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Immigration, Integration, and Identity: Managing Diverse Societies in Europe and the U.S.
May 15, 2006, Washington, D. C
Dr. Lale Akgün, Member of the German Bundestag
Thank you very much for giving me the floor, Mr. Wells.
Before I start my remarks concerning the integration of Muslims into European Societies, I would like to take the occasion and thank the hosts of this conference, namely the Austrian Embassy, the Delegation of the European Commission, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the John Hopkins University and the European Consortium on European Union Studies for the invitation.
I am very pleased to attend this distinguished conference as I believe that our hosts provide us with an excellent possibility to exchange views on and experiences with integration and Islam policies between Europe and the United States.
I was asked to talk about “Muslims in Europe,” which I believe to be a very broad subject. Therefore I will not tend to give an outline of all aspects of integration policies in Europe and Germany.
Firstly, this would be an impossible task given the short time. But secondly and even more important is the fact that much too often in discussions with well-informed participants we tend to talk too much about details.
Please do not misunderstand me: It is very important to go into details at a certain point. But my feeling as spokesperson for Islam policies of the SPD parliamentary group in the German Bundestag is that we first need to agree on basic assumptions before discussing the details.
In the public debate we have to deal with numerous misunderstandings, and I believe it to be one of my major duties to try and dispel at least some of these misunderstandings.
What we witness in the German public debate on Muslims nowadays is the following:
We talk about phenomena and pathologies such as honor killings, forced marriages and domestic violence, directly linking them to Islam and holding all Muslims guilty for these phenomena. This leads to a situation where Muslims in Germany today more and more often have the impression that they are reduced to their religion.
Generally speaking, the public debate about integration in Europe gives us the impression that Islam is the main source of irritation in immigration policies. Behind this perception lies the assumption that it is the Islamic faith that prevents immigrants from becoming proper European citizens.
The most popular term in Germany to describe the conditions in which Muslims live is the concept of “Parallelgesellschaft” (parallel society). This term, borrowed from sociological theory, is used to describe the way that Muslims allegedly live in closed districts, with their own rules and values that do not correspond with the values of the mainstream of the society. A major element of this stereotype of the lifestyle of Muslims in Europe is that there is an ongoing islamization underway that threatens European democracies. Muslims in Europe appear to be a homogeneous group that as a whole wants to overthrow the democratic system and is a danger to European culture and political tradition.
It's not hard to guess that I don't agree with this view on Islam and Muslims in Europe.
Of course, it is obvious that the majority of immigrants in Europe and in Germany have a Muslim background.
But Muslims in Europe and in Germany are a very heterogeneous group.
This concerns the ethnic background, the faith and, what is most important, it concerns the social background and economic situation of Muslims in Europe.
Please let me give you some figures and examples to illustrate this assumption.
Fifteen million Muslims live in the European Union, in the whole of Europe we have a Muslim population that amounts to 30 million people.
The largest Muslim population lives in France, which is home to 5 million Muslims.
In Germany the Muslim population amounts to 3.2 up to 3.4 million.
This group consists of people from 40 different countries. The predominant group are ethnic Turks with 1.8 million people, followed by Bosnians and Muslims from Arab countries.
The presence of Muslims in Germany is based in the immigrant-workers program run by the German government in the 1960s and 70s.
This was the time when Italian and Turkish citizens came to Germany to work in factories in order to fill the labor shortage that had occurred after the building of the Berlin wall.
The situation in France and Great Britain is completely different, both concerning the ethnic background as well as the history of migration. Muslims in France have their ethnic roots in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, while the majority of Muslims in Great Britain originated from the Indian subcontinent. The history of Islam in those two countries is tightly connected with their colonial history.
There are also interesting differences concerning the degree of religiousness of Muslims in Europe.
Only one third of Muslims in Germany may be described as religious, which means that they follow the religious instructions such as going to Mosque on Friday. Another third call themselves “cultural Muslims,” which means that they feel like Muslims but do not pay much attention to religious instructions or even faith. And the last third places itself between these two extremes.
Another distinction is the well-known one between Sunnites, Shiites and Alevites.
But what I believe to the most important fact when it comes to the question of integration is that citizens and inhabitants with Islamic background may be found in every layer of European societies.
To illustrate what I mean by this, I like to give the following example: A Turkish professor of Medicine or Biochemistry has much more in common with a German professor than with a Turkish employee in a factory.
And I also like the example of the Afro-German citizen from my hometown, Cologne, who is the chairman of a shooting club. The anecdote of this gentleman always makes the audience laugh, because a shooting club is maybe the most traditional German association of civil society.
It might seem quite self evident that immigrants are to be found in all layers of society.
But it is a very important fact that we tend to ignore by describing Muslims as a homogeneous block in the above-mentioned way and is actually not so obvious when it comes to the question of common values.
Immigrants, regardless of their religious or ethnic backgrounds, internalize the culture of the social milieu in which they live. It is the milieu and not the ethnic or religious background which influences the values of a person in the first place.
In this regard we have to observe, that immigrants very often belong to the underclass of European societies. Therefore it is the social question that is the predominant issue for integration policies in Europe.
The riots in France at the beginning of 2006 demonstrate this very clearly.
Young people from the suburbs, from the “banlieus” in France, revolted against the social conditions they live in and against the lack of perspective they see for their future. During the events in France we did not hear any Islamic claims. The youngsters in France do not want to live in an Islamic society with the Shari-a. They don´t want their sisters to all wear head scarves - they want to have a real chance to belong to the French society, to find jobs and houses and to start a family.
The crux of the matter of integration policies is therefore the social question. For example the unemployment rate of immigrants is twice as high as the unemployment rate of Germans. The social question connects all migrants - not their religion.
Very often, it is the difficult social situation that produces pathological phenomena such as domestic violence and honor killings. And this is where the public discourse, the perception of migrants by the mainstream of society that I mentioned at the beginning, comes in again.
Too often it is society that makes social problems appear to have a religious background. In Berlin just recently a young man was sentenced to 10 years of juvenile detention because he had murdered his sister, who was 23 years old.
This young man at the age of 18 said that he had committed this crime because his sister lived alone with her son after having split up with her husband. He said that she lived “like a German” and therefore “dirtied the honor“of the whole family.
Following this crude self-excuse, the German public discussed this murder as an “honour killing”.
But as a psychologist I believe that the term “honor” often only serves as legitimization. The underlying motive is a completely different one. For example, this young may have been jealous of the sister, who had greater success in society and in the labour market. Moreover, the tradition of “honor killings” is not an Islamic tradition. Honour killings occur in all patriarchal societies.
But this complicated background is not being discussed. For society it seems much easier to take this “honor killing” as more evidence for the fact that Islam and democracy are opponents and that Muslims don't share democratic values.
It is this kind of debate that makes me believe that the most urgent challenge for integration and Islam policies in Europe today is the need for a new social contract.
This would be a new social contract between the native population and migrants on the grounds of democratic values and human rights.
We have to address problems, and we have to speak frankly about the conditions of living together in a multicultural society.
But we don't need a simple shaming and blaming.
The contrary is true: We need a new feeling of belonging together and a culture of recognition.
The establishment of this new social contract has to go hand in hand with concrete policies that are apt to foster integration.
Integration in this regard means to provide all citizens with equal chances regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds. It means equal participation in social, cultural, political, economic and cultural ways.
This of course involves the freedom of religion and the right to practice the religion.
Therefore, in the field of Islam policies on the federal level in Germany we try to establish a well-functioning dialogue and cooperation structure between the state and Muslim organizations. Such structures are of great importance to solving questions such as Islamic instruction in public schools. This dialogue is under way and it is becoming more and more successful. Although I have to admit that some questions remain open, such as the question of how to deal with Islamic organisations such as “Milli Görüs.”
But this is part of the details I said I would not talk about. I will be happy to go into these details during the debate. Thank you very much for your attention.
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