For German authorities, countering the expansion of more radical religious thinking has presented a vexing problem. For now, the domestic intelligence service keeps close watch on a growing number, with 4,500 Salafists under observation in 2011 and 5,500 in 2012, according to an annual government report.It will be interesting to see how this experiment works out. Does prayer in schools lead to children growing up terrorist? Our own US constitution precludes that kind of experimentation here in the US. So, we just get to watch, from afar, hopefully in safety.
Increasingly, attention has turned to education and ways to nurture greater inclusion for Germany’s approximately four million Muslims, a number that has steadily increased since German industry recruited the first Turks as “guest workers” in the 1960s.
One answer, officials in Hesse hope, is being put in effect in classes where young children are guided by a state-trained teacher working from a state-approved curriculum.
In one class, Timur Kumlu recently asked his 19 6-year-old students each to take a strand from a large wool ball. He then instructed the children — whose parents hailed from Muslim countries as varied as Afghanistan, Albania, Morocco and Turkey — to examine how, like the threads, they, too, were woven together.
It was a simple lesson containing a gentle message filled with symbolism — that they were linked by their Islamic faith and practices of prayer.
“We are now all bound together — you come from different countries, and so do your parents,” said Mr. Kumlu, who reminded the children that while their parents came from Afghanistan or Albania, they were born in Germany.
“I think it’s clear now that for years we made the mistake of alienating people,” said Nicola Beer, who as education minister in Hesse was one of several politicians, professors and teachers who pushed for the Islamic instruction. Now, she said, Germans recognize that “we are here together, we work together, and we educate our children together.”
NYT
27 comments:
This will not end well.
What dumbshits.
Why not just hand the keys over to the Muslims?
Didn't angie Merkel say multi-culti is dead?
(of course, she broke her tush skiing, so she's out of action)
I totally predicted the first comment. Well done, JAL.
I remember years ago being appalled that Germany would outlaw muslim girls from wearing a headscarf in school. I'm not talking a whole full-on burka, since children aren't generally required anyway, but just a scarf over their head. I was also appalled when (supposedly) liberal German internet acquaintances explained how previous muslim immigrants had thrown off such things and so the claim that it was part of necessary religious observation was obviously an excuse.
Now, if what they're doing now will help or hurt I couldn't possibly say but I think that I'm right about this...
When the state messes with your kids and your religious traditions it "breeds extremism" in response to the threat. What may have been simply cultural habit that no one really cared all that much about, suddenly becomes foundationally important because it's been threatened. A head scarf that was pretty much optional in your family, now becomes a symbol of defiance and identity.
I think I read an article once that said the alienation cut both ways, that is, the Muslims kept to themselves, and the Germans preferred that. This is late in coming, but I'm glad they're doing it. With things like Muslim schools in Britain that teach how to chop off hands, the whole continent needs to get on the stick.
The Netflix miniseries Lilyhammer covers the same befuddled efforts of the Norwegians.
The series stars Steve Van Zandt, guitarist for Bruce Springsteen and a cast member of The Sopranos.
Hilarious.
I guess they are going for the inoculation effect.
Inoculation can best be explained by a medical inoculation analogy. Indeed, the analogy served as the inaugural exemplar for how inoculation confers resistance. As McGuire (1961a) initially explained, a medical inoculation works by exposing a body to weakened viruses—strong enough to trigger a response (i.e., the production of antibodies), but not so strong as to overwhelm the body's resistance. Attitudinal inoculation seems to work the same way: Expose someone to weakened counterarguments, triggering a process of counterarguing which eventually confers resistance to later, stronger persuasive messages.
It could work, I suppose.
I'm guessing they figure Christianity would be too strong for the children's system to handle.
Germans are probably GLADD they didn't go that route ;)
Well, maybe they ought to have a "Some people are Christians and that's okay" class, too.
Not that they really ought to either way. I know it's a shocking thing but Germany doesn't seem to be a "let people do their own thing" sort of country. I believe that homeschooling is still *very* illegal there.
It's curious how Islam needs so much special attention.
Other groups like Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews etc... don't seem to require such delicate engineering.
It's always a struggle as to how to calm Islam down and keep them from getting angry.
You wouldn't like them when they are angry.
"...we are now all [threads] bound together..."
In an unwearable garment that twitches uncontrollably.
How about a class on...."This is Germany, where you live. This is the history of Germany and Western Civilization...WHERE YOU LIVE. These are the traditions and culture of the country...where you were born and where you live..... This is how you fit into society."
Plus an additional course on minding your own business, practice your religion as you will. Not forcing your religion on the culture of the country where you moved. Not demanding that everyone else bend to your imported culture and ideas.
For a graduate study....if you can't abide by the rules and culture of the country to which you MOVED and where you live....move someplace else.
Seriously. People are getting really tired of this "forced" multiculturalism.
Society in the US is a multicultural one that had evolved through assimilation. This is a great and good thing. The mix of cultural traditions that are generally accepted will eventually be resolved in the natural course of things.. If we weren't multi cultural we wouldn't have Tex-Mex cuisine, St Patricks Day with green beer, Christmas trees, Creole music and food, Jazz music.... to mention just a few melds. Those multicultural blendings just happen. You cannot FORCE people to accept your culture in its entirety. We will pick and choose what we like.
The separation of cultures, the refusal to assimilate and the segregation by choice, in the case of the Muslims and now in the degraded inner city black society, is the problem.
Bad things are going to happen. People are sick of this shit.
Maybe we should try being unbound for a change. Speaking of which, there's going to be a proposition on the California ballot in 2014 to split California into 6! states. Jefferson here we come.
I think that as Americans we really don't have a good notion of just how parochial Europe is. They *say* they like immigrants and actually invite workers, but the idea of *being German* or *being French* and that maybe people like to be themselves just doesn't compute. Sure, it's a major cognitive dissonance to hold these really strange acceptance/non-acceptance things as true but as liberal as they think they are, and as non-racist and everything else... they just *are*. (It's like liberals here and "civil discourse"... it's not *uncivil* to say that the Tea Party are terrorists, it's just *true*.) As Americans, even if we're hardline "English is our language" sorts, we still expect people to come here and still be Chinese, to still be Laotian, to still be Kenyan, to still be Norwegian...
Europe is *weird*. They're super accepting of everyone, not racist like those Americans are... but their super accepting of everyone who *becomes* German, or French and stops being what they were. There's a very different collective identity thing going on over there that Americans would find outrageous.
Will Germany's "solution" have good results? I'm guessing "not a snowball's chance..."
Europe is *weird*.
Finally, THE TRUTH!
As Americans, even if we're hardline "English is our language" sorts, we still expect people to come here and still be Chinese, to still be Laotian, to still be Kenyan, to still be Norwegian...
I don't expect that someone coming from Norway, France, Nairobi would give up their cultural identity. Abandon their heritage, beliefs, traditions. It is that mix of many cultural traditions that makes us what we are.
I DO expect that they become American citizens FIRST and FOREMOST and that they become proud Americans. Learn the history of their adopted country. Pledge their loyalty to the country that they decided to move to. Abide by the laws and have respect for the traditions of others as well as the combined traditions of the Country.
If you cannot do this, why are you moving here anyway.
It reminds me of the time I lived in Paradise, California and overheard two people in a restaurant who had just moved up from Los Angeles. They were bitching about the pine trees, the needles, the squirrels, the people who lived in the area and a host of other inconveniences.
I not could help but respond to them (I can be quite rude that way :-) "If you don't like pine trees, squirrels, think the locals are a bunch of redneck rubes and miss the concrete jungle of LA....why the HELL don't you go back there and leave the rest of us to enjoy our lives. We WON'T stop you and we WON'T miss you."
This is how I feel about those who move to another country and refuse to become a part of it.
And! State of Jefferson FTW.
You can't keep a culture static when members of another culture are added, and you can't really avoid the new people coming in if your society is a desirable one. Things will simply change no matter what. So the best that can be hoped for is that the mixing can be facilitated and guided with some openness and tolerance and also some discrimination that appreciates the good and dissuades the bad. Neither culture is perfect, and both can add something to what you try to produce, which is a new culture better than either of the original ones.
I think that's what happened on a huge scale in the United States. It's a dangerous mistake to blindly resist a culture based on it's worst aspects. On the other hand the mistake we seem to have made more recently is to blindly accept everything. We have lost the ability to discriminate and select aspects of a culture and reinforced or dissuade.
Regardless, the first step has to be openness and celebration of the new culture's best aspects in a very accepting, even embracing way, while gently rejecting the negative, but you have to be open as a starting point. You have to talk, and share your cultures to get some common footing and investment. The alternative is just ugly long term.
How did we get from hating the Irish to considering them now to be a part of foundational American culture? Isn't the American culture better for that? I mean we do like us some drunken fisticuffs on a Friday night.
The German track record on this tends to be iffy...at best. They tend to go to the extremes for some reason.
Bogoh20 just said what I was trying to say. He said it in a much nicer and more elegant way.
Thank you.
Simple lessons and gentle messages are for marketing.
Islam is a state religion and is positioning itself as a player in dictating the state of Germany. Will Germany remember its revolutionary opposition to the state power of the Roman Catholic Church?
Europe is culturally insecure on a larger scale than America because they have allowed the state to dictate their culture for a longer time than we have here. We're catching up, though.
I would move to the State of Jefferson if it were established!
I would move to the State of Jefferson if it were established!
Come on up.....I'll be your tour guide.
:-)
Germany is a very different case from the U.S. with regard to their Muslim immigrants. They arrived there originally as part of the guest worker program and so assimilation wasn't the plan.
The article says Germans schools already offer ethics training in the Protestant and Catholic faiths. So this is simply adding Islam to the mix.
But the main reason they're doing this to combat the influence of Muslim clerics who are spreading extreme views.
Synova,
In Germany, that headscarf ban doesn't just apply to students, teachers, and school administrators. It also applies to lawyers in courtrooms, but many are not obeying the ban: "According to a survey conducted by the Berlin city-state's justice department, female lawyers who wear headscarves now work in almost all branches of Berlin's justice system: seven out of 11 district courts, the regional court, the social court, the administrative court and the higher administrative court."
This, from the same article, is very interesting: "In secular France, a lawyer wearing a headscarf in court would be inconceivable. In Spain, well-known judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez barred a lawyer with a headscarf from a trial. In liberal Britain, on the other hand, lawyers have had the right to wear headscarves in court since 2006."
Continental Europe is not feelin' the love like the Brits, is it?
Exactly, Lydia. Against the law to wear a piece of cloth on your head. WTF?
And I expect that I'm pretty much point for point with DBQ and Bagoh on assimilation in the US, and I don't think that encouraging people to *not* learn English is a nice loving thing for people to do, and yet that's supposedly the more "liberal" and accepting opinion to have. Total BS. As is "multiculturalism" which turns "melting pot" on its head
I just felt that it was important to point out that our reactions to things are based on what we think of as "normal" and Europe isn't normal.
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