Major Muslim group slams Berlin invitation to talks

Apr 13, 2010, 15:32 GMT

Cologne, Germany - One of Germany's four leading mosque groups criticized Berlin Tuesday, charging that it was hand-picking the Muslims entitled to speak on behalf of Islam and avoiding taking up the issues that upset German Muslims themselves.

Ayyub Axel Koehler, the German-born convert to Islam who heads the Central Council of Muslims, also criticized the government for banning one of the other mosque groups from the upcoming German-Islam Conference to open in Berlin on May 17.

'We don't want a non-binding conference. It would be a waste of time. What we need are early and concrete resolutions to problems such as Islamophobia,' Koehler told the German Press Agency dpa in an interview in Cologne.

His remarks marked a new assertiveness in German Islam, which has been careful in the past to avoid overt disputes with the government.

Koehler repeated a demand for German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere to meet with his group separately and to hear its objections to the terms of the May 17 meeting which were ordained by the government.

Berlin began official talks with the Muslim community, which makes up 5 per cent of Germany's 80 million people, four years ago. Berlin chose religious, secular and rebel figures to be on the 'Muslim' panel. Some Muslims have called this undemocratic.

'There are some people who were not duly elected, for example, the Turkish Community Association,' Koehler said, referring to a liberal secular group of Turkish immigrants invited to the table.

'It's not a religious association, even if Muslims are among its members. By the same token, you could invite the German Motorists' Association to the Islam Conference, since it has got a lot of Muslim members too,' added Koehler.

As in the first round of the conference which ended last year, only five of the 15 Muslim seats at the conference have been allocated to religious groups including Koehler's Central Council, which represents many non-Turkish worship groups.

Ditib, a Cologne-based federation of Turkish-speaking mosques with funding from Ankara, has agreed to attend next month's meeting along with the VIKZ Federation of Islamic Cultural Centres.

But a fourth group, the Council of Islam, was refused a place because Oguz Ucuncu, a leader, is under investigation for financial irregularities and its key member, the Turkish fundamentalist Milli Gorus movement, is suspected of subversion.

Koehler charged that de Maiziere had chosen the 'approach, the persons and the agenda' over the heads of Muslims.

'We want to interact constructively, but the whole thing has to have a different style from what has prevailed up to now.

'This can't be a one-way street: it can't always be the spotlight on the Muslims and the issue of how to absorb Muslims into existing society,' he said.

He said a decision on whether his group joined in the talks depended on whether the interior minister met his group and discussed those issues.