Excerpt:
It hasn't been easy. But on Thursday evening, after another session of the two-year-old Islam Conference led by German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, government representatives and Muslim leaders announced an agreement to work toward introducing Islam instruction in German schools. Furthermore, Schäuble expressed his support for the building of new mosques and the group likewise urged German states to change rules in order to allow Muslim burials.
"We have agreed that this should be the way forward," Schäuble told reporters after the conference. "We are moving ahead step by step."
Still, the parties to the conference were hesitant to play up the announcement due to the difficult negotiations and at times deep divisions that have characterized the ongoing conference. On the one hand, Schäuble's Christian Democrats have at times made their distaste for widespread immigration clear, with Roland Koch's recent re-election campaign in Hesse veering decidedly toward xenophobia. The recent fire in Ludwigshafen, in which nine people of Turkish background died, likewise increased tensions with Germany's immigrant community.
On the other, however, is a German Muslim community that has for years had difficulties uniting behind a single representative. Indeed, the weeks prior to Thursday's meeting were full of disagreement and recriminations as Germany's conservative Muslims fought it out with representatives of the secular Muslim community over the wording of a document declaring their allegiance to the German constitution.