state schools was introduced in several steps from 1975/76. In the rst years the Islamic Cultural Centre in Brussels, which consisted of members of the Muslim World League and ambassadors from Islamic countries, was responsible for organizing Islamic religious education. The Chairman of the Centre was the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia. Until the mid-1980s, Islam was taught in classes according to ethnic origin. Then a law stipulated that the language of instruction in the classes had to be
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Flemish or French. After that date, classes were taught on the basis of the individual preparation of the Muslim teachers, as no textbooks were available in these languages. Belgian Muslims nally elected a representative council in 1998. Within this council, all ethnic groups and confessional denominations are to be represented according to their proportion in Belgian society. The so-called Executif des Musulmans de Belgique (Executive of Muslims of Belgium) then started to work on a unied curriculum for Islamic religious education in Belgium.27 Apparently, they are still working due to some problems within the Muslim communities in forming the Executif. Maybe the new Executif, which was elected in March 2005, will speed up things a little. However, the outlook is rather bleak as there is a clear rift between the MoroccanBelgian and the Turkish-Belgian Muslim communities, resulting in the fact that Turkish-Belgians obtained 40 of the 68 available seats, although they count only 130,000 persons, while the larger ethnic group of 250,000 Muslims of Moroccan origin only grabbed 20 seats. Apparently, the Moroccan Belgians snubbed the elections for various reasons. Currently, teachers for Islamic religious education are trained by the Belgian school authorities and the Executif des Musulmans de Belgique in order to bolster their level of instruction. In 2002, 400 instructors taught Islamic religion (Religion Musulmane) to over 34,000 pupils within the French community, whereas 20,000 pupils of the Flemish community were served by 297 teachers. New Flemish-speaking Muslim religion teachers are trained in a three-year program at the Erasmus Higher School in Brussels, while new Francophone ones are selected by the Executif des Musulmans de Belgique and then approved by the Francophone community. This shows, on the one hand, the Belgian peculiarity of dealing with education according to the two distinct ethnic groups of society, and proves on the other hand that things are still pretty much in the making and that there might be national harmonisation in the future.28 There exists no training program for imams in Belgium yet, but one of the aims of the Executif is to install such a system, preferably through a Faculty of Islamic Theology at a Belgian university. It is interesting to note in that context that the Belgian Minister of Justice Laurette Onkelinx already xed an imam quota in April 2004. A mosque can obtain a permanent imam if a minimum of 250 believers belong to it as members. For the category of 500 to 1,500 believers, there might be two imams; and three imams should be appointed to any mosque with more than 1,500 believers.29 Nevertheless, despite these plans and the ofcial recognition of Islam in 1974, so far imams in Belgium are not given these state grants, but clergymen of other religious denominations do receive this state funding.30 Austria In Austria, where approximately 339,000 Muslims live, representing 4.2% of the population, Islam has been recognized as an ofcial religious community in 1912, through the so-called Islamgesetz (Law of Islam) in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, although the representative Islamic Religious Community of Austria was created only in 1979. Since 1982, this group is responsible for Islamic religious education at state schools and the state authorities approve the curriculum.31 In the years 2003/04, 32,000 Muslim pupils took part in the Islamic religious education classes taught by 279 teachers at the so-called compulsory schools (primary and main schools (Grund- und Hauptschule)), whereas 4,400 pupils were taught about Islam by 52 teachers in the middle and high schools.32
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An important problem concerning the Islamic religious education practised so far in Austria lies in the fact that only 50% of Muslim children do actually take part in this kind of education because it is exclusively Sunni based and follows predominantly the Hana school of law.33 The teachers for the compulsory school sector are trained since 1998 by the Islamic Religious Pedagogic Academy (Islamische Religionspadago gische Akademie) in Vienna, which has close cooperation with the al-Azhar University in Cairo, as the Egyptian director and some faculty members previously taught at al-Azhar. The Islamic Religious Pedagogic Academy might also train imams for the Austrian Muslim community in the future. For the schools of higher education, the training of teachers has to be done at a university and not at a pedagogic academy. Therefore, there are plans to start an MA study program, Islamic Religious Pedagogic, at the University of Vienna in 2007, in order to train teachers of Islamic religious education for schools of higher learning.34 But in any case, the Muslims in Austria should look to broaden their syllabi and curricula as 50% of non-participants among the Muslim community is too high a proportion to make the Islamic religious education in Austria a real success model. On the other hand, the authorities in Austria might consider ofcially recognizing other Muslim denominations as well in order to cater for their respective spiritual needs. The Austrian model requires that Islamic religious education be taught according to the school law even in Catholic private schools, whereby three Muslim pupils necessitate one hour per week and more than 10 Muslim pupils require two hours of Islamic religious education per week. In 2006, the Catholic private school Marianum in Freistadt was the rst of the 55 Catholic private schools to start Islamic religious education, and more schools will certainly follow this example. In addition, there are some Muslim private schools in Austria and one Muslim institution of higher learning (Islamisches Realgymnasium) in Vienna. Spain and Portugal Spain is another European state recognizing Islam ofcially. In November 1992, an agreement was signed between the Spanish government and the Islamic Commission of Spain, which is composed of different Muslim organisations. The agreement ensures the 500,000 to 600,000 Muslims in Spain, who amount to 1.5% of the population, the legal equality of their creed with other confessions in Spain. However, this is so in theory; in practice, the stipulations of the agreement are implemented rather slowly due to delaying tactics within the Spanish administration or inner Muslim problems within the Islamic Commission, especially regarding the eld of Islamic religious education. Although an amendment exists from 1996 concerning the development of curricula, etc., for a long time nothing has really happened. A striking example to illustrate that fact comes from the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast, where the Muslim population is in the majority. In 2002, the state nanced the creation of a dozen jobs for teachers at state schools, but none of the candidates found the approval of the Islamic Commission of Spain at the time.35 At the end of 2005, 40 schools nally started teaching Islamic religious education. Unfortunately, only 17 Muslim teachers met the requirements of the Spanish authorities, i.e., to be born in Spain and to be holder of a university degree. Therefore, only schools in the three regions of Andalusia, Aragon and Basque started the program; and due to the lack of teachers, towns like Madrid and Barcelona, with a high percentage of Muslim population, will have to wait. The head of the Spanish Muslim organisations, Abdel
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Salam Mansour, said that despite the small number of participating schools, the start of Islamic religious education has to be seen as a positive sign for the Muslim community in Spain. On the other side, the Muslim organisations deplored the low turnout of Muslims taking part in the Islamic religious education program. Apparently only 25,000 out of a possible 80,000 Muslim pupils, registered for Islamic religious education at the 40 schools in question. According to the Ministry of Education, teachers will receive a salary of E1,200 per month.36 Looking across the border to Portugal, one witnesses that there is no such thing as formal recognition for Muslims in Portugal. As Muslims only account for approximately 0.3% of Portugals 10 million inhabitants, formal recognition is not the main point on the Portuguese agenda. Nevertheless, Muslim associations are expected to register ofcially under the law of associations. Given the small number of Muslims in Portugal so far, no initiatives for Islamic religious education have emerged.37
Finland In Finland, Islam has been an ofcially recognized religion since 1925. However, such recognition does not carry many privileges; for example, only the Lutheran and the Orthodox Church have church taxes collected for them by the state. The oldest constituents of the 20,000 Muslims in Finland (representing 0.4% of the total population of ve million) are the Tatars who came as traders in the nineteenth century, when the country still belonged to the Russian empire. According to the law, there has to be religious instruction for every community in school when the parents demand it. Despite this fact, only 500 Muslim children are taught their religion in state schools due to the lack of skilled teachers. Therefore, Finnish authorities decided to train such teachers in 2001 in a training course set up by the University of Helsinki, the Helsinki Education Authority and the Ministry of Education. The Muslim community was involved in creating textbooks for the project.38 Most of the current projects of Islamic religious education within the European states, which belong to the Ofcial Recognition model, are taking place in Germany at the moment; therefore, the situation in Germany will be dealt with in a separate section later.
Model IV: Total Disregard Italy The Total Disregard model is practised by Italy. In the Italian Peninsula, which represents home for approximately one million Muslims among 57 million Italians, the public recognition of Islam is hampered by the fact that only approximately 400,000 of the Muslims are legal immigrants to Italy. Therefore, the role of Muslim organizations within the public sphere has been rather marginal so far. Attempts to establish a Consiglio Islamico dItalia (Muslim Council of Italy) in 1998 and 2000 have been unsuccessful due to disputes between the Muslim factions. Moreover, the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church, which is the only religious community with a concordat with the Italian state, is felt deeply in the society and should not be blamed exclusively on the Vatican, which has engaged actively in dialogue with other religious faiths, but also on leading Italian politicians. Although the state concluded agreements with a number of smaller religious communities over the last decades, the former centre-right government lead by Silvio Berlusconi had none of these agreements ratied in Parliament, and the
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ofcial concern in reaching such an agreement with the Muslim communities vanished into oblivion.39 Besides this lack of ofcial recognition, there are further administrational acts of the Italian authorities that anger the Muslim community. In September 2005, a Muslim private school of 500 Muslim pupils was closed down by the local authorities of Milan. At rst, the authorities explained that the hygienic standards of the school did not meet the necessary requirements. Then it was stated that the school had been illegal in the rst place and nally the Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said that Muslim children should go to state schools and learn Italian instead of learning Arabic. Moreover, with this measure he wanted to prevent the building of ghettos within the Italian society; he would prefer an Italian Islam anyhow. The offer that the children should have three hours of Arabic a week at a public school was rebuked by the angry parents. Although the parents and the teachers decided to teach for some days on the street, i.e., the via quaranta in Milan, to express their discontent, the closure of the school has apparently continued until today.40 Looking at these examples, one recognizes that the Europe of nation-states has no unied attitude towards Islamic religious education and is without a clear concept when confronted with the plural structure of Muslim communities in its respective countries.
Islamic Religious Education in Germany Legal Framework in Germany One could ask the question in this context: why should a unied approach be possible in Europe, when it has not even been achieved within the Federal structure of Germany? A unied approach to this question is also pondered over in Germany, as approximately 3.2 million Muslims live there, representing 4% of the total population. Germany belongs to the group of countries, which follow the Ofcial Recognition model for religious communities. It is up to the Federal States to recognize these communities and all questions concerning Islamic religious education lie in the hands of the Federal States. Thus far, the Muslim community legally enjoys unequal rights concerning the practice of their faith, as compared to the Christian churches which benet from a state church law dating back to the Weimar Republic. Within this legal framework religious groups like the churches and the Jewish community are granted the status of a so called Corporation under Public Law (Korperschaft des offentlichen Rechts). Such recognized corporations have certain rights, including but not limited to the following: the state levies church taxes for these institutions; they benet from certain tax exemptions; they obtain help for the construction of religiously used buildings; and there is stately compulsory sponsored faith based religious education in public schools, which means mainly Catholic and Protestant religious education.41 Most of the requirements to build a Corporation under Public Law are nevertheless modelled after the main Christian churches, and the Muslim community has shown so far no ambition to create an Islamic Church of Germany. The German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) states that new groups can obtain these rights if they apply and are able to prove that they have a constitution, a considerable amount of members and the prospect that they will be staying in Germany.42 Here lies a crucial problem, as Islam has no comparable church-like structures to show to the authorities. Therefore in the past the German state did not know who was
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authorized to speak for the Muslims, and state authorities did not want to talk to each Muslim group separately, because a group might object to what was agreed upon with another association. For a long time, therefore, nothing happened and the Muslim community has still not reached the level of other religious communities. As the vast majority of Muslims live in large German cities, Islamic religious education in some schools in densely populated urban areas would affect the majority of pupils. However, the introduction of nationwide Islamic religious education still has some hurdles to overcome. Many lawyers would argue that the Muslim community should rst be recognized ofcially as a Corporation under Public Law in order to be treated in the same way as the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish denominations. Nevertheless, Muslim representatives in Germany are openly demanding the instruction of Islamic religious education in state schools in parallel to the one that is taught to Christian pupils.43 Muslim activists cite the German constitution, which in Article 7 calls for Confessional religious education taught by believing teachers to believing pupils.44 This regulation is by no means restricted to the Christian churches. Furthermore, the third paragraph of Article 7 states that religious education is executed by the state in accordance with the basic principles of the religious community. As Germany tends to be very legalistic, lawyers are now struggling to dene what the constitution means by the term religious community. Is only a recognized Corporation under Public Law a religious community or is any local mosque organization also a religious community? The trend goes nowadays to say that maybe the Muslims do not have to full the very high requirements to become a Corporation under Public Law in order to be granted Islamic religious education. But despite this view, ofcials still see the need for a very high amount of centralization and unication among German Muslim organizations, proving especially that they have sufcient ofcial members in the ranks of their organizations. For many Muslims though, it represents an odd idea that they have to show ofcially, as members of a Muslim association, that they are adherents of Islam, a religion they were simply born into. Many further problems arise in this context, like whether there will be separate Islamic religious education for Sunni and Shii Muslims. It is interesting to note that the more homogenous group of the Turkish Alevis will be granted Alevi religious education in some Federal States in the foreseeable future. The Registered Association (Eingetragener Verein, e.V.) with the name Alevite Community in Germany has recently published the book The Alevites: A Religious and Social Community in Germany. This book constitutes a kind of foundation document of a new religion. It is remarkable that the Alevites published this in Germany as they would have had difculties to publish a similar paper in Turkey. In Germany, the Alevite creed was ofcially recognized in the summer of 2005 by several Federal States, after an evaluation of religious and legal experts, as a religion in its own right. In Northrine-Westphalia there shall be Alevi religious education in public schools within the next two years.45 By contrast, the much larger but more divided Sunni group will have to wait. Islamic Religious Education and the German Federal States The Federal States which are responsible for educational matters realize increasingly that they will be brought to court by Muslim groups if they do not start action regarding Islamic religious education. Moreover, one should not underestimate how the events of 11 September 2001 have accelerated the development of concepts for Islamic religious
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education, which is now seen as a tool for the better integration of Muslims and as a preventative measure for future crises and against Islamist terror in general. It is no surprise that the former Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), promised the introduction of Islamic religious education in German as a means for better integration, during his ofcial governmental speech entitled Preserving LiberalityStrengthening Defence (Liberalitat bewahrenWehrhaftigkeit starken) on the 24th of October 2001.46 Most of the Federal States with large Muslim populations have, in one way or another since September 2001, either pursued more vigorously existing concepts or started new ones. The only exception to this development among the Federal States with a high percentage of Muslim population is the conservative governed state of Hesse, where the Muslim organization Islamic Religious Community of Hesse was denied the status of a Religious Community according to Article 7 on the 19th of September 2001, only eight days after the events in New York. This denial to be recognized as an ofcial Religious Community was then conrmed by a legal decision of the Hesse Administrational Court (Hessisches Verwaltungsgericht) in September 2005.47 In December of 2005 the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institution of Religion e.V. (DITIB), which stands in close alliance to the Turkish state through its nancial and administrative ties with the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Isleri Baskanligi), openly demanded to be the ofcial partner for Islamic religious education in Hesse, but no ofcial application has been made yet.48 One problem would be that DITIB, as a partner in the Islamic religious education sector, would only be attractive to Turkish Muslims and even if the Turkish element is the strongest ethnic component with the Muslim community of Hesse, many Turks in Germany are not really in favour of the handling of religion by the Turkish state. Opting for DITIB as the only partner would mean to exclude large amounts of young Muslim pupils living in Germany. Anyhow, it seems that the government of Hesse is waiting for a new centralized organization of the Muslim community, which would please the government more than the Islamic Religious Community of Hesse, to be formed in the next few years in order to apply for a partnership concerning Islamic religious education. Meanwhile, Muslim pupils can participate in the state schools of Hesse by taking the course Ethics with special stress on Islam, while the Christian pupils go to their religious education class.49 First experiences with these classes show that conicts arise if staunch secularists among the teachers of Ethics clash with young believing Muslims about simple questions such as Is there a God?.
Actual Projects of Islamic Religious Education at State Schools in Germany North Rhine-Westphalia The largest actual attempt to introduce so called Islamic Education in German has so far been undertaken in North Rhine-Westphalia and runs currently at 130 schools (out of 5,000 which exist overall in North Rhine-Westphalia) and within the next three years the number of schools shall be increased to 200.50 The concept is that Muslim teachers teach Muslim pupils the basics of their creed. One main problem of the project in North Rhine-Westphalia remains that leading Muslim organisations have objected to it because they have not been asked to participate in the development of the program, and their own application to be an ofcial partner for the teaching of Islamic religious education has been rejected by the state authorities. The Muslim
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organisations of North Rhine-Westphalia argue that such an education is not following the lines of the German constitution according to which the state provides for religious education in accordance with the religious communities. The organizations therefore went to court. But despite the pending court case the authorities of North Rhine-Westphalia have followed through with their model of Islamic religious education provided by the state. Muslim teachers are so far trained by the North-Rhine Westphalian School Institute in Soest.51 The problem might be solved in the long run by a new initiative of the University of Munster in North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2004, the rst professor for Religion of Islam was appointed there. Professor Muhammad Kalisch is training 30 Muslim students per year who shall become teachers for Islamic religious education after having obtained their degree in a three years program in order to teach the 280,000 Muslim pupils in North Rhine-Westphalia. As this program was approved by the leading local Muslim organizations, one can guess that these teachers might be incorporated into the existing programmes of Islamic religious education in North Rhine-Westphalia.52 What is very remarkable in this context is that with the appointment of Professor Kalisch, the subject of Islamic theology was inaugurated at German universities and it will be interesting to see what the contribution of this German Islamic theology will be to the global Islamic discourse. Lower Saxony School Trials of Islamic religious education currently seem to be en vogue in German Federal States. One of them is currently running in 19 schools in the Federal State of Lower Saxony, which has 45,000 Muslim pupils in its schools. In order to prepare this School Trial, the ofcials of the state invited the leading representatives of the Muslim organisations of Lower Saxony to participate at a round table, where the conceptual outline of the trial was drawn out, including the curriculum. Anyhow, this solution is seen more as a contemporary construct in order to get the project started. To ensure the permanence of this School Trial the state authorities of Lower Saxony still demand from the Muslims to form a unied ofcial Religious Community in the future according to the requirements of the constitution.53 The problem with all these trials is the lack of qualied teachers. In most of the cases teachers, who had been giving Turkish lessons in the afternoon to migrant children and who were paid by the states, are hastily transformed into teachers of Islamic religious education. Many of these teachers were sent by the Turkish state, like in Bavaria, which had agreements with Turkey to send teachers who were then paid by the Bavarian authorities. Some of these teachers did then teach about Islam in the Turkish language classes, but the Turkish language classes are a model that is currently being phased out at German schools. This reects the paradigm shift within Germany towards migration. Germany has nally ofcially accepted that the migrants will stay; therefore, fewer and fewer language programs of the original languages of the migrant communities will be provided by the German Federal States. As the migrants are here to stay, they do not have to be prepared linguistically for a possible return to their home countries anymore, but they have to be integrated. Providing them with Islamic religious education is part of the integration process. The language classes will stop and Islamic religious education in German will be taught instead. In many cases, the former language teachers are now asked to teach Islamic religious education; only that many of the former language instructors do not meet the requirements of the new
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Islamic religious education as their knowledge of the German language is rather weak. Therefore, the University of Osnabruck initiated a training program in 2003 whereby 20 qualied persons, often the teachers who already participated in the School Trial, were trained further in order to qualify as full teachers for Islamic religious education. One of the problems in the teacher training program lay in the fact that many students could not understand texts other than German or Turkish. English and Arabic texts were out of reach for them, therefore many of the main texts of the Islamic creed will have to be translated into German in the next years, especially when taking into account that the teaching will be done often to very young children who require special texts according to their age.54 Another problem will emerge after the end of the training program, which is only open to Muslims. The point that will cause offence is the question of the headscarf. Some of the women in the training program wear the headscarf, but the state of Lower Saxony has passed a law to disallow female teachers to wear the headscarf in classes in state schools. In the future, there will be conicts as the experiences in recent years have shown that veiled Muslim women especially enrol in teacher programmes for Islamic religious education, but once they obtain their degree they have to search for career alternatives. After the end of the three years trial for the teacher training program, the introduction of a full Master program with several professors for Islamic religious education is planned for 2007 at the University of Osnabruck. Osnabruck will, therefore, develop into another place of Islamic theology in Germany.
Bavaria Even the conservative state of Bavaria has initiated a School Trial of Islamic religious education in German. In the city of Erlangen Islamic religious education was installed in a local school in close coordination with the unied Association of the Islamic Community in Erlangen. This central association was especially formed for the School Trial. This local project represents a good example of how Islamic religious education might be implemented in Germany. It was done by the local authorities in close accordance with the local communities of Muslims who seem to have overcome locally the usual rift between Muslim organisations, which is in other cases responsible for many standstills at the Federal level. After the rst School Trial proved to be a success, two other schools in Bavaria started similar projects with the approval of the local community.55 The Bavarian approach might be slower than the projects of other Federal States, but in the long run it might outlast the others as it is growing somehow organically from the local to the Federal level, always trying to have the local Muslim communities on board. In addition, Harry Harun Behr was appointed Professor for Islamic religious instruction at the University of Erlangen, where he is training 30 students since 2006 in order to become future teachers of Islamic religious education. He therefore became the second full time Muslim Theologian at a German University after Prof. Kalisch in Munster. The academic program in Erlangen had started two years earlier with the help of guest professors. Erkan Erdemir was the rst student who nished the four semester long education and has now become entitled to teach Islamic religious education in Bavaria, only he did not nd a job, as there are so few schools yet where this subject is taught, but nally he succeeded and now teachesin Austria.56
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rttemberg Baden-Wu For a long time, the state of Baden-Wurttemberg had not initiated similar projects and School Trials. Maybe there were other preoccupations preceding such a project, as the conservative governed Baden-Wurttemberg was the rst German Federal State to ban the headscarf for Muslim schoolteachers. The problem with this law and other laws passed by other conservative ruled states is that they disallow only the headscarf; other religious signs like the Jewish kippah or the headdress of nuns are still allowed because they stand in the occidental cultural tradition. The former Bavarian education minister Monika Hohlmeier remarked in this context: Churches and the Jewish community stand clearly rm to the German constitution.57 Banning the headscarf is seen by some as protecting pupils from the fundamentalist inuence. Moreover, the headscarf is, according to the actual German and former Baden-Wurttembergian education minister Anette Schavan who was very much respon sible for the headscarf ban, a symbol of cultural division and part of a history of oppression of women.58 Having said this, however, it is clear that there will be no Muslim women wearing the headscarf teaching at state schools in Baden-Wurttemberg in the next years, although Baden-Wurttemberg has now initiated a School Trial for Islamic religious education starting in 2006 at 12 primary schools. Initially the local Muslim communities, especially the Islamic Community of Baden Wurttemberg (RGIslamBW), were asked to take part at the preparation level of this project.59 Together they worked on the curriculum, but when the School Trial nally started, the Islamic associations were left outside and the state authorities followed it through without them. Therefore, the Islamic associations threatened to boycott the Islamic religious education. They have two main arguments against the School Trial. First of all, the curriculum, which had been agreed upon, has apparently been altered by the education ministry and the second point was that the Islamic community was not involved in the employment of the teachers. The associations see therein a violation of the rights of the Muslim community, as the Christian churches have the right to object against the hiring of a teacher for the Catholic or Protestant religious education. Most of the teachers currently enrolled in the program used to be teachers of the Turkish language before. Their theological training is highly disputable in the eyes of the Islamic Community of Baden Wurttemberg. The Federal government rejects these complaints as for the ofcials the Islamic Community of Baden Wurttemberg is not an ofcial Religious Community in the sense of the German basic law. The land, so they say, would ensure the necessary involvement of Muslims through local associations of Muslim parents. The case of the Alevites was seen differently by the ofcials. The status of their community was recognized by the authorities of the state, and therefore they were integrated into the decision process when Alevite religious education was installed.60 For the case of the Sunnis, a teacher qualication program was set up by the Department of Protestant Theology/ Religious Pedagogics of the University of Pedagogic Karlsruhe in order to bolster the religious knowledge of the current teachers. For special Islamic Theological contents, Muslim experts are asked to give seminars within this program on a regular basis.
The Smaller Federal States The state of Rheinland Pfalz, which neighbours Baden Wurrtemberg, has so far initiated only one project for Islamic religious education at a state primary school. A local
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Christian-Muslim Association for Interreligious Dialogue started this initiative. Since 2004, a Turkish teacher who had studied Islamic Studies at several universities in the Muslim world has been teaching Islamic religious education in German. The project is so far limited to four years and to one school in the town of Ludwigshafen, but as there are several thousand young Muslims in the schools of Rheinland Pfalz it might be expanded to other schools as well.61 Even the authorities of the small Federal State of the Saarland at the frontier of France are increasingly thinking of introducing Islamic religious education at state schools. The only Federal States (Bundeslander) of Germany who have no plans whatsoever in this respect are the Federal States which formed the ancient German Democratic Republic (GDR). Although the Basic Law is also in vigour in the ve so-called Neue Bundeslander (New Federal States) since they joined the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990, the number of Muslims living in these states is less than 1%, and the number of Muslim pupils in state schools is therefore marginal. Hence, there will hardly be any Islamic religious education on the level of these Federal States in the foreseeable future: the Neue Bundeslander are presently even loosing population towards the west and no Muslim migration is taking place at a large scale. The German City States Besides the Federal territorial states, Germany also has three city states, i.e., Bremen, Berlin and Hamburg. Hamburg has opted so far for its own Religion for All model, thereby following the British example. Although Hamburg has the same legislation according to which the state provides religious education in accordance with the Religious Community as the other Federal States, the praxis has been so far that mainly Protestant religious education has been taught in schools, as Hamburg was historically dominated by the Protestant Church. Catholic religious education for example had been restricted to special private schools or happened after school in the afternoons. The Protestant religious education was transformed in recent years into Religious Education for All and opened to all pupils. An important part of the curriculum was dedicated to world religions and especially to Islam due to the large migrant community.62 Although the Protestant church (Nordelbische Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche) still represented the partner of the state of Hamburg concerning religious education, the contents were so diluted and expanded that it was turned into a veritable Religious Education for All. This model might well be brought to an end soon. Migration did not only bring many Muslims to Hamburg, but many Catholics as well. The Catholic ofcials in Hamburg are increasingly demanding the inauguration of Catholic religious education at public schools in Hamburg.63 If the Catholic pupils leave the Religious Education for All then the system will most probably collapse. Apparently, the Protestant church wants to keep the status quo, but they might well have to concede that Muslim pupils will leave the Religion for All classes as well, as the conservative mayor of Hamburg Ole von Beust has recently announced that he wants to introduce Islamic religious education in the schools of Hamburg.64 He sees therein certainly a tool for better integration of young Muslims. To complicate things, in Germany there exists an exemption from Article 7 concerning Confessional religious education in schools for Federal States which already had another legal regulation for this complex on 1st of January 1949. This exemption is the so-called Clause of Bremen (Bremer Klausel). Besides Bremen this is also the legal situation for the city state of Berlin.65 In Bremen there is no legal right for public religious education
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in the schools. Instead the subjects Biblical History or Philosophy were introduced. One school has organized a School Trial of Islamic instruction in German as an alternative to these two subjects. However, this instruction is not confessional; it is not to be taught by believing Muslims who are approved by the Muslim community to Muslim pupils, as in the case of Islamic religious education in the other Federal States. Nevertheless, local mosque associations were involved in drawing up the contents of this education.66 Berlin is also exempted from the Federal legislation because of the Clause of Bremen concerning religious education. This means that in Berlin, religious education is not conducted by the state in accordance with the principles of a religious community, but by the religious community itself. A main difference with the model of religious education in other German Federal States lies in the fact that in other states, religious education is compulsory for students, unless the parents ofcially opt out, whereas in Berlin the participation is voluntary. After some legal disputes, the so-called Islamic Federation of Berlin has been granted the status of a Religious Community.67 Currently the Islamic Federation teaches 4,000 pupils at 37 primary schools.68 This leads to the strange situation that one of the largest providers of Islamic religious education in Germany is an organization that is under the surveillance of the German Constitutional Police (Verfassungsschutz) because there are serious doubts whether the aims of this group are in accordance with the constitution.
Teacher and Imam Training in Germany What is clear regarding Islamic religious education in Germany is that it will be provided in the next years in almost all the Federal States with large Muslim communities. In order to train Muslim teachers for this Islamic religious education, several chairs have already been lled at the universities of Germany. As stated above a chair of Religion of Islam has been established at the University of Munster and Professor Dr. Muhammad Kalisch has been appointed. Another chair was taken up by Professor Dr. Harry Harun Behr in 2006 at the University of Erlangen in Bavaria for Islamic religious instruction and there are plans to establish a teacher training master program for Islamic religious education at the University of Osnabruck in Lower Saxony in 2007. All these university programs are clearly aimed to train future Muslim teachers for Islamic religious education in state schools, but in the long run students could be trained as imams as well. They will represent something like the starting point of an Islamic theological pedagogy in Germany in its own right, which will reduce the dependency of German Muslims towards theological institutions in the Muslim world. It is interesting to note that both professors who have been appointed so far are German converts to Islam. This reects well the situation of the Muslim community in Germany. Most migrants have not reached the necessary educational level to reach such a position, and it will need some time until there will be a pool of scholars from the second or third generation immigrants who will be academically eligible for such a position. Moreover, some other chairs will have to follow in order to cope with expected demand. Estimates speak about approximately 700,000 Muslim pupils in German schools at the moment and their size is growing. This means that around 4,500 teachers are needed.69 To educate these teachers and future imams about 15 chairs for Islamic theology or Islamic religious education ought to be established.
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Despite the already existing chairs for Islamic religious education at German universities, two professorships for Islamic Religious Studies were established at the University of Frankfurt within the Faculty of Protestant Theology. The whole construct is quite unusual given the fact that the two professors are paid for by the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Isleri Baskanligi). The inauguration of this program was heavily criticised by scholars of religious and Islamic studies in Germany, as they stated that such chairs would create an intellectual dependency towards the Turkish state and its ofcial understanding of Islam. Professor Bassam Tibi from the University of Go ttingen warned that the Diyanet would by no means propagate a tolerant and liberal Islam and by allowing them to teach at German universities, Tibis ideal of a EuroIslam was at stake.70 However, the Ofcials of the University of Frankfurt replied to these accusations that the Diyanet was only the sponsor and that it had no say whatsoever regarding the contents of the curriculum.71 This argument is quite questionable given the fact that both professors teaching in Frankfurt since 2005, Mehmet Koktas and Tahsin Go n, have close links to the Diyanet. Currently 25 students are enrolled in the rgu program. Ofcially, they are trained to work in all sorts of intercultural activities and Professor Gorgun also sees a possibility that his students might later on work in the eld of Islamic religious education. This, on the other hand, seems quite odd as the state of Hesse, in which Frankfurt lies, is the only Federal State with a large Muslim population, which has rejected so far the introduction of any Islamic religious education, opting instead for Ethics with special stress on Islam. As the education of schoolteachers is carried out in Germany by the Federal States and since it is very difcult for a teacher to switch from one Federal State to the other due to different regulations in the teacher training, it seems that these students are studying for unemployment. Maybe there will be some political movement in the next years in Hesse regarding this issue, but even then it is not really understandable why German Muslim teachers should be trained in such a close accordance to the views of the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs. To me it appears very probable that the department of Islamic Religious Studies at the University of Frankfurt will educate future imams for the several hundred mosques of the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institution of Religion e.V. (DITIB), which represents the German arm of the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Isleri Baskanligi). So far, 600 imams of the 900 DITIB mosques have come exclusively from Turkey after having taken only a short crash course on German language and culture. The Diyanet sends these imams and provides their nancial needs for four years after which they go back to Turkey. Other mosques which do not belong to DITIB are not that fortunate. They have to pay the imams out of the donations of the local Muslim community. Until now there is no large scale imam training in Germany in the private sector, with the exception of the training program of the Association of Islamic Cultural Centres (Verband der Islamischen Kulturzentren (VIKZ)), which has a strong emphasis on traditional religious education and stands clearly against the modications which were introduced in the educational sector in Turkey by the so-called kemalistic revolution of the Founder of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Ataturk. The VIKZ runs an imam train ing institution in Cologne, where it teaches imams for the 300 mosques of the VIKZ in Germany and although the instruction is done mainly in Turkish and Arabic, the majority of the students were born in Germany and have therefore considerable contacts and experiences with the majority society.72 Germany does not have a strong history of private schools; very few private schools exist in Germany overall and therefore there are only few Muslim private schools as well. A private primary school was established in Berlin and a combined primary-secondary
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school in Munich. In both cases, some public funding was involved until very recently as the school in Munich had to close down in 2005 after it had operated since 1982. The allegation from the side of the Bavarian ofcials was that the Islamic Council, which runs the school, had close links to the Islamic community in Germany (Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland (IGD)). According to the Bavarian Constitutional Police (Bayerischer Verfassungsschutz) the IGD has close links to the Muslim Brotherhood. The ofcial investigations in this matter happened in quite a rush after media reports had urged the Bavarian authorities to take measures against the schools. The pupils were totally surprised by this news during their summer holidays. They had to nd new schools within a couple of weeks. Islamic Religious Education in the German Public Debate The issue of Islamic religious education is today in the centre of a very hot debate in Germany, a debate which is frequently conducted very emotionally in these troublesome times. Thus, Islamic religious education is often presented by ofcials on the one hand, as a tool in the ght against terror in order to cope with the dubious education of the so called Quran schools and, on the other hand, as a project for better integration. The truth behind why the projects are now taken up more seriously by German ofcials, as compared to previous decades, is in my view simpler. The German constitution requires confessional religious education in the vast majority of the Federal States. German courts are increasingly willing to grant the Muslim communities their constitutional rights. Confessional religious education will not be abolished in Germany in the future because the lobby of the churches is too strong. Therefore, members of other denominations like the Muslim communities will nally be granted this right as well. Administrative problems like the building of a representative Muslim association in each Federal State will have to be overcome though, and there are attempts to handle these problems on the local and the state level. In the long run, the confessional Islamic religious education might be taught separately for Sunni and Shii Muslims, as the Alevis have already obtained the right for their own religious education. A clear sign towards the general introduction of Islamic religious education in Germany is presented by the fact that the German Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schauble, did initiate a large German Islam Conference in September 2006. He invited 15 representatives from the Muslim community and 15 representatives from local, federal, and governmental institutions to Berlin. Besides the four large Muslim organisations and the Alevis, 10 individual Muslim personalities from different backgrounds were invited. The scope of the invitation went beyond organized Islam in Germany in order to represent the majority of Muslims in Germany. At the Islam Conference, the question of Islamic religious education and the training of German imams were high up on the agenda. Even if matters of education are the responsibility of the Federal States, it represents an important sign when the German interior minister openly propagates its introduction and in fact many Federal States have started introducing Islamic religious education in public schools in the form of school trials in recent years. The German Islam Conference has, according to Schauble, a further general aim to state where we want to be in ve, ten or thirty years and how we get there.73 These are ambitious plans and the implementation of nationwide Islamic religious education will need some years, as can be deduced from the presentation of the various School Trials. If the participants of the Islam-Conference would sign a
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general agreement on the introduction of Islamic religious education, it would mean that all future German governments will be bound by this contract. The door for Islamic religious education in German would be wide open, even if the actual implementation would have to be done at the Federal level. What remains important in this context is that the Muslim community has the feeling that they are treated equally. Experiences with all the School Trials in the different states described above have been very positive so far despite all the differences in their legal and administrative constructs. In February of 2005 a symposium was held in Stuttgart under the title: On the way to Islamic Religious Education in Germany, where the projects for Islamic religious education in Germany were presented. According to the scientic evaluation of these trials, 90% to 100% of Muslim pupils take part in Islamic religious education when it is on offer, regardless of whether the students were Shii, Sunni or even Alevi.74 It seems that the students and their parents are glad that Islamic religious education is taught in state schools and that they obtain the same educational privilege as do the Christian students. They certainly do not really care about all the disputes of the state ofcials with the representatives of Muslim associations. Pupils and parents alike would like that Islamic religious education was on offer nationwide in all schools with Muslim students.
Conclusion When dealing with the issue of Muslims in Europe, it seems that a bundle of quite distinct approaches have developed in Western Europe. There is the Religion for All model that emerged in nation states where the Protestant church played a leading role and represented quite often the former state church. The tolerance of this model lies maybe in the fact that the leading role of the Protestant church is not really challenged by granting all other denominations a piece of the cake in the Religion for All approach. Catholic dominated countries seem stricter in their dealing with the subject; either there is no religious education whatsoever, such as in the French Laicite model, or just Catholic religious education, such as in Italy. Spain is in some respect the odd one out, as it shares the Ofcial Recognition model with other states in Western Europe, like Germany, Belgium and Austria. The historic background of these countries is that they were not as homogeneous as other European countries regarding the composition of their ethnicity or regarding their religious identity. Germanys religious organisation is not understandable without the religious wars of the seventeenth century, and the status quo since then, which more or less divided the country into 50% Catholics and 50% Protestants. Which of the current models might be more acceptable for Muslims? Certainly not the Italian one. The French model, where Laicite is transformed into a sort of religion of the secular state whereby believers are somehow excluded, is not very attractive to them either. The Laicite model ignores all religions equally in theory, but in practice Muslim migrants, as newcomers to this system, feel certainly more neglected. For example, they lack the infrastructure of religious buildings, whereas the Catholics have more than they need. But the two remaining models also have some shortcomings. Anyhow, it seems that they have more advantages for the Muslims regarding religious education. The Religion for All approach allows the establishment of private schools in large numbers and tries to treat all religions equally in the school. Nevertheless, it leaves the initiative to the individual community which might be an advantage if you know how
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to handle this individuality in accordance with the state and if you posses the necessary nancial resources. The Ofcial Recognition model is far more restrictive concerning private incentives but it offers a lot of public services like Islamic religious education, once the religious community is ofcially recognized. As Muslim communities have now been recognized in most countries following the model of Ofcial Recognition, it is likely that these communities will be granted Islamic religious education, either for all Muslims or separated according to their denomination, i.e., Shii or Sunni. Thus, I think that Muslims can live quite well either with the Religion for All model or the Ofcial Recognition model concerning Islamic religious education. The overall question remains, is it desirable to incorporate Muslims and their religious needs into European systems, which were never designed to serve them in the rst place? But even the massive immigration of Muslims into Europe in the last forty years has not opened the opportunities to reform existing regulations and paved the way for a more exible attitude towards religion. At least Muslims should have the feeling that they are legally equal to believers of other denominations in terms of their religious practice. For the time being Muslims will have to live with the fact that being a Muslim in Germany brings other legal obligations and rights in terms of public representation, building of mosques, etc., which would not be encountered by Muslims in France or Great Britain. But this is also true for Christians, although probably to a lesser extent. Is this the price newcomers have to pay? Even if states do not want any form of religious education in state schools, like in France, there should be public or private institutions of higher learning, which train imams all over Europe. This would ensure that imams emerge out of the same cultural context as the rest of the Muslim community and would help diminish inner communal language problems and so on. When one thinks, for example, of the Bologna Process, which aims to install a better compatibility for student curricula throughout Europe by installing equivalent Bachelor and Master Degrees, then the question can be asked why not install a Bachelor of Islamic Theology curriculum throughout Europe, where the students can transfer easily between European countries? This might save us in the long run from an Islam of France, which is then trying to construct and justify its specic otherness as compared to an Islam of Germany or an Islam of Great Britain. I do not think that the attempts at the nationalisation of Islam, which we are witnessing to some extent at the present time, will result in a workable solution for the future. NOTES
1. The present article is an extended and revised version of a paper that was presented at 19th Annual AFEMAM (Association Francaise pour lEtude du Monde Arabe et Musulman) Conference, July 2005, Strasbourg, France. 2. For information about the phrase seek knowledge even as far as China, see Living Islam. Islamic Tradition, available online at: ,www.abc.se/m9783/n/skx_e.html.; even if the addendum even as far as China is highly disputed within the Islamic hadth-science, which veries the authenticity of sayings of Prophet Muhammad, another statement (hadth) of the Prophet, however, is undoubted by Islamic scholars, which has the wording seeking knowledge is an obligation for any Muslim. See Ibn Madja (d. 887), Kitab as-Sunan, al-Muqaddima, 1/220, in Mawsu al-hadth al-sharf (Hadith Ency at clopedia), Cairo: Global Islamic Software Co., 1997 (CD-Rom Edition). 3. R. Paret, Der Koran [The Quran], Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993, p. 223. 4. Christopher J. Soper and Joel S. Fetzer, Explaining the Accommodation of Muslim Religious Practices in France, Britain, and Germany, French Politics, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 2003, p. 52.
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5. See for other classications of models of European countries with regard to Islam: B. Marechal, Modalities of Islamic instruction, in Muslims in the Enlarged Europe, Series: Muslim Minorities 2, eds M. Brigitte, S. Allievi, F. Dassetto and J. Nielsen, Leiden: Brill, 2003, pp. 428; Irka Mohr, Islamischer Religionsunterricht im Europaischen Vergleich [Islamic Religious Education in a European Perspective], presentation at the conference Muslime und moderne Gesellschaften [Muslims and Modern Societies] of the Heinrich-Boll-Foundation, 1418 February 2000 in Berlin, Hannover, Munich and Frankfurt/Main, see the homepage of the University of Erfurt, available online at: ,www.uni-erfurt.de/islamwissenschaft/mohr-vortrag.html. (accessed 17 May 2006). 6. J. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004, p. 22 7. C.J. Soper and J.S. Fetzer, Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 86. 8. J. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, op. cit., p. 23. 9. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 21 June 2005. 10. La Liberation, 8 September 2005; Le Figaro, 7 December 2004. 11. J. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, op. cit., pp. 90 1. 12. See the homepage of the University of Fribourg, available online at: ,www.unifr.ch/religionsrecht/ Einladung%20Tagung%202005.pdf. (accessed 8 May 2006). 13. Soper and Fetzer, Explaining the Accommodation, op. cit., p. 47. 14. G. Kepel, Allah im Westen. Die Demokratie und die islamische Herausforderung [Allah in the West. Democracy and the Islamic challenge], Munchen: Piper, 1996, p. 160. 15. See the homepage of the Association of Muslim Schools in the UK, available online at: ,www.amsuk.org. (accessed 25 July 2007); in contrast to this, Nielsen has the number of some 60 Muslim schools, see: J. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, op. cit., p. 61. 16. Ibid., pp. 5961. 17. The Guardian, 15 January 2003. 18. Kieran Flynn, Understanding Islam in Ireland, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 17, No. 3, Spring 2006, p. 230. 19. J. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, op. cit., pp. 80 2. 20. Ibid., pp. 867. 21. Ibid., pp. 878. 22. Irka Mohr, Islamischer Religionsunterricht im Europaischen Vergleich [Islamic Religious Education in a European Perspective], op. cit. 23. J. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, op. cit., pp. 63 4. 24. Irka Mohr, Islamischer Religionsunterricht im Europaischen Vergleich [Islamic Religious Education in a European Perspective], op. cit. 25. J. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, op. cit., p. 69. 26. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 February 2006. 27. Irka Mohr, Islamischer Religionsunterricht im Europaischen Vergleich, [Islamic Religious Education in a European Perspective], op. cit. 28. Mosquees, Imams et Professeurs de Religion Islamique en Belgique. Etat de la Question et Enjeux [Mosques, Imams and Teachers for Islamic Religious Education in Belgium. The Actual Situation and Chal lenges], written by Mohamed el-Battiui, under the supervision of Firouzeh Nahavandi (Universite Libre de Bruxelles) and Meryem Kanmaz, Brussels, 2004, pp. 303. (This study was published by the Centrum voor Islam in Europa (Center for Islam in Europe) at the University of Gent, Belgium, and nanced by the King Baudouin Foundation). 29. Ibid., p. 29. 30. European Policy Centre, The Status of Imams in Europe. Policy Dialogue29 June 2005, available online at the homepage of the European Policy Centre: ,www.theepc.be . (accessed 5 May 2006). 31. See the homepage of the Ofcially Recognized Islamic Community in Austria, available online at: ,www.derislam.at. (accessed 17 May 2006). 32. Universitat Wien, Islamischer Religionsunterricht in Osterreich und Deutschland (2005) [Islamic Reli gious Education in Austria and Germany], see the homepage of the University of Vienna, available online at: ,http://spl.univie.ac.at/leadmin/user_upload/inst_rechtsphilo/ IslamRU_ExSumPub2005.pdf. (accessed 8 May 2006). 33. Irka Mohr, Islamischer Religionsunterricht im Europaischen Vergleich [Islamic Religious Edu cation in a European Perspective], op. cit.
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Albrecht Fuess
34. Universitat Wien, Islamischer Religionsunterricht in Osterreich und Deutschland (2005) [Islamic Reli gious Education in Austria and Germany], op. cit. 35. Le Monde Diplomatique, 15 November 2002. 36. See the homepage of the Islamic Community National View (Milli Gorus), Germany, available online at: ,www.igmg.de. (accessed 8 May 2006). 37. J. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe, op. cit., p. 100. 38. Ibid., p. 88. 39. Ibid., p. 69. 40. See the homepage of the Islamic Community National View (Milli Gorus), Germany, available online at: ,www.igmg.de. (accessed 8 April 2007); see the homepage of Islamonline, Egypt, available online at: ,www.islamonline.net. (accessed 8 April 2007). r 41. T. Lemmen, Muslime in Deutschland. Eine Herausforderung fu Kirche und Gesellschaft [Muslims in Germany. A Challenge for Church and Society], Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2001, p. 183. 42. Ibid., p. 180. 43. See therefore, for example, the Islamic Charta from 2002 of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, which demands the introduction of Islamic religious education; available online at the homepage of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany: ,www.islam.de. (accessed 26 May 2006). 44. A. Ozgur Ozdil, Aktuelle Debatten zum Islamunterricht in Deutschland [Actual Debates on Islamic Religious Education in Germany], Hamburg: E.-B.-Verlag, 1999, p. 32. 45. See the homepage of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, available online at: ,www.islam.de. (accessed 10 August 2005); I. Kaplan, Das Alevitentum. Eine Glaubens- und Lebensgemeinschaft in Deutschland [The Alevites. A Religious and Social Community in Germany], Koln: Alevitische Gemeinde Deutschland e.V. Cologne, 2004. 46. B. Vath, Islamischer Religionsunterricht an Staatlichen SchulenZwei Modellprojekte zu Seiner Etablierung in Niedersachsen [Islamic Religious Education in State SchoolsA Description of two School Trials in Lower Saxony], in Staatlicher Islamunterricht in Deutschland [Ofcially Recognized Islamic Religious Education in Germany], Series: Islam in der Lebenswelt Europa, No. 1, eds, S. Reichmuth, M. Bodenstein, M. Kiefer and B. Vath, Berlin: Lit, 2006, p. 72. 47. See online at: ,www.faz.net. 14 September 2005 (accessed 18 May 2006). 48. Frankfurter Rundschau, 31 December 2005. 49. H. Schroder, ReligionIslamischer Religionsunterricht [ReligionIslamic Religious Education], avail able online at the homepage of the Teachers Union, Hesse, Germany: ,www.gew-hessen.de/ index.php?id127&backPID127&tt_news332. (accessed 18 May 2006). 50. M. Kiefer, Staatlicher Islamunterricht in Deutschland. Unterrichtsmodelle der LanderDer Aktuelle Sachstand im Schuljahr 2004/2005 [Ofcially Recognized Islamic Education in Germany. The School Trials in the Federal StatesThe Actual Situation in the School Year 2004/2005], in Staatlicher Islamunterricht in Deutschland [Ofcially Recognized Islamic Religious Education in Germany], Series: Islam in der Lebenswelt Europa, No. 1, eds, S. Reichmuth, M. Bodenstein, M. Kiefer and B. Vath, Berlin: Lit, 2006, p. 17. 51. See the homepage of the Federal Ministry of Education, North Rine-Westphalia, available online at: ,www.bildungsportal.nrw.de. (accessed 18 May 2006). 52. See the homepage of the University of Munster, available online at: ,www.uni-muenster.de. (accessed 18 May 2006). 53. M. Kiefer, Staatlicher Islamunterricht in Deutschland. Unterrichtsmodelle der Lander [Ofcially Recognized Islamic Education in Germany. The School Trials in the Federal States], op. cit., p. 17. 54. M. Bodenstein, Zwischen Islamwissenschaft und islamischen WissenschaftenIslamstudien in der Wissenschaftlichen Weiterbildung von Lehrern fur den islamischen Religionsunterricht in Deutscher Sprache [Between Islamic Studies and Islamic TheologyLessons of Islam in the Scientic Education for Teachers for Islamic Religious Education in the German Language], in Staatlicher Islamunterricht in Deutschland [Ofcially Recognized Islamic Religious Education in Germany], Series: Islam in der Lebenswelt Europa, No. 1, eds, S. Reichmuth, M. Bodenstein, M. Kiefer and B. Vath, Berlin: Lit, 2006, p. 89. 55. M. Kiefer, Staatlicher Islamunterricht in Deutschland. Unterrichtsmodelle der Lander [Ofcially Recognized Islamic Education in Germany. The School Trials in the Federal States], op. cit., p. 19. ddeutsche Zeitung, 16 May 2006. 56. Su 57. See online at: ,www.spiegel.de. 11 November 2004 (accessed 20 November 2005). 58. Islamic Human Rights Commission, Brieng: Good Practice on the Headscarf in Europe (9.Marz 2004), see the homepage of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, available online at: ,http:// www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id1030. (accessed 18 May 2006).

59. 60. 61. 62.
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63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.
Frankfurter Rundschau, 26 February 2005. Stuttgarter Nachrichten, 23 December 2005; Pforzheimer Zeitung, 23 December 2005. Die Welt, 23 May 2005. M. Kiefer, Staatlicher Islamunterricht in Deutschland. Unterrichtsmodelle der Lander [Ofcially Recognized Islamic Education in Germany.The School Trials in the Federal States], op. cit., p. 20; H. Engin, Islamischer Religionsunterricht an Deutschen Schulen? [Islamic Religious Education rger im Staat [The Citizen in the State], Vol. 54, No. 1, 2001, p. 242. at German Schools?], Der Bu Hamburger Abendblatt, 4 March 2005. Die Welt, 23 February 2006. A. Ozgur Ozdil, Aktuelle Debatten zum Islamunterricht in Deutschland [Actual Debates on Islamic Religious Education in Germany], op. cit., p. 46. M. Kiefer, Staatlicher Islamunterricht in Deutschland. Unterrichtsmodelle der Lander [Ofcially Recognized Islamic Education in Germany. The School Trials in the Federal States], op. cit., p. 17. H. Engin, Islamischer Religionsunterricht an Deutschen Schulen? [Islamic Religious Education at German Schools?], op. cit., p. 244. See online at: ,www.morgenpost.de. (accessed 27 May 2005). Die Zeit, 9 June 2004. Die Tagespost, 12 February 2005. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 December 2005. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 February 2006; T. Lemmen, Muslime in Deutschland, op. cit., p. 65. Die Welt, 24 May 2006; Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 17 September 2006; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 September 2006. Akademie der Diozese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Auf dem Weg zum Islamischen Religionsunterricht (IRU)Ergebnisse und Thesen der Stuttgarter Tagung 2005 [Academy of the Diocese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, On the Way to Islamic Religious EducationResults and Theses of the Stuttgart Workshop 2005], see the pdf le of this paper on the homepage of the Academy of the Diocese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, available online at: ,www.akademie-rs.de/?id598. (accessed 13 June 2007).

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Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs

Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 2, August 2007