Anna Körs - Religious Diversity and Interreligious Dialogue

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

The diversity of religious life in Germany today is unprecedented. Thanks in part to the immigration of recent decades, there are now over 150 religious groups and communities with at least 1000 members.Discussions in this field have gained a new momentum since 2015 in view of the arrival of a high number of refugees in the country.

I see a close connection between religion and social cohesion. In the first place, religion is always a personal and private matter for every one of us. However, religious faith is a strong motivation for many people to engage in society as a whole and across religious borders: spending time with the elderly, organizing recreational activities for the youth, helping those without homes and documents, or supporting refugees on a day-to-day basis these are all examples of the important types of engagement that also derive from religious belief. As Commissioner for Integration, I also strongly promoted the projects of religious organizations which have a very good access to our society: for instance, I supported a project run by Caritas (Catholic Church), Diakonisches Werk (Protestant Church), and the central welfare office of Jews in Germany. This aims for the better qualification and networking of volunteer refugee supporters. Since many mosques immediately opened their doors for refugees in 2015, I also supported Muslim communities in their volunteer work for refugees. I hope their cooperation with all other welfare organizations will also continue to develop over the next years.

That is the good news. Of course, there is a downside to all this: Without doubt there are conflict lines within our society which are more or less plausibly explained by religious motivation this especially concerns reservations, for example, about Islam.

When looking at the debates about religion in Germany, it is important to point out that the right to religious practice is embedded in the German Constitution as part of the right to religious freedom according to Article 4. Hence, individuals have the right to religious symbols, traditions, and practice. Religious freedom, like any other basic right of the constitution, is limited where it collides with the core value of human dignity or with the basic rights of others or if it is misused. Religious freedom has to bear this tension, and this causes numerous social debates on Christian and Jewish religious rules and customs and, time and again, on everyday questions regarding Muslims and Islam: Are women who wear headscarves able to fully participate in society or at work with full rights and without any prejudices against them? Do we allow the Halal form of butchering? Do we have to ban pork from canteen menus? How do we deal with parents who refuse to allow their daughters to participate in swimming or sports lessons for alleged religious reasons?

We have been fiercely discussing these questions in Germany for many years, and sadly not always in a fair way. The dispute over the headscarf and the verdict of the Federal Constitutional Court in 2003 provide a good example. The question back then was whether a prospective teacher of Islamic faith at a state school should be barred from teaching in case she intended to wear a religiously motivated headscarf in class. During the political debate that sprang up around the trial, all kinds of arguments were produced in order to underline why a headscarf should not be accepted in class under any circumstance. Examples of these were as follows: As a Muslim symbol, a headscarf is incompatible with German tradition, in contrast, for example, to the crucifix; the headscarf is a sign of the suppression of women the German women rights movement had not fought over decades to end up with that; they saw the headscarf as symbolizing the Islamization of Europe.

What the affected women with headscarves or their students had to say about this topic seemed rather irrelevant. Also seemingly irrelevant was the fact that the state should stay neutral in such questions and treat all religions equally. In the end, the Federal Constitutional Court pronounced a judgment saying that all Federal States would have to develop their own underlying laws for a potential ban of headscarves. In a later trial, the court rendered its verdict more precisely and stated that an overall ban would discriminate against women with headscarves and that the different Federal State laws should provide for the equal treatment of all religions. This verdict is seen as a chance to force all states to agree fairly on the role of religion in the public sphere.

The amount of work still to be done is clearly shown by the absurd discussion about a potential ban on burkas. Obviously, burkas are detestable and prisons made of fabric for the women who have to wear them. All Islamic scholars object to their use. The burka is not an Islamic piece of clothing. Despite the fact that there is hardly any woman in Germany who wears a burka, in this time of high refugee numbers and of populist debates about the Islamization of the West, it is regarded by many as a core threat to our free democratic order. At the same time, even a general burka-ban in public might probably be incompatible with our Constitution since everyone has the right to dress the way they want to. Thus, a law that one party, the CSU of Bavaria, was pushing for had to be restricted to a ban on the wearing of the veil in public services. Therefore, judges, state attorneys, or employees in the federal administration are now forbidden to wear a veil if anyone of them ever had the intention of doing so.