The blunders of German officials spurred heated responses from traditional Muslims at last week’s Islam Conference in Berlin, as the two sides seemed to take their positions in the fight for the future of Islam in Germany, and across Europe.
By calling for the end of foreign funding for mosques and a more secular-minded Islam, German officials and liberal-minded German Turks have in recent weeks sought to sideline the conservative Islam of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey.
In response, all three leading Turkish Muslim organisations in Germany sent low-profile figures to the two-day event, instead of their leaders, as a form of protest, reported Diaspora Daily. Some 3 million people of Turkish origin call Germany home; no country is home to a greater share of the Turkish diaspora.
The Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), which is an arm of the Turkish government, the German chapter of Turkey’s Islamist Millî Görüs movement (IGMG), and the Islamic Council (Islamrat) view several of the figures the government has chosen to invite to the event, and collaborate with, as having questionable Islamic credentials. They often criticise Seyran Ates, who runs an LGBT-friendly Berlin mosque, and former Green Party co-chair Cem Özdemir, leader of the recently launched Initiative for Secular Islam. [Ahval] Read more
