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Hans-Jakob Herpers, principal of the Gluecklauf School (which merged with another school after this writing), says Kaddor is not only a teacher, but also a life counselor of sorts, especially for girls, who may not dare tackle certain questions with their parents or in religious schools. All her pupils have stayed, he says.
“She tells them how to cope with life,’ says Mr. Herpers. “Muslim girls are under pressure. They see boys can do everything.... They need tips, they need arguments to assert themselves, to be able to deal with their parents.”
GERMANY - PUBLIC SCHOOLS NOW TEACH
ISLAM - GIRLS
Public
schools in Germany must offer religion classes, and pilot courses in Islam are
now being offered in addition to established programs in Judaism, Catholicism,
and Protestantism.
But it has,
says Ms. Kaddor, a Muslim whose parents are Syrian. Her students ask all sorts
of questions: “Is it OK to have boyfriends? Can I wear nail polish? Will I go
to hell if I’m gay?”
Germany’s
Constitution stipulates that religion be part of school curriculum. The
initiative was born out of the atrocities of the Nazi era, and aimed at giving
young people an ethical foundation and a sense of identity. Roman Catholics and
Protestants have conducted such classes (publicly funded) for decades, and Jews
were given similar rights in 2003.
Muslims,
however, have faced roadblocks. But some observers argue such classes could
help Muslims, some 6 percent of the population, better integrate their
religious and German identities. Now, pilot projects that are chipping away at
the barriers represent the latest evidence of Germany’s changing attitude
toward its booming Muslim minority.
“Muslim
classes in public schools are a litmus test for integration,” says Michael
Kiefer, author of a history of teaching Islam in German classrooms. “Muslims
can see that they’re getting something other religions are getting. That has an
enormously positive symbolic impact on them.”
Taught by
church- or synagogue-appointed teachers with curricula certified by the state’s
education ministries, religion classes are graded, but not mandatory.
One of the
obstacles to including Islam in school-taught religions, some say, is that it
lacks an accepted entity to offer guidance. Germany’s Muslims are mostly
Sunnis; the rest are mainly Shiites, Alevis, or followers of the south Asian
Ahmaddiyya sect. “There isn’t one Islam, and it’s not easy to reflect the different
manifestations of Islam’s pluralism in a class on Islam,” says Jamal Malik,
chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt.
For decades,
Germany did little to help its Muslim minority settle, classifying immigrants
from countries such as Turkey as “guest workers.” But Germans are now more
willing to view immigration as part of the country’s identity, and not long
ago, then-Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said that it was urgent for
Germany’s 900,000 Muslim pupils to be granted state-funded religious teaching.
“It can be an exemplary way for our society to acknowledge and overcome all the
differences that confront us,” Mr. Schäuble said.
According to
an Interior Ministry study released last spring, 80 percent of Germany’s
Muslims want just that. At stake is fairness as well as pragmatism: better to
have state--supervised religious courses, conducted in German, than
unsupervised Koran classes left in the hands of Islamic groups. “We have to get
away from the thinking that Islam is a religion for foreigners, once and for
all,” says Mr. Kiefer.
No state has
done more to bring Islam classes into schools than North Rhine Westphalia,
where one-third of Germany’s Muslims live. Here, 150 public schools offer
Islamic studies to 13,000 children in Grades 1 through 10. About 200 schools
nationally teach the courses, established by state governments and local Muslim
groups.
When
Lohberg’s coal mines closed two years ago, most people left this once-thriving
Ruhr Valley industrial hub. What remained was a Muslim enclave of 6,500,
supported by three mosques. On the streets and in the schools, one hears mostly
Turkish.
“Pupils have
to understand who they are so they can understand other religions,” Kaddor
says. “The better I know myself, the simpler it is to accept other ways of
life…. While politicians talk about legal framework, we have a whole generation
of pupils who leave school without getting to know who they are.”
In Kaddor,
pupils find somebody they can identify with and who challenges them. She is a
non-Turkish Muslim who doesn’t wear a head scarf. She prays and fasts, and
speaks German, Arabic, and Turkish. She tries to tell her pupils that Islam
often gives more than one answer, the conservative and the liberal answer.
“With me,
pupils have to learn how to think about their faith in an independent way,”
Kaddor says.
Hans-Jakob
Herpers, principal of the Gluecklauf School (which merged with another school
after this writing), says Kaddor is not only a teacher, but also a life
counselor of sorts, especially for girls, who may not dare tackle certain
questions with their parents or in religious schools. All her pupils have
stayed, he says.
“She tells
them how to cope with life,’ says Mr. Herpers. “Muslim girls are under
pressure. They see boys can do everything.... They need tips, they need
arguments to assert themselves, to be able to deal with their parents.”
Some schools
used to rely on teachers from Turkey, but many resented Turkey’s implicit
support of the classes, while private Islamic schools insisted on retaining
their control over instruction in the Koran.
“It’s
important that pupils get Islam lessons in German,” says Kaddor, who is one of
about 250 such teachers across Germany. “We’ve overcome more than a language
barrier: In people’s heads it’s no longer unthinkable to be of Islamic faith
and be German.”