{"id":37619,"date":"2019-03-27T08:23:39","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T08:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=37619"},"modified":"2019-03-27T08:23:39","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T08:23:39","slug":"moroccos-diverse-catholic-community-awaits-pope-francis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=37619","title":{"rendered":"Morocco\u2019s diverse Catholic community awaits Pope Francis"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nANKARA:\u00a0Germany has reportedly initiated a campaign to push German Muslims to develop a new interpretation of Islam, the Financial Times reported on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWhat we need now is an Islam for German Muslims that belongs to Germany,\u201d Markus Kerber, the government representative responsible for relations with the Muslim community under the German Interior Ministry, reportedly told the Financial Times.<\/p>\n

\nThe move of Europe\u2019s economic powerhouse is expected to influence Turkey\u2019s state-led diaspora engagement with German-Turks as well as its state-level relations with Germany. But experts do not anticipate relations to further deteriorate as they say they are already as bad as they can get.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nTurks, mostly from the conservative section of society, have been emigrating to Germany since the early 1960s; originally as guest workers during the economic boom. They have since become the largest Muslim community in the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nGermany\u2019s new plan aims to counter foreign influence on the Muslim community and provide homegrown training to all imams preaching in Germany.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThe largest Islamic organization in Germany is the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, which is affiliated to Turkey\u2019s state directorate for religious affairs. Turkey is sending imams to Germany who are paid by the Turkish government and who are preaching in Turkish in 900 mosques funded by Ankara.<\/p>\n

\nAccording to Yoruk Halil, a halal butcher living in Frankfurt, Germany\u2019s new move will be beneficial for the Turkish Muslim community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThose imams coming from Turkey do not benefit Turkish youth in Germany because these young people have been raised with a totally different culture and they mostly speak German, so they cannot establish a healthy dialogue with those imams,\u201d Halil told Arab News. \u201cIn order to reach out to the Muslim community, including Turks, there is a need to use homegrown imams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nMy 15-year-old son has been going to the mosque for five years and he even told me that he has better communication with imams being trained and educated in Germany,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThere is also a continuing debate over requiring Muslims in Germany to pay a worship tax.<\/p>\n

\nTurkey is against any \u201cGermanification\u201d of Islam and considers any redefinition of Islam for Germany against the universality of the religion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nGermany\u2019s move intends to further integrate Muslims\u2019 daily routines into German society, to boost the loyalty of the 3 million members of the German-Turkish community.\u00a0 It is therefore considered a move for breaking the Turkish community\u2019s ties with their national and religious identity as well as their traditions.<\/p>\n

\nLast year, German police recorded some 578 hate crimes against Muslims between January and September, while about half of Germans think that Islam is incompatible with the values of their nation, according to recent research by pollster YouGov.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cTurkey has been developing diaspora politics since the mid-2000s, and Turks in Germany have been put at the center of it,\u201d Murat Onsoy, an expert in Turkey-Germany relations at Hacettepe University in Ankara, told Arab News.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nHowever, for Onsoy, the presence of imams in Germany who have been appointed by Turkey is a socialization factor for the Turkish diaspora \u2014 who show relatively low rates of crime \u2014 and to maintain their links with their home country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIf Germany rejects Turkish funding to these mosques, they will face serious difficulties in covering their expenses,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nGermany has a community of about 4.5 million Muslims worshipping at about 2,400 mosques, and the number is expected to rise with the refugee influx from Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Sy The German federal constitution, called Basic Law, gives autonomy to Muslim communities to receive funding and religious officials from abroad to operate mosques in Germany.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt is unlikely that this article of the constitution would be easily amended. Various provinces would react to such a move, resulting in widespread protests. The Turkish government would raise the issue at the intergovernmental Islamic organizations, and the German government would be obliged take a step back,\u201d Onsoy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nHe, however, draws attention to the timing of the debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt coincides with the upcoming local elections in Turkey this Sunday, and in the past we witnessed that such potential crises with Western countries have been used by the ruling government to consolidate its voters through engaging in international polemics and assuming the role of the defender of external Turks and \u2018Islam\u2019 worldwide,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nAyhan Kaya, professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, said that the move in Germany to bring a homegrown reading to Islam had already been on the table since Angela Merkel\u2019s initiative in 2006.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cAlthough it contradicts with the Sunni Islam rhetoric, what Germany did is a counter-move against the lobbying strategies of Muslim countries such as Turkey, Morocco or Algeria within German territories,\u201d he told Arab News.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nKaya also noted that in the past Germany and Turkey developed joint projects to train imams who would be appointed in Germany by providing them with linguistic and cultural-integration skills.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThis latest move is a dialectic result of the political maneuvers on the diasporas by countries who are sending and receiving migration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANKARA:\u00a0Germany has reportedly initiated a campaign to push German Muslims to develop a new interpretation of Islam, the Financial Times reported on Monday.\u00a0 \u201cWhat we need now is an Islam for German Muslims that belongs to Germany,\u201d Markus Kerber, the government representative responsible for relations with the Muslim community under the German Interior Ministry, reportedly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":37620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}