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this page Inter Faith in Action - Perspectives
Christian-Muslim relations and the protestant churches in Germany
By Rev. Dr. Barbara Bürkert-Engel, Ludwigsburg/Germany
1. The socio-political context
As a long-term result of the age of enlightenment and the ideas of French
revolution, state and religion are separate. That’s true to most
of Europe, yet with a wide range of interpretation what this “separate” means
in the political realm. On the one side of the scale we have countries
like Italy or Poland with the roman catholic church, especially in its
ethical teaching, being highly influential on legislation. On the other
extreme there is French laicism, that keeps religion and religious symbolism
strictly out of the public realm. Germany is something in between, not
only geographically. One of the most precious principle of our constitutional
law is religious freedom. The state has to guarantee it and to safeguard
both the individual and the collective right, even in its negative form:
the right not to believe.
History has provided us with political arrangements that worked so far.
Muslim presence forces us to rethink and debate in public issues such as:
what is the theological significance of religious communities in a society
of western freedom? Or what role should and can religion play in the organizing
of public life? Far too long we allowed mass media to be the first ones
to jump on the topics involved, fuelling the necessary political discourse
with rather heated emotions.
65% of our population are Christians: roman-catholics and protestants being about equal in numbers (25,9 mill / 25,8 mill), followed by 1,2 mill orthodox Christians. 30% have no official religious belonging at all. 5% are members of other religions: with a small number of Jews (0,2 Mill), and 3,2 mill Muslims. That makes up for about 3,8% of the population. Numerically Islam in Germany forms the second biggest Muslim minority in Europe. Or to put it differently: it is the largest minority religion in Europe. More Muslims live in protestant Northern Europe than catholics; and there are more Muslims in catholic southern Europe than protestants. However, compared with the west african setting, the Muslim segment of german population is extremely small. So why on earth are we dealing with that issue?
Because Islamophobia has been a growing phenomenon and it goes hand in hand with xenophobia, the fear of the stranger. In may 2006 2/3 of the polled Germans negated a peaceful coexistence with the Islamic world, 58% fear growing conflicts between Christians and Muslims and 40% wish legal restrictions on the religious practice of Islam in this country[1]. If one flips the coin, Muslims experience discrimination: 57% say, they were discriminated at their working place; 49% feel disadvantaged while looking for appropriate housing; and 48% claimed that applying for a job was more difficult for them than for none-Muslims[2].
Historically speaking, Islam in Germany is a rather new phenomenon. There have been individual Muslims (former prisoners of the Turkish wars, slaves and diplomats) since the 18th century, yet Islam officially arrived in my country (unlike Great Britain or France) with the foreign workers of the late fifties, followed by refugees and asylum seekers. It has been and remains the religion of the foreigners, the strange religion. Only about 1 million Muslims hold german passport (in contrast to Great Britain or the Netherlands where over 50% are citizens which means: they have the right to participate in elections and be elected). In Germany Muslims are less integrated in the political process of decision making. Unlike e.g. Protestants, Catholics or Jews they are not organized as “Körperschaften des öffentlichen Rechts” and therefore suffer from structural disadvantages: the state doesn’t collect religious tax on behalf of them; their representation at communal development plans or media boards depend on good will; Islamic tuition as official subject in public schools structured parallel to protestant or catholic religious teaching is still on the agenda.
At the peak of the cartoon crises, Henryk Broder[3],
a well-known Jewish journalist told that joke: “Jesus and Moses are
sitting in a café making small talk. Suddenly Jesus stops asking: “By
the way, Moses, do you know what happened to Muhammad?” Moses looks
around and orders: “Muhammad, two coffee please!” Of course,
I would never dare to tell that joke in a dialogue meeting. I am sure,
nobody could laugh. But it is very much to the point: Christians and Muslims
in german society are not on equal footing. Our social reality is multireligious
and multicultural, yet our public awareness and our laws are not. They
are biased towards Christian tradition.
To give you just a few examples: The annual opening of parliamentary session
always starts with a service. Of course, non-Christians are invited to
it as well, but its Christian ecumenical. Christian nuns can wear their
habit in public school, female Muslim teachers not. By law (Staatskirchenvertrag)
public media stations not only cover various religious affairs, but have
to allow for certain programs of Christian religious teaching, yet so far
the Islamic community has no equivalent right. Besides two political events,
only Christian feasts are public holidays. In some areas public life closes
down even at the feast of Mary’s Conception or Corpus Christi (although
the majority of people have no clue what these feasts mean). Muslims celebrate
Id al-fitr, Id al-adhar, Lailat al-qadr or Maulid without public notice.
How should public know? All regular stationary calendars indicate only
Christian dates, rarely Jewish festivals. Its up to interreligious activities
to find out and publish themselves other-religious festival dates.
Our society is multireligious, our awareness is not
2.) Interreligious church activities and issues
Many churches, church areas and umbrella organizations have their own special working units and representatives on Islam and Christian-Muslim relations. Church academies host net-works of dialogue-groups, interreligious peace workers or Christian-Muslim couples, they hold seminars, summer-universities or conferences. Some of them have even specialized on this topic.
It’s specific to our situation as churches in Germany, that we
are engaged in two important, but very different dialogues: the Christian-Muslim,
which is at stake here. And the Christian-Jewish, with a much longer and
a far more complex historical and theological setting. The two dialogues
run parallel - to say the least; more accurate: there was and still
is a notion of competition / rivalry between the two: the synods and churches
deal with the topics involved in very different ways. We have separate
networks for the Christian-Muslim and the Christian-Jewish dialogue. The
Evangelischer Kirchentag runs at least two different programs. In the nineties,
when the notion of an abrahamic / monotheistic ecumene entered the scene,
some dialogue initiatives opened up for discussions among all three monotheistic
faiths. At some point there were good chances to weave these different
strings of dialogue together, yet, at least on a institutional level, it
didn’t happen.
For various reasons: Both dialogues are backed by very different pressure
groups. Those engaged in it, are torn into opposing solidarities in the
political context of the Middle East. And their theological implications
run into very different directions: the highly sensitive Christian-Jewish
dialogue exposes the anti Judaism of our theological tradition and church
history and asks for a re-reading of our own scriptures. At least in a
german setting, “antisemistism” means exclusively anti Judaism,
leaving aside the other relevant semitic branch.
What holds long tradition in churches eg of the Middle East, has only recently become good practice in Germany: archdeacons, bishops, or the head of the EKD publicly greet the Muslim community at the end of Ramadan. These greetings are welcomed as a sign of respect to our neighbours in faith, yet they seem to get stuck somewhere in between on their way from top to bottom: local Muslim communities are little aware of them, and local Christian parish churches don’t feel called to imitate them.
Mixed seminars for ministers and imams together are held sporadically, which is a promising idea, for both sides: imams learn more about the way, our churches are organized, and the questions, we face right now. And ministers get into contact with local imams
What are the major topics of Christian-Muslim encounter discussed within the churches? Its the building of mosques and the public azan; the head scarf for Muslim women in school and in public life; the establishment of regular Islamic tuition in German language parallel to protestant, catholic and Jewish religious teaching; issues of integration, tolerance and its limits; world wide ecumenical awareness and solidarity with Christians in Islamic countries; interreligious marriages and services of blessing; the legitimacy and limits of shared prayer, with both Muslims and Christians been present; sensitivity on Islamic issues within development agencies - just to mention a few topics
3.) where are we heading at?
You may have realized/wondered: so far I hardly mentioned theological questions
arising from Christian-Muslim encounter. For good reasons.
Of course, our synods and committees discuss theological issues arising
from dialogue in diverse sometimes very heated ways. Yet recent theological
statements of the churches on Christian-Muslim dialogue tend to get increasingly
conservative, dogmatically closed in. That is true to the latest publication
of the EKD with the telling title “clarity and good neighbourhood”[4],
which awoke strong reactions from our Muslim dialogue partners.
Islamophobia is increasing – and the church communities
participate. Secularism is increasing. And we as churches are afraid. As
part of European Christianity we suffer from deep crisis. There seems to
be an easy way out - In the words of a member of my congregation: “now
we have to sell the church building. And all this because of Islam”,
meaning: its because of our pluralistic situation, that our churches are
empty. It’s because of Islam, that Christian teaching has so little
relevance any more to people… We know, it’s not! Yet there
are even church documents that put the diminishing significance of
the churches on equal footing with the challenging presence of Islam. It’s
a common and very dangerous argument: Islam is our enemy again. And “Christian
Europe needs to be defended again.
Church theology, the official statements of many of our synods show a closed-in,
non-dialogical concept of identity. They define, they wrap up. “Here
we go, that’s you. And now go, say who you are, reach out to
society and respond to their needs!” “Necessity”, “responsibility”, “implications” -
these are words with substantial weight and significance. But they don’t
imply reciprocity, they don’t breath, they don’t live, they
don’t taste. Old dark bread, german “Vollkornbrot”:
very healthy, but not fluffy, lacking the spirit. The whole situation is
felt to be a big burden. That’s why many of our responses as churches
to the interreligious challenges are so late and lack courage: They smell
of tiredness. They are half-hearted and fearful.
We meet as Christians and Muslims – but we don’t live together. We define – but we don’t pray together. We still act as hosts, not as guests sitting at the same table. Because the project of Christian-Muslim dialogue is not rooted in shared spirituality. We are lacking vision, we don’t know, what hope drives us, what kind of future we want to expect and work for, as Christians and Muslims together. I Think, that’s one of the reasons, why dialogue didn’t become a movement within our churches.
The birthplace of MODERN Christian-Muslim dialogue has been within the churches. Today an exodus takes place, dialogue seems to become secularized. Just a few indicators: Recently the government established a permanent Islam conference – without participation of the churches. The municipalities initiate interreligious working groups, with the churches been only one among many. That’s new to us. And I am not sure where it will lead us to.
1. Institut for opinion research, Allensbach may 2006
2. Halm,Dirk/Sauer, Martina: „Parallelgesellschaft und ethnische Schichtung“; in: APuZ 1-2/2006, 18-24.
3. Der Tagesspiegel, 03.02.2006
4. Klarheit und gute Nachbarschaft. Christen und Muslime in Deutschland, EKD Texte 86, Hannover 2006
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