Muslims pessimistic as talks resume with German government

Mar 29, 2011, 10:32 GMT

Berlin - Muslims voiced pessimism Tuesday as talks resumed with the German government in Berlin on religious teaching in schools and setting up Islamic theology departments in universities.

Europe's biggest nation has had a rocky relationship with its 4 million Muslims. One group is boycotting the talks, denouncing them as nothing but a 'talking shop.' Another mosque group has been thrown out by the government after claims that it may be a criminal organization.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, who chaired the talks, upset many Muslims when he took over the portfolio this month and gave a speech stressing that Islam was not part of Germany's history.

While that may be a fact, some Muslims perceived it as a calculated affront for the interior minister to emphasize it in such a manner.

Friedrich was unrepentant in a television news appearance early Tuesday. On the public channel ARD, he said: 'The character of our country, our culture through the centuries, our value system is Christian and occidental.'

But he said Muslims 'obviously' belonged to German society today and appealed for them to integrate better into German life.

Muslim groups have tried to focus the Germany-Islam Conference, which began in 2006 under a previous interior minister, on poverty and low education among Muslims and on easing friction between Muslims and the German school system.

The government's focus has been on persuading Muslims to reject terrorists in their midst.

Friedrich's office issued a statement saying he would ask the Muslim groups to join him in denouncing Islamist extremists.

So far, the main common ground has been that both sides welcome state-salaried religion teachers being trained at German universities to give instruction in public schools.

Aiman Mazyek, head of the multi-ethnic Central Council of Muslims, said the conference had achieved little to overcome discrimination against Muslims and was just 'a security conference in disguise.'

Lamya Kaddor, a Muslim academic, disagreed, charging that the conference had been dominated by mosque groups and gave too little voice to liberal Muslims. She demanded in a newspaper article that Berlin abandon the conference in its present form.

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