Germany trains new generation of Muslim leaders

Osman Soyer is a religious affairs officer who was sworn into office this month in the Sehitlik Mosque in Berlin's Neukölln district. He is one of 28 young men and women who have been trained as "religious representatives" by DITIB, Germany's largest Islamic organization. They are involved in a variety of pastoral duties; this can also include acting as imams, but the job description is broader.

Soyer has been working as an Islamic religious representative in Alfter, a town near Bonn in western Germany, for a few months now. Community outreach, he says, is his top priority. It includes a wide range of activities. "I teach pupils, I'm a prayer leader, preacher and pastor. We also go to weddings, I do funerals."

His parents came to Germany from Turkey in 1972, and his father worked at the large Opel car manufacturer near the city of Mainz — a fairly typical life for many immigrants at the time.

The swearing-in ceremony in Berlin reflects this history. Around 900 mosque communities make up the Turkish-Islamic Union, part of the Institute for Religion (DITIB) in Germany. That's out of more than 3,000 estimated mosques and Muslim prayer houses in Germany overall.

For a long time, the Turkish-Islamic Union has been financed exclusively by the powerful Diyanet Turkish state religious authority — indeed, the union's imams were sent from Turkey to preach and provide pastoral care in Turkish.

Building social cohesion

The training program is an "important service," Eyüp Kalyon, DITIB Secretary General, tells DW. He says his association is geared towards the needs of Muslims in Germany. As a religious community, it's committed to providing personal as well as financial support and has made a shift in perspective reflected in the training of Imams in Germany to strengthen "social cohesion."

In the future, the German language "will be a much bigger part of the picture," he tells DW.  "It will be the language that binds us all together, that connects the Muslim community in particular. That's why our training language is German." But maintaining Turkish-language services will also be important for older members of the community, he adds.

The idea of training Muslim clergy in Germany has long been part of integration and religious policy debates in Germany. Over the years, the German Islamic Conference (DIK), which was launched in 2006, has always emphasized the issue of imams' lack of German language skills.

For a long time, the Ahmadiyya community offered the only imam training in Germany. The Ahmadiyya emerged at the end of the 19th century in what is now Pakistan. The community sees itself strictly as a religious reform movement. Since 2008, it has been training German-speaking imams in a seven-year course. They're active in Ahmadiyya communities throughout Germany.

Four years ago, two very different groups entered the scene.  DITIB converted a former youth hostel in Dahlem, in the remote Eifel region of western Germany, into a training center in 2020. A year later, Islamic scholars from the University of Osnabrück and German Muslims with Bosnian roots created the "Islam College of Germany" (IKD).

Horst Seehofer who was interior minister at the time, praised the IKD's foundation, saying it was good news for Muslims in Germany and a recognition of "the reality of life for Muslims living in Germany."

A push from the Interior Ministry

Both the DITIB and the Islamic College in Osnabrück have already sent several dozen graduates into the field. Imams from both institutions preside over prayers and lead Friday prayer services. But then in mid-December, a press release from the current Federal Interior Ministry caught many people off guard.

Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser announced that, after lengthy negotiations with Diyanet and DITIB, her ministry had agreed to gradually wind down the deployment of state-sponsored religious representatives from Turkey. "This is an important milestone for the integration and participation of Muslim communities in Germany," Faeser said. Going forward, 100 imams are to be trained in Germany each year.

Germany is following France's example: Since the beginning of this year, France has no longer allowed any new imams from abroad into the country. Rather, clerics are to be trained at French universities. This change was initiated by President Emmanuel Macron at the beginning of 2020 and has now come into force. Up until now, French imams largely came from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.

Just like Osman Soyer, 36-year-old DITIB representative Eyüp Kalyon represents a new generation of Imams in Germany. Kalyon was born in Wuppertal holds German citizenship, and has a German high school diploma. His grandparents came from Turkey. And like many of the 28 current graduates, Kalyn and Soyer speak at least two languages fluently: German and Turkish.

A representative of the Interior Ministry spoke as the official guest of honor at the DITIB ceremony in Berlin. Jörn Thiessen is Head of the Department H (for Homeland, Cohesion and Democracy) in the Interior Ministry.

"This is exactly the right step: people who are here, who live here, who speak our language, who know the culture, and who form bridges into society, can do exactly what we want," he told DW, explaining that the idea was to train 100 imams and religious officials each year and decrease the deployments from Turkey by the same number.

After many years of debate and delay, the training of Muslim religious officers in Germany is changing. But many questions — above all the financing of the DITIB imams without Turkish support — are still unanswered. A debate on the next steps is only slowly getting up to speed now.

This article was originally written in German.

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.