Wanted: The Chance to Become German Assimiliation should neither be dictated nor demonized. Integration should have priority – By Faruk Şen and Dirk Halm

In March, the 3rd German Conference on Islam approved adding Islam classes to religious education in schools. It also asked municipalities to encourage public acceptance of new mosque construction. A clearinghouse for Muslim appeals will be set up as part of the fight against terrorism.

The debate on immigration and integration in Germany is premised on perceptions of a concrete grievance − that Germany has failed to integrate its immigrant population. Recent examples include Islamic terrorism, the murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, which brought the debate on the existence of Muslim parallel societies to Germany, honor killings, the Danish Mohammed caricature controversy, and crime by teenagers with immigrant backgrounds.

This list makes it obvious that German public outrage is focused on integration in the sense of behaving in a socially desirable manner. Obviously, most Germans do not consider immigrant children’s educational disadvantages, the immigrant community’s exceptionally high unemployment rate or questions of residence rights as subjects for a broad social debate on integration.

The latest dispute on the integration of people of Turkish descent seamlessly fits into this tradition. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s speech in February in Cologne stirred up mistrust regarding the loyalty of Turks living in Germany − for no reason, by the way. Until immigration laws were changed in 2000, that community was consciously excluded from political codetermination. As a consequence, it began developing true loyalty to Germany only with difficulty.

Regardless of this, Turkish integration in Germany has made great progress. A study on volunteer work by people of Turkish descent showed that, of the 61 percent who are in clubs and associations in Germany, 60 percent are active within a German context. Only a 40 percent minority belongs to an exclusively Turkish network. Neither does the Cologne rally, with its sense of a parallel society, reflect organizational reality.

Debates on integration are always based on examples of failure. They always proceed along the same well-known lines and the same well-known arguments are exchanged between the immigrant population and the social majority. As a rule, the ratio of integration to assimilation is at issue.

Theoretically, there is no question that assimilation is the most reliable way to successfully be part of a society. People who do not set themselves apart from Germans are still most likely to be treated equally. Yet not all immigrants can or want to follow this route. These people must also have the opportunity to integrate.

In a pluralistic society, individuals should always be able to determine their own identity and manner of living. But that also means that assimilation should be neither dictated nor demonized. Experience has also shown that when people want to assimilate, they are no more likely to succeed than the much-maligned multicultural model is.

The Netherlands has been a multicultural society for decades. Regarding employment integration, the daily coexistence of the majority and minorities and physical segregation within urban spaces, the Dutch have made less progress than Germany. On the other hand, Germany has created few of the preconditions that would enable people who maintain their cultural identity to participate in social decision-making.

Germany’s challenge for the future will be to organize cultural differences to a greater extent than it has done until now, to create a legal and political framework for coexistence among different people. The federal government seems to be rising to the challenge as the Interior Ministry’s Islam Conference shows.

The government understands that Islam cannot be ignored because it is probably the most important factor in Germany’s cultural patchwork. Expecting Islam to lose its significance as a result of immigration is also unrealistic. The increasing importance of religious devotion for Muslims in the past few years indicates that the trend is going in the opposite direction.

In Germany’s pluralistic society, Muslims have organized themselves in associations and mosque communities in a variety of ways but have not achieved a social influence proportional to the quantitative importance of their religion. The role of Islam has remained a marginal one, which means that Islam is far from having equal social status in Germany.

Two alternatives remain: accepting the situation as it is or creating a framework that will enable Muslims to take the active place in society that they deserve. If the Islam summit contributes to the latter, it will have achieved its goal. It would also include the hope that refusing to assimilate will not automatically lead to social discrimination.

Of course, that requires a complex bargaining process. How much cultural autonomy will society accept and require? To what extent can Muslims comply with Germany’s agenda, especially with the organizational requirements that religious groups have in Germany? In the worst case, a failure of the Islam summit could legitimize the long-term marginalization of Islam in Germany.

The conference has achieved at least one result. It has emancipated the issue of integration from the cyclical debate and helped to establish it as a subject in its own right, independent of what is going on in the news. Of course, the summit itself will also have to rise above the anxiety-ridden public discourse on Islam.

In sum, if German society allows a wide variety of strategies for integration, chances improve that a variety of people will become native Germans. Accomplishing that will require tolerance and active policy-making.

– Faruk Şen is director of the Center for Turkish Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Dirk Halm is a scientific assistant at the center.