BERLIN, March 14 (UPI) -- Germany's top security chief wants to improve integrating the country's 3.2 million Muslims in an attempt to discourage home-grown terrorism.
Germany last September held the first-ever official conference on Islam in an effort to better integrate the country's Muslim population, a summit initiated by German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.
An estimated 3.2 million Muslims live in Germany; they have multiple ethnic backgrounds (most of them have Turkish origins) and often have significantly different views of Islam. But one thing they can all agree on: They feel that ever since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and later the Madrid and London train bombings, Muslims living in Europe have to live with the burden of being under general suspicion.
Schaeuble denies that, but says that Muslims living in Western European societies have to play by the rules. "We want to influence the community in a way that it becomes clear that certain rules have to be followed, and certain things have to be dropped," Schaeuble recently told the foreign press corps in Berlin.
Germany has had a problem recently with forced marriages and honor killings within its Turkish community. And the different cultures have clashed on a European scope as well. In the past year, the Prophet Mohammed cartoons and the controversial remarks by Pope Benedict have irritated Muslims in Europe, leading to violent and sometimes deadly protests.
The Islam conference, which Schaeuble sees as especially important, hands officials from both sides a venue to let off steam and come closer together in the process.
"We're not handling each other with velvet gloves," Schaeuble said. "We're going to argue, but that's what makes a democracy."
The Islam conference isn't a summit where officials meet once a year and then don't see each other again; it has given rise to working groups where experts from both communities regularly meet to tackle integration problems.
The concept has convinced integration experts.
"The Islam conference has established a new reality in the religious-cultural life of Germany," Friedrich Heckmann, head of the European Forum for Migration Studies, a research institute at the University of Bamberg, Wednesday told United Press International in a telephone interview. "Already, the Muslim groups feel more accepted, and this opens up new chances for successful integration."
While some critics say Schaeuble, one of the most conservative politicians of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, has launched a security-motivated bid cloaked by an official debate to improve integration, most observers acknowledge that the two are closely linked.
"There is the hope that this conference also helps to contain the phenomenon of home-grown terrorism," Heckmann said, adding that terrorist recruiters often chose young Muslims alienated by the society they are living in.
"The conference also establishes individual relations based on trust," he said. "In times of crisis, for example a terror attack, an official from the government can call a leader from the Muslim community to prevent a situation from escalating."
Heckmann added that Berlin does not have to fear French-style social unrest, as immigrants in Germany were better integrated in the country's work force and within the cities. "The absolute segregation of the French banlieus does not exist in Germany," he said.
Moreover, Germany's population with an immigrant background hails mainly from Turkey; unlike the Arab-dominated population of the banlieus, the German immigrants aren't as influenced by the tensions surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The conference has also given rise to a bid to abolish the legal insecurities of Muslims in Germany. Because they are split into so many different groups, Muslims in Germany are not a 'religious community' -- a legal status that would entitle them to government funding and to hold Islamic studies classes in German schools.
Recently, however, four groups want to change that: The Turkish-Islamic Union for the Institution of Religion (DITIB), the Islamic Council (IR), the Central Council of Muslims (ZMD) and the Association of Islamic Culture Centers (VIKZ) are joining forces to form an umbrella group which they hope will speak on behalf of all Muslims in Germany.
Schaeuble, the interior minister, and several other German politicians are supporting the initiative.
