Secondment of Turkish imams to Germany will end

Religion - Secondment of Turkish imams to Germany will end

Imams sent by the Turkish state are no longer to preach in German mosques in a few years' time. The Federal Ministry of the Interior has announced that the German government has agreed a timetable with Turkey for a gradual end to the sending of imams to Germany.

This has been controversial for years because the preachers, who are usually sent for four years, follow instructions from Ankara as Turkish state officials and usually only have incomplete knowledge of the reality of life in German society.

The plan

According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the approximately 1,000 preachers currently working in Germany for the Turkish religious authority Diyanet are to be gradually replaced by imams trained in Germany over the next few years. To this end, at least 100 additional imams are to undergo training in Germany each year.

The Diyanet imams are mainly active in the approximately 900 mosques of the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion (Ditib). According to information from the German government, several dozen of them preach in the congregations of the Union of Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations in Europe (ATIB) and Milli Görüs - two associations mentioned in the latest annual report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

In order to curb foreign influence on what is preached in German mosques before the final end of the deployment of imams, the professional responsibility for the preachers sent and paid from Turkey will no longer lie with the Turkish consulates general in the course of 2024, but will be transferred to Ditib.

For its part, the German government wants to financially support the training of additional imams in Germany. This training, which is open to graduates of Islamic theology courses, is to consist of three pillars: German language teaching, Islamic religious education and German history, socio-political issues and values.

Satisfied reactions

"I am delighted that, after long negotiations, we have been able to conclude an agreement with Turkey for the first time that will put an end to the deployment of state-employed imams from Turkey," said Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD). She emphasized: "We want imams to be involved in the dialogue between religions and to discuss questions of faith in our society."

The Federal Government Commissioner for Combating Anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, welcomed the agreement. He said: "I am convinced that this is not only an important step towards better integration and participation, but also a decisive step in the fight against anti-Semitism."

The SPD member of parliament, Macit Karaahmetoglu, criticized the fact that atrocities committed by Islamist extremists were always met with "reflexive demands for pledges of allegiance from the Turkish and Muslim communities in Germany". In the Ditib communities, tough action is taken against extremist tendencies. The reason why a separation from the Turkish state is nevertheless necessary is "not the threat of extremism, but the need for Muslim communities to be accepted as part of this country".

Talks between Turkey and Germany on work visas for religious personnel have been ongoing since 2016. The agreement that has now been reached was also discussed at the meeting between Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Berlin in November.

"This clearly shows that we can also achieve important and good results in talks with difficult partners, which CDU/CSU-led governments have not been able to achieve in 16 years," said Sandra Bubendorfer-Licht, spokesperson on religious affairs for the FDP parliamentary group.

Training to become an imam

Ditib is the largest Islamic association in Germany. The fact that the religious authority in Ankara sent preachers from Turkey to Germany for decades and also paid them is due to the history of the so-called guest workers. They came to Germany between 1961 and 1973 under a recruitment agreement. As they were not originally intended to stay permanently, the practice of sending preachers from Turkey initially seemed unproblematic to many.

The training of German imams is still in its infancy. Sunni Islamic religious leaders have been trained at the Ditib Academy in the Eifel town of Dahlem since 2020. According to the academy management, the first 25 participants completed their two-year training in 2022. There are currently 35 Islamic theologians taking part in the second course - eleven men and 24 women.

The Islamic College Germany (IKD), based in Osnabrück, was founded at the end of 2019, where the first participants began their practical in-service training to become imams in summer 2021. The college, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, is the first cross-association institution founded in cooperation with Islamic theologians from Germany for the training of Islamic clerics and pastors in German.

The prerequisite for imam training here is usually the completion of an academic degree in Islamic theology in Germany. In September 2022, the first 26 graduates of the Islam College received their certificates.

There are now plans for cooperation between the Ditib Academy and the IKD, two institutions that have so far operated independently of each other in organizational terms. The planned funding will cost taxpayers 500,000 euros per year.

In the view of the German government, one advantage of the planned new regulation is that the responsibility for what the preachers say and do in the congregations is now assigned solely to the respective association or organization - and not, as previously, to the authority of a foreign state.

Lamya Kaddor, spokesperson on domestic policy for the Green parliamentary group in the Bundestag, said: "It remains to be seen how reliable President Erdogan is in this development." For the Greens, it remains crucial that additional liberal, progressive Islamic forces in Germany are also recognized and supported as partners.