The vast majority of everyday contacts have nothing to do with religion. It is high time the debate on Muslim immigrants and integration in Germany was de-Islamicised, comments the Islam Studies scholar Michael Kiefer
The overwhelming majority do not define themselves purely in terms of their religion. Yet this plays only a negligible role in the continuing rowdy and polemical debate on Islam that has gone out for its latest spin on Germany's op-ed pages in recent weeks. The so-called Islam critics in particular have constructed an allegedly irreconcilable "us" and "them": in one corner the seemingly "enlightened" and far too "tolerant" host society, in the other the "backwards" Muslims, plied with further negative attributions such as "distance from democracy", "intolerance" and an "exaggerated concept of honour".
This perception harbours much potential for conflict. In the final consequence, it leads to the exclusion of all that is "different" and "foreign", as we can see from the large number of prohibitions suggested by determined opponents of Islam, from the bans on headscarves and minarets to those of the burqa or even the Koran, as the Dutch right-wing populist Geert Wilder propagates.
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1:53 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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