Germany struggles to better integrate Muslims after fears

By: Anjum Kermani

BERLIN, Germany: German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has called on Muslims to better integrate themselves in German society saying Muslims “must clearly and without misunderstanding demonstrate that they accept our legal order and democratic rules”.

Schroeder said that the state had to insist on the fact that “our willingness to integrate corresponds to a willingness to be integrated on the part of those who come here.”

German politicians have been debating the integration of the country's estimated three and a half million Muslims following the killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a suspected extremist on November 2.

The anti-Muslim attacks that followed the murder of controversial filmmaker have prompted fears that the violence could spread to Berlin and the industrial towns of western Germany where most Muslims live.

Suggestions from high-profile politicians have ranged from a proposal to force mosques to hold prayers in German in order to check whether violence is being incited to a suggestion that a Muslim holiday should replace a Christian one.

Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, who backed the idea of a Muslim holiday, was lampooned by the top-selling Bild newspaper, which pictured the Green Party politician on its front page with a white beard and a turban.

The proposal was given the cold shoulder even by his own party.

The Greens' Marieluise Beck, the government's representative on integration issues, dismissed the proposal as “not very intelligent" and said "there is a not a single region of Germany which has a Muslim majority”.

A Muslim leader however said granting such a holiday would make immigrants feel at home.

“If you are placing importance on the rights of minorities, a Muslim holiday is overdue,” Askar Mahmut, the secretary-general of the Union of Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations in Europe, told Bild.

The education minister of the region of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Annette Schavan, was widely criticized for her suggestion that prayers in mosques should be said in German instead of Arabic.

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