EDUCATION-GERMANY: Islamic Values to be Taught in Schools

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yojana Sharma

BERLIN, Oct 24 2001 (IPS) - Germany’s education officials are increasingly concerned about how best to prevent alienation of the country’s three million Muslims.

The voices calling for Islam to be offered alongside the Protestant and Catholic religions in schools have become louder since September’s terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Germany’s state education ministers met last week to discuss how best to move forward with offering an Islamic option after Renate Juergens Pieper, education minister for the state of Lower Saxony, urged ministers to consider different forms of Islamic education in mainstream schools.

“Integration also includes the possibility to grow up within one’s own religious beliefs,” said Bavaria’s state secretary for education, Karl Freller. “The terror (attacks) must not jeopardise the integration of foreign children in our schools.”

Less that two weeks after the Sep 11 attacks, Freller announced an expansion of Islam lessons offered in the German language in Bavaria, Southern Germany.

“Without Islam in mainstream schools, radical Islamic groups could offer their more radical interpretations in private lessons,” noted Josef Kraus, president of the German Teachers’ Association.

According to the authorities in Berlin, home to the largest Turkish minority in the country, some 17 percent of Turkish children in the capital attend Koranic schools, usually after school.

Already state education ministers are calling for more monitoring of mosque-based Koran schools where parents send their children in the absence of an Islamic option in religious studies lessons in school, compulsory in many German states.

“There is the danger that some Koran schools may be giving lessons in hate,” said Wolfgang Clement, the premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

German officials recognised that it is impossible to keep a close eye on mosque-schools without exciting accusations of limiting freedom of religion, and that an alternative must be provided in schools.

Germany’s three million Muslims, mostly from Turkey outnumber the French Muslim population by almost a third and is three times the British Muslim population. Yet many believe German Muslims are less integrated in their host society than those in Britain and France.

With some 570,000 Muslims of school age in Germany, many education experts believe more must be done to ensure they do not overly sympathise with radical Muslim groups responsible for the terror attacks in the United States, or “turn against” their host country.

In the past many argued that offering Islam alongside the main Christian religions in state schools would lead to a “ghettoisation” of Muslim children and hamper integration.

It is now seen as imperative that an Islamic teaching be offered. Burhan Kesici of the Islamic Federation, which is providing classes in state schools in Berlin, says “Islamic teaching will mean that Muslim youth will feel more at home in their schools and in Germany”.

Many states under Germany’s federal education system are pushing ahead with plans to offer an alternative to the Mosque- based schools. Hasan Ozdogan, Chairperson of the German Islamic Council predicted that Islam could be offered in all the German federal states by 2003.

But concern also has increased about the content of school courses. Kraus of the German Teachers’ Association said this week that Islamic lessons in school should be offered in German to ensure “the necessary transparency” – shorthand for ensuring that the state could more effectively monitor the content.

“Radical Islamic interpretations have no place in German schools,” he added, voicing the fears of many in the education world.

In Bavaria, where religious instruction is compulsory in schools, the state has offered some Islam lessons in the Turkish language under an agreement with the Turkish government that also sends teachers to other German states.

The lessons are inspected by Turkish-speaking German government officials. “That way we can be sure that Muslim children receive Islamic teaching free from fundamentalist tendencies,” says Freller.

Instruction will now be expanded and provided in the German language that will allow even closer monitoring. But publicly Freller said: “Islamic instruction in the German language will now make it possible in Bavaria for Muslims of different countries and cultures to learn their common religion together.”

Not all states have rushed to provide such alternatives. Some states such as Hesse in Western Germany, which includes the large city of Frankfurt with a significant Muslim population, have rejected the need for Islamic lessons.

Nonetheless the need to offer value-based education to Muslims is recognised. Hesse officials say the neutral subject of “ethics” will be offered as an alternative to non-Christians.

This is a move supported by many Muslims too. Ozcan Mutlu, education spokesperson for Berlin’s Green party and a Turkish Muslim, believes “life-skills, ethics and religion” (LER), at present offered in neighbouring Brandenburg state, should be offered in Berlin to introduce pupils to all the world’s major religions and provide an opportunity for dialogue.

He sees faith-based religion classes as an “old model”. “We live in a multicultural society. In Berlin alone there are 130 religious communities. Imagine the chaos if all of them wanted to come into the schools now,” he says.

The problem of finding acceptable Muslim teachers and catering to a diverse Muslim population is partly the reason why even cities with large Muslim communities is finding it difficult to approve Islamic teaching even in the current climate.

Since the beginning of the school year in September, the Islamic Federation, a highly controversial umbrella organisation of 24 Muslim groups in Berlin, began teaching in the capital’s schools after winning a lengthy court battle against the city administration which regarded it as a political rather than religious organisation.

Many, including leading city officials oppose the Federation, which includes a group linked to the banned Turkish Welfare party. It also has been under surveillance by Germany’s internal intelligence organisation.

Officials say the Federation won the right to teach Islam in Berlin schools because it was the most organised and had teachers and a prepared curriculum.

The education authorities in the state of Lower Saxony were forced to break off negotiations with Muslim representatives last year because the Muslims could not agree among themselves on a common spokesperson or Islamic curriculum.

“The groups which are organised enough to teach in schools are all radical Muslim organisations, they represent at most three to five percent of Muslims here,” says Vahap Aslam, a member of the European Association of Turkish Academics and a member of Turkey’s Alavite Muslim minority which opposes the Federation.

“The majority Muslims are not organised, because, in contrast to Christianity there is no Islamic ‘church,” he said.

“Politicians (in Germany) need to find another way to provide Islamic teaching instead of attempting to impose church-like structures on Islam,” Aslam said, adding that teaching more neutral “ethics” was preferable to forcing “the wrong kind” of Islam on groups of different Islamic leanings.

In Berlin, the Federation says its religious teaching, which started with 50 children in two primary schools in September, is expected to grow to include possibly another 20 schools in the capital, despite disquiet at the Federation’s own credentials.

“If we do not teach values in schools, then others will do so instead,” said Kesici, in a reference to the Mosque-based schools.