Muslim Women in Germany
As they forge their own paths while respecting tradition and religion, and yet living a modern life, these women pose challenges to themselves and to the larger German and European society.
Between Modernity and Islamization
The December 2007 exhibition of the Goethe-Institut Washington showed a collection of works by members of the Berlin-based photography agency OSTKREUZ, depicting female Islamic culture in Germany and portraying women as members of their Muslim subculture as well as of general society. The photos mirrored activities within Islamic and Western cultures, emphasizing particularities of two cultures that meet in Berlin today.
The following introductory notes are excerpted from an article by Kürtan Karakut: "Muslim Women in Europe: Between Modernity and Islamization".
This article was originally published in "Reconciling Religion and Public Life: Essays on Pluralism and Fundamentalism in the United States and Germany" by Patrick J. Deneen, Türkan Karakurt, Charles T. Mathewes, Erik Owens and Rolf Schieder. German American Issues 7 (2007). © American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Reprinted with permission.
Religion
Islam has emerged as the second largest religion in Europe as a consequence of the massive influx of migrant workers and their families and political refugees from a variety of Muslim countries. The number of Muslims in Europe has tripled over the last thirty years, but, in fact, the Muslim population makes up not more than 5 percent of the total population of Europe. The rising visibility of Islam is not so much due to the number of Muslims living in Europe, but rather to a different perception of Muslims after 9/11, and equally important and parallel to this, a change in Muslim self-perception.
Double Identity
Muslim women were, for the better part of the last fifty years, stigmatized as uneducated, oppressed, and voiceless individuals within Muslim societies. But the Muslim communities are growing and pose a challenge to not only Germany's, but to Europe’s concept of tolerance, which has always been understood to be a more advanced concept in Christianity than in Islam. How do Muslims themselves feel about it? Do Muslim women contribute to a reconciliation of Islam with modernity? Or are they instead turning away from it by clinging to their traditions? The truth is that they do both: the majority of Muslim women have accepted the basic elements of European secularism and liberal democracy and enjoy their double identity."Islamization"?
Europeans, religious as well as secular, often tend to mistrust the intentions of Muslim activists today. Some non-Muslims fear the beginning of the "Islamization" of their societies - and that by winning this battle, Muslims will be encouraged to challenge even further the existent social consensus within European societies, based on enlightened Christianity and a liberal and secular political order. The fear expressed by non-Muslim Europeans, to be more precise, is that tolerance might be abused for political aims that could eventually lead to “backward” social and political developments.
Women and the Veil
Wearing the veil is seen to contradict the Western concept of women’s liberation and universal equality of the sexes. Muslim women were believed to be potential allies of progressive Western democracies, which could offer them equality and individual freedom instead of the oppression they presumably experienced in their male-dominated culture and religion. Europeans believed the practice of wearing a headscarf would disappear in the generations of Muslim girls born and raised in Europe. This did not happen; in fact, the opposite did. The outright rejection by some Muslim women, raised in European societies of the “well-meaning” European expectation that Muslim women would become like their liberated European sisters, has created a rift between the majority and minority societies. In Germany, the headscarf debate is still ongoing; some of the federal states have opted for laws prohibiting the veil—for schoolteachers, for example—although other states have been more reluctant to pass such laws.
Read entire article by Kürtan Karakut (pdf):
"Muslim Women in Europe: Between Modernity and Islamization" (PDF, 130KB)
