Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is at once the brightest and least ideologically driven of world leaders. The daughter of an East German Lutheran pastor, she came of age when Protestant churches were the focal point of opposition. She earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry, and rose to leadership in Germany's Christian Democratic Union through brains and grit, much like Lady Thatcher in England a generation earlier.
"At the beginning of the sixties,” the Chancellor said last Saturday, “our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country." She added, "We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay, sometime they will be gone', but this isn't reality. . . . And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other . . . has failed, utterly failed."
When this tough and pragmatic woman told a Christian Democratic youth group on October 17 that multiculturalism had utterly failed, liberal commentators around the world bemoaned the reappearance of the old Blonde Beast. Nothing of the sort is true: Chancellor Merkel, with Pomeranian candor, was simply stating the facts. The facts, however, have not made their way into the global press.
Today, her party offered a position paper stating that while Germany has benefitted from immigrants, it has problems “with a minority which will not integrate itself, doesn't learn our language and shields its children from participation and advancement in our society.” Germany should offer “no tolerance” to those who refuse to integrate into German society, including consequences for residency. “In the future we will take care that the possibility of such sanctions is applied in the appropriate way and determine whether a further sharpening of sanctions is required.”
Part of the CDU's concern is a matter of pure economics. The country has little need of unskilled labor illiterate in German, although it is facing a labor shortage for highly qualified positions. The German economy is doing far better than the rest of Europe due to niches in machine tools, construction equipment, and other high-quality capital goods; every factory in China runs on German machine tools. Unlike the 1960s, unskilled immigrants are now more of a burden than a blessing to German industry.
The facts the global press failed to mention, however, include the fact that an important motivation for the Chancellor's remarks lies in Germany's profound disillusionment at the radical Islamist tendencies in Turkey's government, led by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, and Germany's alarm at Turkey's drift towards Islamism.
When Erdogan visited Germany September 10, he delivered a mixed message to the nearly three million Turks (about four percent of the population) now living in Germany. On the one hand, he called on them to “integrate” into German society; on the other hand, he called “assimilation” a “crime against humanity.” Just what is the difference between “integration” and assimilation” would challenge the great German philologists of centuries past.
Erdogan's political success in Turkey is the flip side of Merkel's coin: The traditional Islam of the Anatolian highlands has beaten the cosmopolitan secularism of Istanbul. Turkey's Islamists want to restore their country's leading position in the Muslim world, in a sharp turn away from the country's previous Western orientation (as well as its military alliance with Israel). For Germany, though, the revived arrogance of the Anatolian backwaters represents a problem.
It may have been more symbolic than substantive that a corruption scandal spoiled the inauguration of Germany's showpiece Islamic studies program—an enterprise considered a major part of the “liberal Islamic project”—at the Goethe University in Frankfurt the same week that Merkel and her party washed their hands of multiculturalism. Symbols, though, have their own importance.
In 2006, Germany invited a theology professor from the University of Ankara, Ömer Özsoy, to join the Goethe University faculty and create a program in Islamic studies. On October 14 the university celebrated the start of the program, which has a hundred students enrolled. For the first time in Germany, Özsoy told the Wiesbadener Tagblatt, “Islam will be researched and transmitted not from an external perspective, but from the inside.”
In 2008, major media had advertised a new, moderate Islam under construction at the Ankara theology faculty, where Özsoy and his colleagues reportedly were updating the Hadith (the sayings of Mohammed's “companions” and a main source of Islamic doctrine). According to numerous press accounts at the time, Turkey's new brand of Islam heralded an Islamic reformation.
Writing for the BBC on February 28, 2008, Robert Pigott enthused, “Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion. Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.”
The optimism was misplaced. Godfather to the new program was Fr. Christian Troll, S.J., who frequently advises Benedict XVI on Islamic issues, and assisting the Turks was one of his students, Fr. Felix Körner, S.J., then on assignment to Ankara. Körner wrote a book on the subject, characterizing the supposed reforms as “tin-opener theology,” that is, opening Islam as if it were a tin of beans and changing the contents arbitrarily.
As I noted in a “Spengler” column, he wrote that the Ankara theologians argued that parts of the Koran—like those dealing with polygamy and the wearing of veils—were directed at specific people at a specific point in time and therefore can be revised. They "subsume the whole of Koranic theology under the single intention of influencing people's behavior. Consequently, they are what should be called ethical reductionis[ts].”
Whatever the theological status of the Ankara group’s work, the Turkish government has shown no interest at all in religious reform, moving the country instead towards a more fundamentalist reading. As it happens Professor Özsoy's salary is underwritten by Turkey's Office of Religious Affairs, headed by Erdogan's picked man, Mehmet Görmez.
This was when the scandal arose. Reports in the Turkish press last week—vigorously denied by the Office of Religious Affairs—claimed that the “liberal Islamic project” in Germany was used to launder two million Euros to place Turkish imams in Western Europe. Özsoy, the Turkish media reports allege, is a “close friend” of Mehmet Görmez and complicit in the use of the two million Euro slush fund.
It is all rather sketchy, as the Turkish press typically is, but the allegations come at a particularly delicate time. If the poster-boy for moderate Islam in Germany turns out to be an Islamist wolf in sheep's clothing, that is, an instrument of a Turkish government agency, Chancellor Merkel and the CDU will have all the more reason to crack down on Germany's Turkish problem.
David P. Goldman is a senior editor at First Things and the “Spengler” columnist for the Asia Times.
RESOURCES:
David P. Goldman’s Tin-Opener Theology from Turkey
Mustafa Akyol’s The Hrant Dink Murder and Its Meaning.
George Cardinal Pell’s Islam and Us (also behind the paywall).
Comments:
Thanks be to God Germany has Chancellor Angela Merkel, a voice of reason.
Let us read an excerpt of Pope Benedict XVI's [then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger] addressed on May 13, 2004 to the Italian senate:
"Here in the West there is a strange form of self-hate we can only consider pathological. Yes, in a rather praiseworthy manner, the West does strive to be open in full to the comprehension of external values, but it no longer loves itself. All it sees in its own history is what is disgraceful and destructive, while it no longer seems able to perceive what is great and pure. In order to survive, Europe needs a new, critical and humble acceptance of itself; but only if it really wishes to survive. The multi-culturalism now being encouraged and fostered with such passion comes across at times as mostly an abandonment and denial of what is one's own, a sort of flight from self.
Multi-culturalism, however, cannot subsist without shared constants. without points of reference based on one's own values. Part thereof involves reaching out with respect to elements sacred for others, but we may do this only if the Sacred One, God, is not extraneous to us." [1]
May I suggest the book written after Pope Benedict XVI [then Cardinal Jospeh Ratzinger] delivered his address to the Italian senate, and with Marcello Pera "Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam".
Source and further reading:
[1] "Europe: Its Spiritual Foundation: Yesterday, Today and in the Future"
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6317&repos=1&subrepos=&searchid=292730
We note in passing that these are the same radical militarists whose agent, Ali Agca, attempted to murder the pope, and to lay the blame on the Soviet leadership. These Grey Wolves are very generous with other people's blood when it serves their purposes.
Your name is German/Jewish; are you yourself Jewish? If so, then you are yet another example of that strange paradox: the quisling Jewish Neo-Cons. Who gave up on the very liberalism that allowed them to live in the Wes -, to embrace the ideology of the oppressor. To embrace the racial theories of even, WW II Germany.
But at some point shouldn't our Jewish conservatives remember finally, that racial/religious exclusion in general, was never in their own interest? How well 1) did those policies work in WW II Nazi Germany? How well would the Jews have done2) in America, if America had firmly discriminated against another religion - Judaism? And if it had firmly excluded them from its borders?
Conservatism - especially Jewish neo-conservatism, c. 1980-2010 - is the strangest and among the most self-contradictory and incoherent, the most intellectually indefensible, of contemporary political ideologies.
As to the secularists in Turkey, they are dedicated to any kind of revival at all of Ottoman type Islamism, and anyone with an historical memory will comprehend that (this is not to say that the "Grey Wolves" are necessarily nice people).
Come to think of it, I would also like to hear the reaction of Turks to this whole issue.
Genuinely curious,
Richard
I could not disagree with your assumption more. Germans are not racist to Turkish people, having first hand experience myself. I was part of a German language integration class when my wife and I moved there in Sept 2009, since I needed to learn German. The Turkish men, mostly, were very rude to our female teachers, and suppressive to the other Turkish females in the class. One female was not permitted to leave her apartment for 6 years, other than for buying groceries and other necessities; while her husband did whatever he wanted. The class was the first time she was "let out". The one Turkish man, as we were speaking about the EU, said that "Turkish people like Germans; Germans don't like Turkish people"; which is completely false and was his assumption.
David Goldman is not advocating racism. What he is explaining is how Germany attempted to welcome auslanders into their country to be part of that country, yet many of the Turkish people do not integrate. Some do, don't get me wrong; but there is a definite division in much of the country. Doesn't Germany have a right to promote its own nationalism? And I know what every one is thinking when I say that..."Well, look what happened last time."
The quote from Pope Benedict XVI given by J de la Cruz is totally true. The young generation of Germans still feels shame and hides any sense of German pride because of WWII. We met a young American when we were living there, and he was shocked when Germans started waving flags and celebrating Germany during the World Cup. That is the only time I ever saw Germans being proud to show they were German. Germans should be allowed to advocate for their own nationalism in their own country.
I think there is a case to encourage integration in terms of language and general culture, but this article sounds dangerously like forcing the religion itself to assimilate, even when practiced in a country that has chosen it. I also think that it's easy to describe in glowing terms because it's not your religion.
What comes to mind as a similar value is the Bible's take on homosexuality. It's also a part of fundamentalist religion that refuses to assimilate to secular society, and could equally be described in many of the terms used here. I'm saying that you shouldn't be so quick to champion measures used on Muslims that could easily be adapted to Christians and may have the same result in practice, depending on how Merkel will react to the failures of multiculturalism brought by the religion.
As an American who in the service of his country lived for many years in both Germany and Turkey, I feel that the reconciliation of these two cultures is not impossible. But there are some problems to solve.
First I am troubled by Germany's continuing, longstanding, nationalistic anti-multiculturalism; which is contrary not only to world peace, but also to the coherence of the EU. No doubt, Germany nationalized later than most countries; as late as the 1870's. Therefore nationalistic sentiments are still fresher there. But ... in the post WW II era, the era of the EU, that nationalism is not appropriate.
What is the solution? Conflicting religions especially continue to cause many of these problems. And so finally it is a secular or liberal Christian modernity that is the solution; that seems to be the common ground for all different peoples, worldwide. Many people feel that the best way for all nations to get along, is to simply wait for religious differences to disappear. While to achieve this, not just a new religious leadership, but especially an open, liberal religiosity - one that can get along with other religions - is an absolute necessity.
Religious conservatism, conflicting fundamentalisms, is the problem; religious liberalism, ecumentism, is therefore the answer.
To be sure, it is hard to get this from fundamentalists; Islamic or Christian both. But we are tolerant, after all. And liberalism is the answer; not conflicting, conservative fundamentalisms, that will always be at war.
Pope Ratzinger might have seemed to have spoken, for a moment, against the tendency of the West to self-criticism or compromise on our own side. But Jesus himself always encouraged it; Jesus telling us to look for the "beam in our own eye," before criticizing others.
Liberals here, in subjecting their own culture to critical inspection, are simply ... obeying Jesus.
And oddly, that is the answer. But it means following Jesus' liberalism; not religious conservatism.
and its effects for the world at large that may have been reinforced by the ill seeds of newage that came from the East , into a ripe enough soil ...
the path back , for a Christian heart does not have to be complex or arduous ..
In God's infinitley merciful plans that make use of the Stone rejected by the builder , there is the (? former lowly ) neighbor Poland to whom our Lord promised - " from her will come the spark that will prepare the world for the second coming " .
That mercy , esp. becoming more evident by the yearning in more hearts to seea Mother as Mother of all...thus bypassing divisions with its potential of tremendous outpouring of graces ...to make possible to make amends ..by being merciful to those who are seen as the least , in more than one way ( as much as mercy entails steps to admonish the sinner etc ; too )
even learning from the very East which could have brought the hardening that made possible the atrocities , from a people who had been given much ...
that The Church has also means to drive out dark powers , to call down the Holy Spirit who alone makes it possible for the seats of newage not to fall apart through animosities ....because of the graces poured forth through The Church ...even when it seems as invisible as the salt ...
May His mercy flood more hearts ....to wash away gulit and shame ..to trust in tte infinite love of our Father ..to tread back into higher realms ..
You won't of course; such didactic simplicity is beneath your uber-sophisticate palate.
Good and bad are not so easy to parse here. I am reporting the unfolding of a tragedy, not cheerleading for the German Christian Democrats. There are plenty of writers out there who want to pump up emotions against Muslims in Europe, against multi-culturalism, etc., and try to package the facts into political Happy Meals. In general I don't read them, and I certainly don't want to do this myself.
I think, Mr Goldman got a sharp picture about Germany, Turkey and the Turks.
The underperfomance in terms of economy, education and so forth of most Turkish immigrants in Germany are caused by low level of integration. And this is the point Merkel is addressing. It is not the point that the Turks should be expelled from Germany, but that they should increase or even start their efforts to get a good education, raise their children to take responsibility and thoughtfulness to their hearts.
How I could experience at visits to friends in Istanbul, they blame too their compatriots in Western Europe for not so pleasant parts in the international image of Turkey and are somehow bewildered by Erdogans "assimilation-is-a-crime" rhetoric. So the issue is not based on the Turks themselves but cultural matters.
The rather secular Turks seem to have the same complaints about religious Anatolians like the Germans. And I think East Coast Americans, too.
@Joe the Human Person
It's rather "Guten Tag" in Northern Germany and "Grüß Gott" in Southern Germany. "Gutentag" does not exist.
Frankly, the prospect of a German Chancellor saying that Germans should have no tolerance for those who won't integrate fully into German society gives me the creeps. We've been down that road before.