BERLIN, 18 November 2004 — German politicians were yesterday grasping at solutions to better integrate the three and a half million Muslims who live in Germany in the wake of ethnic tensions in the neighboring Netherlands.
The anti-Muslim attacks that followed the murder of controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh have prompted fears that the violence could spread to Berlin and the industrial towns of western Germany where most Muslims live.
Suggestions from high-profile politicians have ranged from a proposal to force mosques to hold prayers in German in order to check whether violence is being incited to a suggestion that a Muslim holiday should replace a Christian one.
Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, who backed the idea of a Muslim holiday, was lampooned by the top-selling Bild newspaper yesterday. “The Green minister is completely mad,” the paper said.
The idea was first mooted on Tuesday by his party colleague, veteran left-winger Hans-Christian Stroebele, who suggested introducing a holiday at the end of Ramadan. The proposal was given the cold shoulder even by his own party. The Greens’ Marieluise Beck, the government’s representative on integration issues, dismissed the proposal as “not very intelligent” and said “there is a not a single region of Germany which has a Muslim majority”.
A Muslim leader however said granting such a holiday would make immigrants feel at home.
“If you are placing importance on the rights of minorities, a Muslim holiday is overdue,” Askar Mahmut, the secretary-general of the Union of Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations in Europe, told Bild.
