German Islamic leaders may quit integration conference

Mar 12, 2010, 16:32 GMT

Cologne - Islamic leaders in Germany debated on Friday whether to suspend their involvement in a government-sponsored forum on German-Islamic integration, after a fundamentalist Islamic group had been excluded.

Four leading Islamic organizations, representing religious groups and secular Muslims, threatened to leave the German-Islam Conference after the Interior Ministry excluded the Council of Islam, dominated by the international Milli Gorus movement.

The ministry had ruled that legal investigations into the activities of Milli Gorus, viewed by officials as the largest Islamist organization on German soil, could overshadow the conference, set up to address Muslim integration issues.

In addition, the remaining four groups had complained that a reorganization of the conference, initially established in 2006, failed to address some of their key concerns.

'We are interested in constructive cooperation,' said Bekir Alboga, spokesman for an umbrella group representing the four Islamic organizations, ahead of Friday's meeting in Cologne.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said he was happy to take the groups' concerns on board.

'Subjects such as racism and Islamophobia can certainly find a place,' Maiziere told German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung in reference to the reorganized German-Islam Conference.

Alongside the four Islamic groups, the 30-member German-Islam Conference also includes 10 individuals who stand for different spectrums of Germany's diverse Muslim community. The remaining 15 members are German communal, state and federal representatives.

Germany's Muslim population dates back to post-war 'guest worker' schemes which invited people from mostly poor, rural backgrounds in countries such as Turkey to come to Germany as labourers during the boom years, until 1973.

The German-Islamic Conference was welcomed as an important milestone to address integration issues, although many German Muslims - the majority of whom belong to no organized group - have not felt sufficiently represented by the forum.