Muslims bitter at German government crackdown demand

Mar 29, 2011, 17:36 GMT

Berlin - Muslim leaders in Germany on Tuesday protested the new interior minister's demand that they should help root out extremists by coming forward with information shared in mosques.

The demand by Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich at the long- scheduled talks chilled five years of efforts to overcome suspicions between Berlin and the Islamic community, who make up 5 per cent of Germany's population.

Muslims had wanted to talk about ways to fight poverty and the high failure rates of their children in schools.

When he took office earlier this month, Friedrich said Islam had no place in German history, and then repeated the remark on national breakfast television Tuesday.

The minister, who belongs to the conservative Bavaria-only Christian Social Union (CSU), then issued a briefing paper demanding that the community renounce Islamists, report radical sermons by imams and tell police about conversations that could indicate a terrorism threat.

Muslims in Germany often say they feel insulted for being collectively blamed for crimes, such as the murder of two US airmen on March 2 at Frankfurt Airport by a disturbed ethnic Kosovar youth.

Nine of the 15 Muslim delegates to the conference, all of whom had been hand-picked by the government, issued a joint statement of protest.

They said a demand that German Muslims should fight homegrown extremists as the price for government aid to their community made them doubt whether the meeting was even intended to encourage dialogue or improve the integration of Muslims in Germany.

'As Muslim participants in the Germany-Islam conference, we appeal to the minister not to carelessly endanger years of efforts to build dialogue between Muslims and the state and put at risk the achievements of the conference so far,' they said.

Muslim academic Armina Omerika said outside the meeting that Friedrich seemed to be urging on Muslims 'a nasty culture of shopping one another' to the police.

Europe's biggest nation has had a rocky relationship with its 4 million Muslims.

Friedrich was unrepentant about his views. He said on public channel ARD: '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 had tried to focus the Germany-Islam Conference, which began in 2006 under a previous interior minister, on poverty and low education levels among Muslims and on easing friction between Muslims and the German school system.

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.

The Muslim community itself argued about who should attend the conference. Mosque groups were upset that people who had rejected their religion were invited to take part.

Lamya Kaddor, a Muslim academic, said the conference had been dominated by mosque groups and gave too little voice to liberal Muslims.

One major Islamic group, the Central Council of Muslims, decided a year ago under an earlier interior minister to boycott the meeting series, the Germany-Islam Conference, calling it just 'a talking shop' and a 'security conference in disguise.'

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