German Islamic leaders postpone conference decision (Roundup)

Mar 12, 2010, 18:30 GMT

Cologne - Islamic leaders in Germany postponed Friday evening taking a decision on 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.

The council is seen dominated by the international Milli Gorus movement which is under investigation by security authorities and some of whose members are being investigated on grounds of fraud and forming a criminal association.

After nearly eight hours of discussion in Cologne, Bekir Alboga, spokesman for an umbrella group representing the four Islamic organizations, said there was still need for further debate.

'This was a very intensive discussion, which once again makes clear the importance,' Alboga said.

The Islamic groups did not want to take too hasty a decision, he said.

In the discussions, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere signalled a readiness for compromise on some points, but at the same time he stuck with the decision to exclude the Council of Islam.

'I am naturally open to thematic suggestions from the Muslim associations,' de Maziere told German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung in reference to the reorganized German-Islam Conference.

'Topics such as racism and islamophobia can well have a place.'

But regarding the exclusion of the Council of Islam, he said this move 'has nothing to do with the other Muslim associations. They remain heartily welcome.'

Previously, 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.

Besides the issue of the exclusion of the Council of Islam, the four remaining groups had complained that a reorganization of the conference, initially established in 2006, failed to address some of their key concerns.

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 of some four million people 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.