Controversial Intentions: Why Did Germany Appoint, for the First Time, a Consultant for Islamic Affairs

Germany recently appointed its first official consultant for Islamic affairs, with the aim of bringing together points of view and defrosting Islamic associations in Germany and local authorities.

Estimates of the number of Muslims in Germany range between 3.8 and 4.5 million. Turkish Muslims constitute the majority of Muslims among them, as their proportion is estimated at about 2.5 million people.

The majority of Muslims settled in Germany in the sixties of the last century by bringing in Turkish and Moroccan workers.

Many Lebanese and Palestinians also came to Germany during the civil war and settled like other Muslim immigrants in major cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, and Frankfurt.

Recently, more than half a million Syrians, most of them Muslims, have sought refuge in Germany and settled in its various states.

 

Islamic Consulting

According to a report by the German DW website, on August 13, 2023, the immigrant of Lebanese origin, Hussein Hamdan (44 years old), became the first consultant for Islamic affairs in Germany to work in avoiding conflicts between mosques and local authorities.

He works as an Islam consultant for local institutions. He is known as the author and speaker of the column Islam in Germany on SWR.

His main areas of expertise are Muslims in Germany, interreligious dialogue, humor in Islam, and introductions to the foundations, sources, and history of Islam.

According to statistics, there are at least 2,800 mosques in Germany. From time to time, debates or disagreements arise around them, especially when mosques with prominent features, such as minarets, appear prominently in a particular cityscape.

Although mosques are generally subject to the same regulations as churches or synagogues, many things depend on the local regulations of each municipality.

Hamdan, who holds a Ph.D. in Islamic and Religious Studies, has been working since 2012 at the Diocesan Academy of Rottenburg-Stuttgart as Head of the Department of Muslims in Germany.

In the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, which has a population of about 11 million, there are about 800 thousand Muslims, for whom Hamdan works as an advisor to local authorities and decision-makers. The first mosques in the state were built in the 1990s.

In 2015, he took charge of a newly launched project called Partner Muslims in Baden-Wurttemberg.

In the project supported by the Robert Bosch Foundation, Hamdan works as a consultant to municipalities and decision-makers.

For 8 years, Hussein Hamdan provided consultations on Islam to 60 municipalities in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg in southwestern Germany.

Hamdan stresses the need to conduct a bilateral dialogue between those in charge of mosques and municipalities and to provide official representatives from mosque associations as trusted interlocutors. The researcher specializing in religious affairs also summarized his experiences in one book.

Hamdan’s mission often involves everyday questions, such as: Is the minaret too high? How can local authorities best understand the who’s who of all the individual Islamic groups in their communities? How can a municipality best integrate young Muslims?

Hamdan understood the differing views when it came to building mosques in Germany. While some see it as part of a process of Islamization, others find publicly visible mosques.

He also informed local authorities about Islamic groups that are being watched by the German constitutional protection authorities, which are charged with tracking extremist movements.

In addition, he warned against generalizing all mosque communities that belong to the Turkish–Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), whose political influence in Germany has been criticized in the past.

“We must always look at each individual mosque community. Because the communities could vastly differ from city to city,” he told DW.

Mosques that are part of DITIB, the largest umbrella organization of mosques in Germany, have been criticized because they are subordinate to, and allegedly controlled by, Turkish religious authorities.

However, Hamdan believes that DITIB also has the right to differential treatment, but he stresses that these associations also have to ask themselves serious questions.

Hamdan’s efforts have been praised by the anti-Semitism commissioner for the state government of Baden-Württemberg, Michael Blume.

“Hussein Hamdan proves that the coexistence of religions is truly playing out at the grassroots level,” Blume told DW.

He stressed that countries that do not want to experience clashes like those seen in France should invest now in local dialogue and advice regarding Islam.

 

Growing Islamophobia

“Animosity towards Muslims is widespread in Germany,” “Muslims suffer daily from the danger of discrimination, hatred, and racism,” and “Muslims are the most pressured minority in Germany,” these are some of the statements made by senior German officials, commenting on the results of an independent report, the first of its kind in Germany, based on several studies conducted in the past years.

According to the report conducted by a German independent commission tasked by the government and issued at the end of last June, hostility to Muslims is not a marginal problem but rather a widespread phenomenon in German society, and 50% of German citizens acknowledge their hostility to Muslims.

The report indicated that the German society views about 5.5 million Muslims in Germany as alien immigrants who belong to a backward religion that is linked in the consciousness of the German citizen as a violent and extremist religion, which leads to Muslims being subjected to discrimination in all aspects of their lives.

The report concluded that at least one-third of Muslims in Germany have experienced hostility due to their religion.

Former Interior Minister Horst Seehofer launched the committee in 2020 after a right-wing extremist killed 10 people and wounded 5 others in an anti-Muslim shooting in the central city of Hanau.

The attack shocked the country, prompting human rights organizations to warn of growing Islamophobia in Germany.

In July 2019, the German DW website said that a series of bomb threats targeted more than 20 mosques in Germany, which led to anxiety among Muslims who no longer feel adequately protected by the state.

After that, Muslims in Germany resorted, through representatives of Islamic associations, to convey their voice to the German authorities, calling for serious measures to be taken and the appointment of an official commissioner to address the phenomenon of Islamophobia in the country.

From that time until now, the German government is still reluctant to appoint a commissioner to tackle Islamophobia, despite appointing a federal commissioner to combat anti-Semitism in 2018, which came in response to the demands of Jewish organizations.

 

German Imams

Over the past years, programs have been launched in Germany and France in parallel to qualify imams for mosques, as their objectives seem compatible in the two countries, such as emphasizing language and integration, but the reality showed that the two experiences differed, whether in the choices that were made for the program or in the forms of reactions to it, especially by the most influential bodies among Muslims in Germany or in France.

Germany has sought for several years to establish a new approach to the lives of Muslims residing in it, based, in its concept, on appointing German imams from the German interior, who were born, studied, and trained in Germany in order to take charge of the leadership of mosques in it instead of seeking the help of imams from abroad.

At the Islam in Germany conference this year—a conference that has been held annually since 2006 to discuss the conditions and methods of understanding and integration of Muslims in their German surroundings—Nancy Faeser, the German Minister of the Interior, stated that she is determined to reduce the use of imams from mosques outside Germany.

There is no doubt that the matter is not easy when a non-Islamic country decides to play this role, apart from seeking the help of imams who graduated from well-known Islamic universities in the Islamic world.

It is noteworthy that the teaching of Islamic sciences is present in a number of German universities, such as Munster, Tubingen, Osnabruck, Frankfurt, and Berlin. However, all of these universities do not automatically entitle students to practice the work of an imam because graduates need practical experience after study.

That is why the Scientific Council, the most important advisory body for educational policies in Germany, recommended in 2010 the establishment of Islamic studies departments, aiming to qualify imams and teachers who are allowed to teach Islamic education in Germany.

Hence came the decision to establish an Islamic college in the city of Osnabruck in 2019, and its mission is to graduate imams and teachers of religious education according to German conditions, which focuses on the student’s proficiency in the German language, given that they reside in Germany and completed the study of Islamic sciences in one of its universities. After two years of study and training in this college, the student graduates as a recognized imam in Germany.

The matter goes back many years to German fears about DITIB’s activity in Germany, as it was the body that often supervised the qualification of imams in its mosques after bringing them from Turkiye.

The German authorities have always viewed this with suspicion, especially in the midst of their political dispute with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Berlin was never satisfied with DITIB alone supervising the imams’ activities in Germany.

DITIB was often subjected to a torrent of German press criticism, and the press accused it more than once of spying on dissident Turks, and of supporting Turkish armed interventions in neighboring countries, in addition to the participation of representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood in its activities.

However, DITIB and all the organizations it supervises reject these allegations, and a spokesman for the Union stated that less than 20% of those in charge of mosques in Germany support the German government’s steps to appoint German imams instead of imams abroad.

As a result of this dispute, Nancy Faeser, the Federal Minister of the Interior, was sent to Turkiye to conduct further discussions on this matter. The German Ministry of the Interior said that the matter is not about giving a German character to Islam but rather settling Islam in Germany, and the goal is for Muslims living in Germany to feel that they are part of Germany and enrich it.