Turkish immigrants began to enter Germany 50 years ago under a guest worker program, and brought Islam with them. Today, the country is home to 2.6 million Turks, who face challenges integrating with German society.
This year, for example, a fire in the German town of Ludwigshafen killed nine Turkish people and led to accusations of racially motivated violence.
But Germany’s 3.2 million Muslims — most of them Turks — are becoming more visible and vocal. On Oct. 25, the largest mosque in Germany opened in Duisburg. And there are plans to build more like it — sparking fierce debate in the country.
Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal reports from Cologne, Germany — home to 120,000 Muslims — where the city’s first official mosque is pending constructing.
Below, bloggers weigh in on the Turkish-German immigration debate.
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The “PoliGazette” blog writes about protests in Cologne, claiming that both immigrants and native Germans should acknowledge responsibility for their role in creating social problems before the society becomes more deeply divided.
The “Impudent Observer” blog writes about planned meetings of the German Pro Cologne group — a group opposed to the Islamic “invasion” of Europe — arguing that despite the demands of Islamic countries to put a stop to the meetings, repressing free speech would only encourage hate.
The “Jihad Watch” blog argues that the Islamization of Europe is a threat, and that equating anti-Islamization protesters to Nazis is misrepresentative.
As a signal of integration and trust among Turks and Germans, the first co-leader of the German Green Party with an immigrant background was elected on Saturday. Born to Turkish Muslim parents, Cem Ozdemir is now the highest-ranking Turkish politician.
A blogger at “A World View” writes that the Green Party has made a step in the right direction by electing Ozdemir, comparing the new leader to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama.
An opinion piece in the German news site “The Local” writes that comparisons of Ozdemir to Obama are unfounded, and that Germany still has a long way to go in easing Turkish-German relations.
04/04/2010 :: 05:42:54 PM
WhatThereIs Says:
I believe the discussion here reflects exactly what debate is going on in the countries with many muslim immigrants, for example in germany, france, netherlands and so on.
Muslim discrimination is taken for granted more and more in the native societies. It was just ten years ago when nobody didn’t say one bad thing about muslims in general, but unfortunately nowadays, if you even take a look at the local papers, you will find discussions about why islam supposedly is “agressive”, why muslims don’t “want to integrate”, that muslim culture is “dangerous” for european countries and furthermore – which is a very critical development. And no single word about discrimination.
It is just sad to see that the atmosphere towards muslim immigrants is getting very dismissive and way too generalized by the time that is passing.
More and more right-wing groups (in these times even some of the moderate natives) are afraid that muslims want to take over the country just because a mosque is built in their country.
This absurd idea just shows in a very clean way how advanced the prejudices against the muslim society are.
Statistics show that muslims in europe mostly are part of the underclass population – which means more poverty, low education, dirty jobs or unemployment which of course leads to tendentially popular discontent among muslims and more criminality.
The problem is that instead of trying to solve this complex problem of disparity among natives and muslims, the European locals – especially the media – are more and more blaming the muslims themselves for being in such a situation.
In contrast to this accusations I hear from muslims in Europe (I know some) that they are writing tons of applications to german companies – with no response, or that they don’t get access to clubs when they have a southern/muslim look, or that it is nearly impossible as a muslim to rent an appartement in wealthy regions with less muslim citizens.
What I want to underline is that there seems to be something wrong when comparing the general public view in Europe towards muslims and what actually is happening in the everyday life.
We can only hope that this Islam-conflict in EU doesn’t heat up in the future.