If governing Islam is to be understood as a form of state public policy, it follows that it has its own set of particular instruments , techniques, and tools. In the cases of Turkey and Morocco , both states conceive of religious affairs as a distinct domain of public policy and employ specific policy instruments to govern the religious field. In addition, they are both part of traditional systems of cooperation and conflict between state, parapublic, and non-state religious actors, and the expansion of state religious activities abroad has forced both to rely even more on the latter two sets of actors than is the case at home. Nevertheless, the transnational context has not altered the fact that religion continues to be framed as its own domain of public policy.
Conversely, neither France nor Germany views religious affairs as a holistic administrative category within state policy. Religion in both countries is subject to different regimes of state–church cooperation or separation in which state action towards religion is fragmented between numerous policy domains that are not necessarily in communication with another. The question of Islam has led both states to take new approaches to religious governance over the last years; however, and despite their many significant differences, both states share the difficulty that they are only able to partially govern Islam.
The first part of this chapter discusses partial governance and its policy instruments , emphasizing that religion rarely if ever exists as a distinct field of state action in France and Germany . The second analyzes a potentially new policy instrument that has emerged through the attempt to “institutionalize” or “integrate” Islam in both countries: the French Council of the Muslim Faith (Conseil Français du Culte Musulman, CFCM ) and the German Islam Conference (Deutsche Islamkonferenz, hereafter Islamkonferenz ). These examples reflect the paradox that greater state involvement in Islamic religious affairs in France and Germany has not led to a decrease but rather to an increase in the level of participation of Morocco and Turkey in the religious field abroad. Finally, I explore two recent cases of mosque construction : the DITIB central mosque in Duisburg -Marxloh and the Great Mosque of Strasbourg . Both examples shed light on the complexities of multilevel governance as well as the dynamics of competition and cooperation that offer opportunities for outside actors to intervene in the religious field as a consequence of partial governance.
1 The Partial Governance of Muslim Fields in France and Germany
1.1 France
In studies on state-religion regimes, France’s system of state laïcité (secularism) often serves as a benchmark case of strict separation. The French model of religious governance is based on the 1905 “Law Concerning the Separation of Church and State” and the second article of the 1958 constitution of the Fifth Republic, which declares that “France is an indivisible, secular (laïque), democratic, and social Republic.”
Nevertheless, the reality is more complicated. The list of exceptions to the characterization of France as a country of strict separation between the state and religion is relatively long. For instance, when the 1905 law was passed it was not extended to French overseas colonies, most notably French Algeria, where the state remained in control of Islamic religious institutions. There are currently special provisions for French overseas territories, which have permitted that in Mayotte, qāḍīs have been named in the past by the prefect and paid by the state. Moreover, in French Guiana Catholic priests, along with the bishop, are all paid as state employees, in keeping with a royal decree dating from 1828.
Another important exception is that of Alsace -Moselle, comprising the départements of Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, and Moselle, which has a separate local law (droit local) that exists alongside normal French law. The region was annexed by the German Empire following the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and when it was returned to France after World War I, authorities decided to recognize the validity of prior French laws that had been preserved in Alsace -Moselle, but repealed in France. One of the most important elements of these earlier laws is a system that officially recognizes and subsidizes religions, modelled on the concordat signed between France and the Vatican in 1801. For this reason, Alsace -Moselle holds a particular place in discussions concerning Islam in France and represents a perennial exception to blanket statements concerning the place of religion in France. Moreover, given the large size of the Turkish and Moroccan populations in the region, it has been at the centre of many new initiatives promoted by both home states .
Following these geographic caveats come a host of others. The title of the famous 1905 law seems clear enough, until one reads a little further. The first article declares that the state ensures freedom of religion, while the second article states that “the Republic does not recognize, remunerate, or subsidize any religion.” However, the same article goes on to stipulate that the state is responsible for the salaries of chaplains in public establishments, which have since been institutionalized within prisons, hospitals, and the army, and administered, respectively, by the Ministries of Justice, Health, and Defence. Until recently this article applied only to Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism, but Muslim chaplains were recently admitted to the club in 2006. These, along with other questions concerning religion, fall under the purview of the Central Office for Religions (Bureau Central des Cultes , BCC), a division of interior ministry. The BCC is responsible for relations between the state and religious communities, following a precedent which began during the nineteenth century. Since 1920, there is also a counsellor for religious affairs within the foreign affairs ministry, who traditionally has been in charge of relations with the Vatican and Middle-Eastern Christian churches (Interview, Foreign Affairs Religious Counsellor I, 8 June 2012, Paris ).
As a result of the 1905 law , all religious edifices built before that year became state property, meaning that their upkeep became the responsibility of the state. These measures were taken in the spirit of the law’s first article, that is to say ensuring freedom of religion; however, they have led to important inequities, allocating significant funding for Christian (mostly Catholic) religious edifices and practically nothing for Islamic ones, given that Muslims had no such buildings before 1905. In addition, though religious education does not exist in French public schools (aside from in Alsace -Moselle), private schools can qualify for public funding and many of these schools are religious. Catholic private schools account for “15 per cent of the nation’s students” (Minkenberg 2003, 204), and the number of Muslim private schools in France has grown significantly over the last years.
Religious associations in France are organized as publicly declared associations, for which they can be registered under the association law of 1901 or within the scope of the 1905 law already mentioned. While the latter status is exclusively designed for religious (cultuel) associations, the former is much broader and can apply to any kind of non-profit organization. The vast majority of Muslim associations have opted to register under the 1901 law, because they are relatively easier to found and manage and can be involved in a wider scope of activities, while 1905 law associations are obligated to restrict themselves to religious affairs (Interview, Director BCC, 13 May 2009, Paris ). The fact that Muslim groups prefer the 1901 status, despite the special financial benefits afforded to 1905 law associations, attests to the greater social and cultural role that is envisioned for these religious associations within the diaspora.
For the majority of migrants who founded the first Muslim associations in France , cultural and religious elements were complementary. Indeed, a very large number of association names include the words “Islam” and “culture” together. However, there is also a strategic element involved in this approach: as 1901 law associations engaged in cultural activities, they can qualify for certain kinds of public funding. Local municipalities rarely have a problem supporting cultural activities, while religious activities raise both political and legal issues. As an example, municipalities often rent out publicly owned spaces to Muslim associations for very low or symbolic prices, such as the city of Paris has done for the CFCM (Interview, French Interior Ministry Y, 6 November 2013, Paris ).
Another glaring example that state-religion relations in France are not so straightforward can be seen in the actions of the French army in 2009, when it began organizing the hajj for its Muslim soldiers, going so far as providing a military plane for the pilgrims and organizing their housing and guides with the Saudi Defence Ministry. As surprising as this may seem in the context of French laïcité , it is only fair given that the army has also been organizing the pilgrimage of Catholic soldiers to Lourdes since 1958 (Settoul 2008). This latter case may confound scholars who have characterized the French state as “hostile to religion” (Fox 2008, 135). The reality, however, is that state institutions and ministries have their own interpretations of laïcité that correspond to their own interests, which are accepted as long as they fall within the general legal parameters.
Grey zones for the principle of laïcité have appeared over the last decades, most notably with regard to Islamic headscarves (ḥijāb in Arabic, voile or foulard in French). The first “headscarf affair” occurred in 1989, but the issue continued to occupy an important place in public debates throughout the 1990s. In 1994, the Minister of Education, François Bayrou, issued a directive banning “ostentatious signs from schools,” and in 2004, President Jacques Chirac approved a law that banned religious symbols in public schools. This was followed by a law in 2010 banning burqas and niqabs in public spaces, which came on the heels of a poorly handled debate on national identity that had been launched by the centre-right government the year before.
These examples constitute clear instances of state intervention in the religious field. However, it would be exaggerating to consider these actions as anything more than the partial governance of religion, because the state’s policies concerning the religious field are derivative of other legal or political considerations such as security issues and the constitutional obligation to ensure freedom of religion. The French state has no legitimacy as a religious authority as such and cannot be said to operate as a religious actor. Rather, it constitutes an actor of the political field whose vision of the religious field is wholly conditioned by questions of interior politics and foreign policy. It is for this reason that interstate cooperation with home states has also been welcomed: these states can intervene in areas where the French state cannot, with a religious authority that it does not possess, and in a fashion that generally corresponds to its own interior political exigencies and foreign policy objectives.
1.2 Germany
In the case of Germany , though the prevailing state-religion regime is different, when it comes to the governance of the Muslim field the result is similar. The keyword used to describe the German regime of state-religion relations, often repeated in my fieldwork interviews as well, is partnership.
Similar to France , religious groups in Germany are organized as “registered associations” (eingetragener Verein, or e.V.), which confers a juridical personality on the group after having adopted a number of administrative structures and procedures and pending approval of the responsible authorities. Contrary to France, religious groups can obtain official recognition thanks to special legal status called “corporation of public law ” (Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts), which falls under the jurisdiction of the individual federal states (Länder) and confers unto them a number of distinct privileges. These and other aspects of state-religion relations are covered by article 140 of the constitution (Grundgesetz) and are derived from the earlier Weimar Constitution. The status of corporation of public law is held across the country by the Catholic church, numerous Protestant (Evangelisch) denominations, the Jewish community, and many other Christian groups (including Orthodox churches and in some cases Jehovah’s Witnesses), though the specific list changes depending on the Land.
Aside from constituting official recognition from the state, the status of corporation of public law also confers numerous concrete advantages on the group that obtains it. One of the most well-known is the right to levy a “church tax” (Kirchensteuer), which is administered on its behalf by the state for a fee. The tax is only paid by members of the religious community and not the general population, and every individual of the community has the right to leave if they do not wish to pay. Nevertheless, the tax constitutes a formidable instrument for collecting funds: in 2006, it provided close to 7.8 billion euros to the Catholic and Evangelical churches (80% of their total income), leading some scholars to critique that “the principle of neutrality is being violated since the coercive power of the state is being put at the disposal of the [recognized] churches” (Monsma and Soper 2009, 184–85). No Muslim groups have yet obtained this status in Germany , which has led to mounting criticism of the selective and biased nature of formal state–church partnerships.
Alongside the status of “corporation of public law ,” and distinct from it, is the status of “religious community” ( Religionsgemeinschaft ). Religious communities dispose of constitutional rights concerning religious education in public schools, which “form[s] part of the regular curriculum in state schools” and “without prejudice to the state’s right of supervision […] shall be given in accordance with the tenets of the religious community concerned” (Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2012). It is the Ministry of Education (Kultusministerium) at the Land level that has the ability to confer this status on religious groups, indicating that the government recognizes the group in question as a legitimate partner in determining the content of religion classes . The difficulty for German authorities in relation to Muslim religious instruction has been in determining which of the myriad Muslim associations represents a legitimate partner for the state.
These practices and arrangements not only structure but also limit the state’s action in the religious field to particular policy domains. As in France , the German state’s action in the religious field remains partial and derivative, meaning that even when religious affairs become an object of governance, it is because they overlap with recognized policy domains, such as health, education, and public security. Focusing on policy domains enables an understanding of the actors and processes that motivate decisions by state actors, in the sense that a policy domain is “a component of a political system that is organized around substantive issues” (Burstein 1991, 328). In this sense, there is no “policy domain” that corresponds to Islamic issues in France and Germany , suggesting that they cannot be governed in their entirety.
At the same time, official forms of recognition function as political opportunity structures that have an important impact on the demands and actions of Muslim federations, reflecting Fetzer and Soper’s argument that “pre-existing Church-State practices and institutional arrangements structure the politics of state accommodation of Muslims’ religious needs in each country” (2007, 933). They serve as benchmarks to be attained in order to show that Islam has been veritably “integrated” in the country, or at least that it is treated equally to the other main established religious groups. The fact that the Länder are the competent actors in this domain reveals the importance of a multiscale approach to the analysis of partial governance and renders generalizations at the national level more complicated.
Nevertheless, despite the central importance of the Länder, the federal state has managed to have a decisive impact on the local Muslim field thanks to a surprising tool: its foreign policy. While the creation of the Islamkonferenz represents a highly symbolic initiative, it does not change the fact that the German state is constrained by a system in which its actions in the Muslim field are limited to a handful of policy issues. Consequently, the main instrument by which to exert at least an indirect degree of control over the religious field continues to be the federal state’s close cooperation with home state actors, such as the Diyanet and the Ministry of Habous.
1.3 Partial Governance and Public Policy Instruments
There are two summary conclusions that I would like to make at this point concerning the notion of partial governance. The first is that the state’s involvement in religious affairs in France and Germany is by no means negligible; however, it remains circumscribed to specific domains in which religion is in fact not the main object of governance. Insofar as public order and the laws of the state are respected, religious actors in both cases are constitutionally guaranteed full autonomy with regard to state authorities, which are obligated to adopt an impartial and neutral stance towards them. In other words, though the state’s actions have an impact on the religious field, the state in France and Germany can hardly be called an actor of the religious field. In order to do so, it would have to be able to pronounce on religious issues and either be considered or consider itself a religious authority.
Second, given that there is no part of the French and German states that considers itself a religious authority, there is also no comprehensive state supervision of the religious field in the country. The state’s view of the religious field, including the Muslim fields under consideration here, is inevitably partial and limited: it rarely has the necessary tools to intervene, and the information it possesses is fragmented across numerous state ministries, institutions, and levels of governance. The lack of a holistic view of the religious field means that its dynamics are only partially understood by the particular sub-departments of the state that are concerned by its derivative aspects: security issues; association law; integration or cultural outreach programmes, etc. As a result, a particular perspective, such as that focused on national security and public order, can easily come to dominate the state view concerning the governance of Muslim fields.
Another way of stating this is to say that France and Germany do not have a religious public policy, while Turkey and Morocco do. This theoretical viewpoint has a number of implications for my analysis of transnational Muslim fields. The ways by which states intervene in the religious field involve the use of specific instruments of governing, in the sense developed by Lascoumes and Le Galès (2004, 11–12), for whom a public policy instrument is a “technical and social device that organizes social relations between a public power and its citizens, in accordance with the representations and meanings that it carries.” Public policy instruments reflect an understanding of the role of the state within society, whereby issues in certain policy domains can be administratively managed and scientifically analyzed in a way that presumes a certain degree of depoliticization.
German Public Policy Instruments with an Impact on the Religious Field
Instrument | Public policy domain | Actor |
|---|---|---|
Official recognition | Education, state-religion relations | Kultus ministries of the Länder |
Church tax | Public finances | Federal finance and interior ministries |
Religious instruction | Education | Kultus ministries of the Länder |
Registered association | Civil society associations | Local courts (Amtsgericht) |
Cultural subsidies | City, regional development plans | Local municipalities, Länder, BAMF |
Halal meat production | Animal protection, religious freedom | Nature and agriculture ministries of the Länder |
Right of pre-emption | Urban planning | Local municipalities |
Religious dress codes in schools | Delimitation of private and public spaces, state neutrality | State courts, school employees |
“Import imams”—entry | Foreign policy (visas), bilateral relations | Consular system, foreign affairs ministry |
“Import imams”—extended stays | Foreigner laws (residency permits) | Foreigners’ registration offices (Ausländerbehörde), interior ministry |
German Islam Conference | Immigrant integration | Multiple (organization by the interior ministry) |
Illegal organizations and terrorist activity | Security | Local police, Landesverfassungsschutz, Bundesverfassungsschutz |
French Public Policy Instruments with an Impact on the Religious Field
Instrument | Public policy domain | Actor |
|---|---|---|
Official recognition (only Alsace-Moselle) | Education, state-religion relations | French Prime Minister, parliament, interior ministry |
Chaplains (aumônerie nationale) | Health, correctional services, armed forces | Ministries of Health, Justice, and Defence |
Religious building renovations and upkeep | Heritage and historic monuments | Ministry of Culture |
Declared association (1901 law or 1905 law) | Civil society associations | Ministry of the Interior |
Cultural subsidies | Urban development | Local municipalities, départements, regions |
Religious dress codes | Delimitation of public and private spaces (laïcité) | State courts, school employees |
“Import imams”—entry | Foreign Policy (visas), bilateral relations | Consular system, foreign affairs ministry |
“Import imams”—extended stays | Foreigner law (residency permits) | Ministry of the Interior (prefectures, intelligence services, BCC) |
Halal accreditation | Public health | Ministry of Agriculture |
Right of pre-emption | Urban planning | Local municipalities |
Illegal organizations and terrorist activity | Security | Local prefectures, interior and exterior intelligence agencies |
French Council of the Muslim Faith | Immigrant integration, state-religion relations | Ministry of the Interior |
… are partially an issue for the interior ministry, when it has to do foreigners. Or the foreign ministry, when it has to do with religious officials coming here [from Turkey]. When it has to do with educational issues, for instance Qur’an courses in schools, Turkish language, culture, or religion classes, then it’s the education senator [in Berlin ]. Of course, there’s no [federal] education ministry in Germany; it’s at the level of the Länder, so it’s a subject for the [Berlin ] education senator. […] There isn’t just one ministry or one set of competent authorities. (Interview, Turkish Embassy Germany, 7 April 2011, Berlin )
Whereas Turkey and Morocco both have such competent authorities in order to govern religious affairs, in Germany and France the multitude of policy domains they touch on results in a large and varied number of interlocutors at different levels of government.
The importance of employing an approach “emphasizing the political sociology of policy instruments” is to “stress power relations, processes of naturalization and depoliticization, legitimization and delegitimization of instruments and the effects they produce” (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2004, 237). The notion of power is understood here as “not in things” but rather as “the outcome of an ongoing process of resource mobilization” (Allen 2003, 108). Given the limits imposed on Turkish and Moroccan state action by the transnational context, both have focused on deploying specific instruments that mobilize resources that are essential for the local religious actors competing in these transnational Muslim fields. While religion may be instrumentalized as a resource for the diaspora policies of both states, its effectiveness is tied to the specific policy instruments the state has at its disposal. These instruments include the provision of religious services, notably by sending imams abroad; the provision of organizational support and know-how; direct and indirect financial contributions; diplomatic support vis-à-vis receiving state authorities; and the diffusion of religiously sanctioned cultural capital. These instruments provide resources that are in high demand in the religious field and represent forms of symbolic capital that support specific forms of legitimate religious authority.
Home State Transnational Religious Public Policy Instruments
Instrument | Technique | Tools | Actor |
|---|---|---|---|
State religious services | Sending of religious personnel (imams) to foreign countries | Mosque services: leading prayers, giving sermons, providing religious education | Religious personnel (imam) |
Organizational support | Foundation of state-linked religious associations abroad | Coordination and organization of activities between groups, association statutes | Religious counsellors, attachés, diplomats |
Diplomatic support | Interstate cooperation | Bilateral agreements | Diplomats |
Religiously sanctioned cultural capital | Combining linguistic and cultural heritage with religion | Visits by state leaders, cultural events in mosques, celebration of national and religious holidays | Diplomats, political, religious, and cultural actors |
Financial aid | Identifying recipients and allocating monetary support | Loans, direct deposits | State religious ministries, parapublic institutions |
Religious intellectual production | Publication and diffusion of religious materials | Free distribution of Qur’ans and other religious publications, audio-visual materials, international television and radio stations | State religious ministries, parapublic institutions |
These characterizations of religious governance in home and receiving states are not meant to be static. The political initiatives in France and Germany that proclaim to seek the “integration” of Islam through its institutionalization may represent a new policy instrument by which the French and German states hope to gain greater influence over the local Muslim fields. Nevertheless, due to both states’ compartmentalized relations with religion and the pervasiveness of a perspective overly concerned with national security issues, these attempts have met with mixed results. The following section will elaborate on these two cases of institutionalization, while focusing on the role of Turkish and Moroccan diplomatic and religious actors faced with this development in France and Germany.
2 “National” Islam vs. Interstate Cooperation?
The last decades have seen calls by state leaders in Western Europe for a “national” Islam: free of foreign ties, speaking the national language, and practised by integrated citizens. In turn, academic literature and media sources on the topic often employ the expression “institutionalizing” or “integrating Islam” as a way of alluding to policies adopted by Western European states in order to accommodate Islamic religious practices and symbolically recognize them in the public sphere (Maréchal 2003; Laurence and Vaïsse 2007).
There are three main ideas behind policies that aim to “integrate” Islam: the first is that the state and its institutions need to undertake some kind of action in order to deal with practical daily issues that arise from Islamic religious practice. The second is the creation of a representative organization, capable of acting as spokesperson for Muslims in their relations with the state. Symbolic recognition is to be found somewhere between the two and largely depends on whether there is an official procedure by which the state can recognize religious groups within each particular regime of state-religion relations. The third idea concerns the place of foreign states in local Muslim fields. The idea of “integrating Islam” is generally presented in opposition to the involvement of these states, whether they are home states such as Morocco, Algeria, or Turkey, or interested third parties, such as Saudi Arabia or Qatar; indeed, one of the former Islam counsellors of the French interior ministry called the CFCM a “weapon against foreign control” (Boyer 2005, 12). The acceptance of Islam as a national religion is thus seen as a concession granted by receiving state authorities on the condition that Muslim immigrants decrease their ties abroad.
Nevertheless, the policy shift that has occurred over the last 30 years in France and Germany with regard to immigrants and Islam has not resulted in the rejection of interstate cooperation as a means of controlling local Muslim fields. Instead, political discourse on “national” Islam has become increasingly disjointed from actual state practices: while demanding that Muslims “de-transnationalize” their religion (Laurence 2006, 271), receiving states continue to rely on foreign policy when it suits them. At the same time, Turkey and Morocco (and to a lesser degree Algeria) have become better organized and more established in their role as providers of religious services to “their” communities across Western Europe, while Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states of Qatar and Kuwait still represent important sources of funding. The CFCM and the Islamkonferenz are both exemplary cases of this paradoxical situation, in which the discursive policy goal of nationalizing Islam not only coexists with, but has in fact led to an increase in interstate cooperation.
2.1 Institutionalizing Islam in France: The CFCM
2.1.1 Elections and Home State Involvement
The first attempts at institutionalized dialogue in France between the interior ministry and Muslim groups began in 1989 and continued throughout the 1990s. In 1997, Jean-Pierre Chevènement convened the “Consultation” that eventually led to establishment of the CFCM in 2003. The Muslim groups involved at this stage included the main federations (such as the Moroccan-influenced National Federation of French Muslims, FNMF; the Algerian Great Mosque of Paris , GMP; and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France , UOIF , close to the Muslim Brotherhood); the large mosques of regional importance (e.g. Mantes-la-Jolie and Évry); and a number of independent individuals chosen by the ministry. Together with French officials, this group was to work out the main details concerning the tasks and duties of the new council, as well as the electoral method that would be used to determine its leaders.
In the case of Turkey, French officials were uncomfortable about working with DITIB, as it seemed incongruous to speak of “French Islam” and then invite the president of DITIB, who is also the Diyanet’s religious services counsellor. Consequently, the interior ministry came up with a creative solution in discussions with Turkish officials: they created a new association “in the office of the BCC” that would be responsible for representing the DITIB mosques in the CFCM and named it the Coordination Committee of French Turkish Muslims (Comité de Coordination des Musulmans Turcs de France CCMTF) (Interview, Director BCC). The first president of this new association was a Francophone DITIB employee who had been the interpreter of the organization. In my interview with him, he emphasized that the CCMTF was a unique organization that reflected the French desire “to affirm a French presence […],” and that “limiting the expression and future of the Islamic religion of French Turks to an international vision would be distorting the debate […]. The Turks of France need to have a role as Turks of France” (Interview, President CCMTF, 22 April 2009, Paris).
Nevertheless, there is a little mystery that CCMTF is a smokescreen for DITIB that corresponds better to the demands of French authorities. In our interview, the CCMTF president did not seek to hide the fact that he was still a DITIB employee and that the CCMTF was located at DITIB’s headquarters in Paris . For one former president of DITIB (and Diyanet religious services counsellor), the CCMTF is “the channel through which DITIB’s relations with the CFCM are conducted” (Interview, Diyanet Religious Counsellor France , 19 October 2011, Paris ), while a top diplomat at the Turkish embassy simply stated that “it’s important that local authorities, including the [French interior] ministry, feel comfortable about these [organizations]. […] If [dealing with the CCMTF] makes life easier for them, all the better” (Interview, Turkish Embassy France, 20 October 2011, Paris ).
The next step in the consultation was the permanent establishment of the council, both centrally in the form of the CFCM , as well as regionally, with the creation of the Regional Councils for the Muslim Faith (Conseil Régionaux du Culte Musulman, CRCM). The legitimacy and representativity of these councils were based on the organization of elections in order to determine their composition; however, choosing the method used for these elections constituted a major difficulty, as each federation attempted to push for the system most favourable to its particular circumstances. The final decision was that the number of delegates for each place of worship would be proportional to the surface area of the mosque or prayer space in question, with a bonus conceded to the GMP.
Moreover, in order to persuade the leaders of the main federations to cooperate, the new Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy reached a compromise whereby the presidency of the future CFCM would go to the GMP, the two vice-presidencies to the UOIF and the FNMF, and the position of secretary-general to the Turkish CCMTF—no matter the outcome of the upcoming elections (Frégosi 2010). According to an official at the interior ministry, there was a moment when Sarkozy considered attributing a position to Milli Görüş as well; however, this was contested by the CCMTF president and was later dropped after the Turkish ambassador himself called directly to discourage Sarkozy from doing so (Interview, BCC Counsellor, 17 September 2010, Paris ).
The results of the 2003 CFCM elections served as a shock to the GMP, which came trailing in third place behind the FNMF and the UOIF . The GMP’s defeat was due primarily to the fact that the network of Algerian mosques in France had difficulty in recognizing the Algerian government’s official representative as their own. At the same time, the victory of the FNMF showed the numerical domination of Moroccans in places of worship, while the UOIF reaped the rewards of its activism and its tactical alliances with other federations (Terrel 2008).
The UOIF was by far the most organized federation, with youth groups and an Islamic training institute, and was the most vocal in their opposition to the involvement of home states . For its president, “the CFCM is a French issue, not an international one. States that have citizens in France have no reason to be involved. It is up to French Muslims to organize their religion, not the states” (Alaoui 2005, 117). The president’s remarks are understandable given that the campaign period saw a significant mobilization of the Moroccan, Algerian, and Turkish consulates, ironically leading to a “reinforcement, if not the constitution of a new influence of home states over the places of worship” (Godard and Taussig 2007, 175). The paradox of this situation is striking: the very institution that was created to bring about French Islam paved the way for even greater foreign involvement in the French Muslim field.
At the same time, such an interpretation obscures the fact that foreign states had been involved at all stages of the earlier consultations. The Turkish ambassador at the time states that Sarkozy met regularly with the ambassadors of the main countries of origin of French Muslims (Algeria, Morocco , Tunisia, and Turkey) in the lead-up to the creation of the CFCM —“though this is not a well-known fact.” The meetings took place at the French interior ministry or during dinners organized at the ambassadors’ residences. The diplomat recognized that international considerations were present from the very beginning, given that foreign interference in the French Muslim field was something that “extraordinarily bothered Sarkozy as interior minister” (Interview, Former Turkish Ambassador, 23 November 2011, Istanbul).
On the one hand, there were states such as Saudi Arabia , Iran, or the Gulf countries, which despite having very few nationals in France could still acquire an important degree of influence thanks to their funding of associations or mosque projects. On the other hand, there was the much more complicated issue of rivalry between Algeria and Morocco. According to the former ambassador, another factor that bothered Sarkozy was that “despite the fact that they were French, Algerians and Moroccans were either always receiving help or under continuous pressure from their embassies.” The fact that the Algerian and Moroccan communities constituted by far the majority of French Muslims meant that the concerns of both ambassadors had to be acknowledged if there was to be “a solution which received the support of the embassies while promoting cooperation” (Interview, Former Turkish Ambassador).
During the creation of the CFCM , the French state did not hide its misgivings over foreign states’ influence in the French Muslim field. However, it could not rely solely on state sovereignty as a means of ensuring that its policies were going to work, as with other religious questions in internal politics, such as the 2004 law on religious symbols. Given that most of the main Muslim federations in France received aid from their respective home states , Sarkozy’s interlocutors at the foreign embassies had just as much if not more clout than the leaders of the mosque associations. If the goal ever truly had been to diminish the role of home states with regard to French Islam, the catch-22 here is obvious: by involving the home states in the creation of the CFCM , the CFCM itself was to remain an object of French foreign policy as much as French internal politics.
It is difficult to say whether this was a miscalculation or an unavoidable first step. Due to the partial governance structures in place, the French state does not have the legal capacity to create a state council for religious affairs and it has limited means at its disposal to compel the main Muslim federations to cooperate. However, there is also a long-standing institutional precedent to treat Islamic issues within the framework of foreign policy, and it would be both tactless and naïve to imagine that a representative council for Muslims in France could be created without involving home state authorities.
Conversely, for the Moroccan diplomat in charge of religious affairs in France , the CFCM was never really meant to work. The organization itself shows that “everything was done to make sure that the whole mess would get blocked!” The main problem highlighted by the diplomat was that French authorities “didn’t manage to—how should I put this—emancipate themselves from the ethnic aspect,” which he believed was done intentionally because the French state does not have any interest in there being a real institution that can speak for Muslims (Interview, Moroccan Religious Counsellor, 23 May 2011). The disappointment over the CFCM is a generalized phenomenon and is particularly due to its paltry lack of achievements and the incessant rivalry between Muslim federations as a result of the aforementioned “ethnic aspect.” This rivalry is most pronounced between Morocco and Algeria: for both states, winning the CFCM elections carries an element of symbolic prestige and has thus led to a greater involvement of their diplomatic services; nevertheless, Morocco has been the clear victor in these contests.
2.1.2 Moroccan Islam in the CFCM: Dominant yet Unstable
The result of the five CFCM elections that have been held so far (2003, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2013) has been the emergence of Moroccan Islam as the dominant current in the French Muslim field (Godard and Taussig 2007). However, these elections have been marked by boycotts from two of the main federations (the GMP and the UOIF ) and a rising level of indifference amongst French Muslims, while the main association representing Moroccan Islam has gone through multiple instances of fragmentation.
The federation that initially represented Moroccan Islam within the CFCM was the FNMF , which had grown progressively closer to Moroccan authorities after Mohamed Bechari became president in 1993. During the conflict concerning the Évry mosque in 1996 (see Chapter 4), the Moroccan ambassador had laid out a strategy so as to “save Moroccan Islam in France,” which included reinforcing the ability of the Moroccan embassy and the consulates to oversee Islamic affairs in France (Berrada in Tossa 1996, 35). It was this consular network that helped mobilize Moroccan mosques in the CFCM elections and led to the FNMF’s victories. However, the FNMF was never a coherent structure and more often than not resembled a temporary alliance, which observers and competitors frequently criticized as an “empty shell” (El Ghissassi 2005).
Not long after another electoral victory in 2005, the tension within the FNMF came to a head when Bechari was openly challenged by a group of delegates who then founded a new federation in 2006: the Rally of French Muslims (Rassemblement des Musulmans de France , hereafter the Rally). According to the president of the Rally, the FNMF “wanted to federate the mosques that were, quote unquote, run by individuals of Moroccan origin.” However, many members did not identify with the federation, “because clearly the FNMF was an empty shell, and there was a whole lot of history that wasn’t very glorious” (Interview, Rally President I, 9 October 2012, Paris ). As a result, the president recounts that he felt from the beginning the need to start a new organization.
While the Rally president emphasized the evolutions within Muslim associations in France , other sources maintain that this conflict had been brought on by changes in Morocco . In particular, King Mohammed VI’s decision to dismiss the powerful interior minister, Driss Basri, who had supported Bechari as head of the FNMF, led to “a clan-like settling of scores” (Telhine 2010, 331) during which Moroccan authorities switched their support to the Rally. Moreover, the Rally was a much more capable partner than the FNMF for Moroccan authorities, who were seeking to reassert their control over the religious field abroad as part of Mohammed VI’s reform of the religious field at home.
The Rally’s success has also been thanks to the shortcomings of its two main rivals, the GMP and the UOIF . The GMP has been slow to develop a country-wide federation of mosque associations and even in places where Algerians greatly outnumber Moroccans, such as Marseille , it has been unable to secure solid support. Algerians, or French citizens of Algerian origin, are on the whole less involved in religious affairs and are less observant Muslims than their Moroccan counterparts (Laurence and Vaïsse 2007). Moreover, the GMP suffers amongst younger French Muslims from the poor image of its president, Dalil Boubakeur, who aside from not being a religious authority is criticized for being too close to French authorities and too far from the daily realities of French Muslims.
On the other hand, in my interview with Boubakeur, he voiced his criticism of French authorities, mentioning how he had to “fight” to ensure that the number of imams sent from Algeria was not decreased, and that it had been French authorities who had privileged contact with the embassies over the Muslim federations in France . Furthermore, Boubakeur asserted that in many instances the French state had managed to put pressure on him “through diplomacy” by talking to Algerian authorities and diplomats, who would then compel him to make certain decisions (Interview, GMP President II, 7 December 2011, Paris ).
As for the UOIF , it suffered setbacks due to its earlier cooperation with former interior minister and later President Sarkozy . During the creation of the CFCM , Sarkozy had decided to recognize and involve the UOIF instead of following the existing policy of “containment by favouring the Algerian-Moroccan alliance” (Zeghal 2005). The relationship between Sarkozy and the UOIF —described initially as a “love story” by media and scholars—was reflected in UOIF’s position on a number of issues from 2003 to 2007: from calling on its members not to protest against the 2004 law on religious symbols to its 2005 “fatwa” against the riots in the Parisian suburbs, the UOIF “largely supported the security policies employed by the interior ministry in working-class neighbourhoods” (Geisser 2012). These stances provoked a crisis of legitimacy amongst grass-roots members and younger generations of French Muslims and undermined the UOIF’s status as the principal movement of political Islam in France (Amghar 2009).
The CFCM has had a few success stories: its role in helping free French hostages in Iraq in 2004 is often brought up in the literature; it was instrumental in the establishment of official Muslim chaplain positions in prisons, hospitals, and the army; and several of my interlocutors have mentioned that it has been a factor in facilitating the construction of mosques across the country. Furthermore, the frequent paralysis at the national level has not stopped the regional CRCM s from playing an increasingly active role in religious affairs, though the visibility of the CRCMs varies significantly in each region.
The last round of elections in 2013 was preceded by an extensive reform of the CFCM’s statutes with the goal of rendering the CFCM more “collegial.” Accordingly, the presidency and all the other top positions are rotating between the top three federations—the Rally , the GMP, and the Turkish CCMTF—for three two-year periods, until the end of the mandate in 2019 (CFCM 2013). While this new arrangement has improved relations between the main federations, there continue to be significant problems, such as the absence of the UOIF due to their boycott of the 2013 elections, as well as yet another major split within the main Moroccan federation that occurred in 2013 (see Chapter 7). Moreover, the French government itself began to sideline the CFCM with a new “dialogue forum with French Islam” in 2015, and more recently President Emmanuel Macron has indicated his intent to put an end to “consular Islam” and carry out a comprehensive reform of the CFCM and the “structuration of French Islam” (Sauvaget 2018). A potential policy tool that the French state may attempt to revive in this respect is the “Foundation for French Islamic Works” (Fondation des oeuvres de l’islam de France), which was founded in 2005 with the aim of acting as a national intermediary between Muslim associations and funding coming from abroad, but which has never truly functioned due to its potential to disrupt the transnational ties between home states and religious associations abroad.
Instead of an actor of the French Muslim field or an effective religious policy instrument, the CFCM has more often than not represented an object of contention. It has succeeded in attracting the attention of Muslim federations, home state authorities, French politicians, and interior ministry bureaucrats—but of few Muslims in France. The creation of the CFCM shows the limits of the French state’s ability to govern its religious field through top-down policies that obey the exigencies of foreign politics, national security concerns, and official laïcité , instead of responding to the lived everyday reality of French Muslims.
2.2 The German Islamkonferenz : The Politics of Dialogue
2.2.1 The “Paradigm Shift”
The road to the German Islamkonferenz began with the reform of the country’s citizenship laws in 1999–2000, under the Social Democratic Party (SPD )-Green coalition government led by Gerhard Schröder . The policy change represented a fundamental break with the approach of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) chancellor Helmut Kohl, who had unceasingly emphasized that Germany was not a country of immigration (Herbert 2001). The former SPD speaker for interior affairs stressed the importance of this moment during my interview with him, calling it a “paradigm shift” in German integration policies (Interview, SPD Speaker, 6 April 2011, Berlin ).
The changes in the citizenship laws also meant that Islam would no longer represent a “foreign” religion: in its response to a “major enquiry” (Große Anfrage) submitted by the main centre-right parties concerning the status of Islam in Germany in 2000, the federal government highlighted that the process of immigrant naturalization now entailed that “Islamic religious beliefs would be increasingly less identifiable with the status of foreigner” in Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2000, 3). At the same time, the government included a caveat that could double as a definition for partial governance: “the questions [asked in the enquiry] can thus only be answered insofar as they concern issues that permit the intervention of the state, or make such intervention necessary.” This report, like other similar enquiries over the years, demonstrates the considerable gap between what certain parliamentarians believe the state ought to know and what, institutionally and legally speaking, the German state can know. The report also gives multiple examples of cooperation between the Länder and Turkish consulates concerning religious affairs, especially with regard to Islamic instruction and chaplain services in prisons, and shows that the federal state had no illusions concerning DITIB: “Turkey exerts influence over the association […] DITIB, based in Germany, through its state ‘Presidency for Religious Affairs’” (Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2000, 74). Of course, it neglects to mention the role of the German state in facilitating the religious services provided by the Diyanet.
After becoming chancellor of a CDU -SPD coalition in 2005, Angela Merkel launched the first “Integration Summit” in 2006. DITIB was the only Muslim federation invited, which the head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, BAMF) justified by saying that she had a good working relationship with DITIB’s spokesperson, Bekir Alboğa. Later that same year, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble called for a large-scale conference on Islam at the federal level, which led to the creation of the German Islamkonferenz .
The first phase of the Islamkonferenz brought together 15 state representatives with 15 German Muslim representatives in order to establish dialogue and form workgroups on specific topics. Whereas in the case of France , the goal of the consultations had been to create a body such as the CFCM , the Islamkonferenz has never been envisioned as anything other than a forum for discussion and dialogue. Indeed, the German state sees it as a “unique process in Europe,” and different from the “French model,” which is perceived as having been put in place by the French state itself (Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2006, 125). The organization of the conference has been the responsibility of the interior ministry, within which a special department was created for this purpose, and for which the Islamkonferenz is understood as “the arena, in which the fundamental sociopolitical questions concerning Islam in Germany are addressed” (Interview, German Interior Ministry, 22 February 2011, Berlin ).
The composition of the participants was designed to reflect this vision. The 15 state representatives were drawn from all three levels of the state: the main federal ministries concerned with issues pertaining to Islam (Interior, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Family, and Labour), alongside a representative of the chancellor and the head of the BAMF; the interministerial committees of the Länder governments—especially those concerned with interior affairs, integration, and Kultus (education and religion); and municipal government associations. The mix of different levels of government is on the one hand necessary, given Germany’s federal structure, but also contrasts with France , where the consultations were consistently dominated by the interior ministry.
The 15 Muslim representatives include five members from the main Muslim federations, as well as 10 other “independent individuals” who were Muslims. When the conference was initially created, the five federations represented were DITIB, ZMD, VIKZ , the Alevi Community of Germany (AABF ), and the Islamrat (IRD), a federation heavily dominated by Milli Görüş. 1 They were joined by associative leaders, such as the president of the non-religious Turkish Community in Germany , and finally the “non-organized Muslims” who were intended to represent Muslims who were not members of any religious association. The “non-organized Muslims,” such as the sociologist Necla Kelek and the lawyer Seyran Ateş, were perceived quite critically by the Muslim federations. One DITIB representative told me that the group of non-organized Muslims “have nothing to do with religion, they mess everything up” (Interview, DITIB-NRW, 2 March 2011, Düsseldorf), while a top Milli Görüş member commented that they came across as “token Muslims,” who were there to “say things that were in fact positions held by the interior ministry” (Interview, IGMG Deputy Secretary-General, 29 September 2011, Cologne ).
From the beginning, the official position of Turkish authorities towards the Islamkonferenz was positive. One diplomat at the Turkish embassy in Berlin stated that “we believe that the Islamkonferenz is a necessary initiative in the name of creating a German Islam,” and that it transmitted the message that “Muslims are a part of the country” (Written correspondence, Turkish Embassy Germany , 20 April 2011). The Diyanet’s director of foreign affairs mentioned that it was a good initiative to create “a foundation for the relationship” between the state and Muslim associations (Interview, Diyanet Foreign Affairs Director A, 17 March 2009, Ankara). Turkish authorities have long held the position that DITIB should be recognized as the main interlocutor for the German state with regard to Islamic religious affairs and for one of the officials in the foreign affairs ministry’s general directorate for citizens living abroad, the Islamkonferenz appeared to be a step in the right direction (Interview, Turkish Foreign Affairs Ministry, 10 November 2011, Ankara).
Ironically, this perception runs counter to that of the German interior ministry, which clearly sees the Islamkonferenz as a forum designed for German Muslims . During my interview with a top representative of the interior minister, my multiple questions regarding contact with Turkish or Moroccan institutions such as the Diyanet and the Habous ministry began to exasperate my interlocutor, who told me that it was “foreign to the German constitutional understanding of religion to deal with religious matters through a [diplomatic] attaché” and that “the emphasis is not on having contact with foreign state institutions, but—and I’m repeating myself here—to the Muslims here” (Interview, German Interior Ministry).
The interior ministry official’s statements reflect well the German state’s contradictory discourse on the issue. Despite the assertions in the interview cited above, Germany’s decision to promote a “national” Islam did not result in conflict with Turkey because the issue did not leave the sphere of bilateral foreign policy and interstate cooperation. The interior ministry “considered it important to enter into intensive dialogue with Turkey alongside the consultations in the German Islam Conference [and] closely cooperated in this regard with the [German] foreign ministry” (Bundesministerium des Innern 2009, 358). As a result, talks were held in Istanbul in 2007 and Berlin in 2008, bringing together Turkish and German officials, academics, and the vice-president of the Diyanet in 2007.
In its summary of these talks, the interior ministry stated its satisfaction that complicated aspects of state-religion cooperation in Germany could be discussed in such detail with Turkish authorities. The ministry emphasized how the issue of DITIB’s ties to the Turkish state had been broached, “and how this could represent a legal obstacle, if [DITIB] sought to become a partner of the Länder in the provision of Islamic religious instruction” (Bundesministerium des Innern 2009, 360). The point had already been raised the year before with regard to Islamic religious instruction in the Islamkonferenz ’s interim report, which emphasized that the German state cannot “grant a foreign state sovereign powers that, according to the constitution, it does not have itself” (Deutsche Islam Konferenz 2008, 25). At the same time, the report concedes that there is nothing to “preclude foreign dignitaries from having influence over religious communities, even if they simultaneously hold state positions,” and only includes the caveat that foreign state influence must not be externally imposed (Deutsche Islam Konferenz 2008, 25–26). This very broad and pragmatic view allows both sides to save face, while ensuring the continuity of interstate cooperation in local religious affairs.
2.2.2 The Evolution of the Islamkonferenz
The first phase of the Islamkonferenz lasted three years and resulted in a number of initiatives and significant studies, such as “Muslim Life in Germany ” (Haug et al. 2009) and “Islamic Community Life in Germany” (Halm et al. 2012). One of the most significant public policy recommendations concerning Islamic theology at German universities was quickly translated into action, leading to the creation of the first such programmes at the universities of Münster , Osnabrück, and Tübingen in 2010. The second phase of the Islamkonferenz began in 2010, following national elections that led to the formation of a new coalition government of centre-right parties. For this new phase, the interior ministry stated its desire to “make the whole thing more practical” and focus on specific themes, such as religious education (Interview, German Interior Ministry).
Now under the direction of Thomas de Maizière, the second phase ran into a first problem with the suspension of the Islamrat from the conference. German authorities attributed the Islamrat’s exclusion due to an investigation launched by the Munich public prosecutor against Oğuz Üçüncü, the secretary-general of Milli Görüş, while the Islamrat rejected this explanation, claiming that the actual reason “must certainly be the decidedly critical position taken by the Islamrat during the former Islamkonferenz ” (Kızılkaya in IGMG 2010). Moreover, in 2010 the German interior minister closed down an Islamic humanitarian association with multiple ties to Milli Görüş for providing support to the Palestinian organization Hamas (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz 2012, 307–8).
A spokesperson for the interior ministry evoked both these cases in order to explain the change in position (in Preuß 2010), while I was similarly told “we can hardly send the minister into a discussion with Muslim representatives, when those representatives are being watched by the [interior intelligence services] or when criminal charges have been brought against them,” while referring directly to Milli Görüş (Interview, German Interior Ministry). The exclusion of the Islamrat led the ZMD to refuse to participate as well, which ran the risk of delegitimizing the entire process. The interior ministry thus decided to invite a Bosnian and a Moroccan Muslim federation in their place—the Moroccan group, the Central Council of Moroccans in Germany (Zentralrat der Marokkaner in Deutschland, ZMaD) , unsurprisingly is the main partner of the Moroccan Habous ministry in the country.
According to a top member of Milli Görüş, many members of DITIB were reticent to join in the second phase as a result of these developments. Consequently, the German interior ministry spoke with Turkish diplomatic authorities, which thereafter gave DITIB an “order” to participate, while the Diyanet was unable to intervene because the Turkish foreign affairs ministry had the upper hand. Following “massive pressure” from the Turkish ministry of foreign affairs and the German interior ministry, DITIB eventually agreed to participate, “after holding out for a month” (Interview, IGMG Deputy Secretary-General). This anecdote recalls the comments of the president of the Great Mosque of Paris , who similarly asserted that French authorities had put pressure on him by speaking with his Algerian superiors. When following up with DITIB members or Turkish diplomats, most replied to me that they had no information or that DITIB was autonomous, while one Diyanet member found the idea so incredulous that he asked me in return, “so you mean to say that the same German authorities who question the relationship between Diyanet and DITIB [would ask] Diyanet if it can put pressure on DITIB? Is that logical?!” (Interview, Diyanet Director for Turks Abroad I, 11 November 2011, Ankara). The phrasing is in fact quite apt: whether logical or not, on multiple occasions the nationalization of Islam by receiving state authorities in Western Europe has paradoxically led to even greater cooperation with home states , sometimes at the expense of the autonomy of local associations.
The appointment of the right-wing parliamentarian Hans-Peter Friedrich as interior minister in 2011 led to even more difficulties, given his numerous comments refusing to accept Islam as part of German culture and his focus on national security issues. Despite moderating his tone in the following years, by the end of the second phase of the Islamkonferenz , the majority of media and participants were critical of how the conference had evolved (Die Zeit 2013; Preuß 2013). According to the representative of the Moroccan ZMaD , “there wasn’t really a strong will to reach any results. More like dialogue for dialogue’s sake” (Interview, ZMaD Representative, 15 June 2013, Paris ).
The general tone of the public debate had not helped either. In 2010, SPD politician Thilo Sarrazin caused an enormous uproar with the publication of a book in which he criticized multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants as being opposed to integration. Moreover, during the same time the German police uncovered the existence of a neo-Nazi terrorist group that was responsible for murdering one Greek and eight Turkish immigrants from 2000 to 2006, raising concerns regarding the government’s overemphasis on Islamic terrorism and its negligence of right-wing extremism. The affair was closely followed in Turkey and Erdoğan brought up the murders on numerous occasions, such as during a speech in Cologne in 2014, when he tied them to “growing racism in Europe” (in Gezer and Kazim 2014). Indeed, the same year a series of large-scale Islamophobic demonstrations began in Germany, taking the name Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West (Pegida), and the following year the recently founded political party Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) completed its metamorphosis from run-of-the-mill Euroscepticism to full-blown anti-immigration and anti-Islam populism.
The third round of the Islamkonferenz began in 2014 with a number of important changes: no “independent individuals” were invited to participate and security issues were taken off the table, which led to the participation of all the main Muslim federations. However, the news that Diyanet imams had been involved in espionage activities against members of the Gülen movement in 2016 led to calls for the state to break off dialogue and increase surveillance of DITIB. Nevertheless, in an official response to a parliamentary enquiry from the Green Party , the government stated that there was no need for the intelligence services to become involved as the suspicion of espionage “only concerned Diyanet imams who had been sent to Germany and were working with DITIB” and not DITIB itself (Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2017, 10–11). In contrast to Milli Görüş, which had attracted much greater state scrutiny for less serious allegations in past years and had even been excluded from the Islamkonferenz as a result, DITIB clearly benefits from a greater degree of leeway.
Similar to the CFCM , the general perception of the Islamkonferenz has been divided, with some actors criticizing its lack of accomplishments and others praising its ability to promote progress on themes like Islamic education. The fact that the third round of the Islamkonferenz focused on so few themes is partially evidence of one of its successes, as the first two phases at the national level had provided the impetus for many of the Länder to address the issues that fall under their competence. These evolutions at the regional and local levels have been increasingly perceptible over the last years and attest to the importance of understanding political processes at multiple levels in France and Germany’s systems of partial religious governance.
3 Partial Governance in Practice: The Effects of Multiple Levels
3.1 Regional and Local Levels
The partial governance of the French and German Muslim fields not only refers to the lack of a single policy domain for religion at the national level, but the fact that the state competencies that do exist are frequently conditioned by the level of government under consideration. The regional level is much more significant in Germany than in France , due to the federal structure and the specific competencies of the Länder with regard to education and the recognition of religious communities, though it is true that the CRCMs in France are based on the main administrative regions of the country. Nevertheless, the local level is decisive in both contexts, as discussed below in the cases of Duisburg and Strasbourg.
As mentioned, in Germany it is not the federal government but the Land that has the legal authority to officially recognize religious groups as a “religious community” and “corporation of public law .” The latter status is by far the more difficult to attain—the only Muslim group to date to have received it is the Ahmadiyya Community in Hessen and Hamburg—leading the majority to focus their efforts on the more feasible status of religious community. Accordingly, over the last years, Muslim groups have been recognized across the country under this status, especially Alevi associations as well as numerous Sunni Muslim groups, including DITIB. Thanks to this legal status, these associations can then form agreements with Land governments regarding the instruction of Islamic religion courses in public schools.
The first step for the main Muslim federations has been to found regional associations (Landesverbände), which has occurred following two distinct patterns: in the first, a large federation such as DITIB founds its own regional association, which then applies for recognition as a religious community. This strategy paid off for DITIB in Hessen in 2012, when it was recognized (along with the Ahmadiyya Community) as a religious community, though its decision to leave behind its erstwhile partners created friction with other Muslim federations (Interview, IGMG Deputy Secretary-General). The second pattern is for different Muslim groups to create a regional association amongst themselves, opening the door to alliances and the possibility of greater representativity. Taking the name “ Schura ” or “Islamic religious community,” these regional groupings of local Muslim associations have emerged with different constellations in numerous states; however, a perennial problem has been how to accommodate the large federations, most notably DITIB.
Thanks to discussions in the Islamkonferenz , the large federations decided to create their own collective organization in 2007, when DITIB along with ZMD, Islamrat, and VIKZ founded the Coordination Council for Muslims (Koordinationsrat der Muslime, KRM ). The KRM model gives preference to the largest Muslim federations, especially DITIB, which often has veto power or other special concessions, and in many cases has blocked the initiatives of the regional Schura groups (Rosenow and Kortmann 2011). The KRM’s first achievement came in 2012, when the government in North Rhine-Westphalia started a pilot programme for Islamic religious education in public schools that would be supervised by a council including both KRM members and government officials. Nevertheless, legal and political complications have not been far behind: the top administrative court for North Rhine-Westphalia ruled in 2017 that the Islamrat and ZMD cannot be considered religious communities, leaving uncertain what will happen when the pilot programme ends in 2019.
Even more significantly, the 2016 DITIB spy affair sent shockwaves through all instances of cooperation with German authorities. Due to the scandal, DITIB decided on its own to abstain from participating in the joint council for Islamic education in North Rhine-Westphalia, which did not stop the latter from breaking off cooperation with DITIB (Jacobs and Reisener 2018). Similarly, in Hessen the government has issued an ultimatum for DITIB to provide proof of its independence from Turkish authorities by the end of 2018 or be excluded from participating in Islamic education (von Bebenburg 2017). The repercussions of foreign politics at the Land level raise questions concerning the suitability of state authorities dealing with potentially delicate issues independently of federal authorities. For instance, in the lead-up to recognizing DITIB, government leaders in Hessen had made numerous trips to Turkey and met directly with Erdoğan to discuss the issue. Nevertheless, in his appraisal of the situation for the Hessian government, a well-known German scholar of Turkey warned that given the “instrumental character of Diyanet for the Turkish government” and “tensions in German-Turkish relations,” the leeway for individual Länder to pursue independent strategies is quickly disappearing, and that both federal and state authorities would be well-advised to “develop a uniform strategy for dealing with the [Diyanet]” (Seufert 2017, 47). Despite the many competencies at the state level, the prospect of conflict in foreign relations brings home the transnational reality of the Muslim field and the limits of local actors when faced with higher-level foreign policy interests.
In the case of France , the regional level is perhaps one of the least important for addressing state-Islam relations. The administrative divisions of the French state that play a far greater role than the region are the département and the municipality. Legal questions concerning foreigners as well as financing from abroad both fall under the responsibility of the departmental prefecture, which also supervises most issues concerning the construction of mosques along with municipal authorities. The major difference is that those issues concerning state-Islam affairs that are dealt with at the Land level in Germany , namely religious education in public schools and the attribution of official statuses for religious groups, do not exist in France (other than in Alsace -Moselle).
On the other hand, the regional level is significant when it comes to the regional components of the CFCM : the 25 CRCMs are based on the former administrative régions of France before reforms enacted in 2014, and include three councils for the Parisian region of Île-de-France and another for La Réunion. At this level, a regional dynamic can be seen in the alliances that have been formed between certain Muslim federations during the elections for the CFCM and CRCMs. This is all the more the case given that there is no direct election for the CFCM , but rather a system of multiple designations and appointments that is based on the results of the regional CRCM elections.
At times, these alliances are to be expected—such as the UOIF with Milli Görüş (“political Islam”) or the GMP and the Turkish CCMTF (“consular Islam”)—but not always. In 2005, for instance, the GMP gained the presidency of the Alsace region thanks to an alliance with Milli Görüş (Godard and Taussig 2007), while the UOIF succeeded in doing the same by joining up with the Turkish CCMTF in Bourgogne (Coroller 2005). Though these alliances may have resulted in unexpected cooperation between certain Muslim groups, on the whole they have not led to any fundamental changes within or amongst actors in the religious field. Victories in the CFCM -CRCM elections do not reflect changing opinions on the part of an electorate; they do not drive the formation of any new movements; and most importantly, they have a very limited impact on the symbolic and financial capital of Muslim federations and mosque associations in France.
For the majority of concrete issues of local Islamic religious governance, the local level of the municipality is a key player. As elsewhere, the partial governance of Muslim religious affairs at the local level in France and Germany means that there is rarely, if ever, a separate administrative category for religion. One exception in recent years has been the development of a new position in several German police forces: the “Islam officer” (Islambeauftragter), who is in charge of maintaining dialogue with local Muslim actors (Interview, Duisburg Police, 16 November 2010, Duisburg ). Nevertheless, in general religious issues are—at least officially—derivative of other public policy considerations. Consequently, when a mosque is shut down or a foreign imam expelled, it can never be for religious reasons, given that both states assure freedom of religion and state neutrality, insofar as the norms of public order and safety are respected. Nevertheless, there can be a fine line between determining what constitutes a threat to public order and using it as an excuse to influence the Muslim religious field.
For example, mosques and other places of worship in France are officially considered “establishments open to the public” (établissement recevant du public), meaning that they must respect a number of criteria pertaining to safety and accessibility regulations. The prefect is responsible for the creation of a special consultative commission at the level of the département in order to carry out the required inspections; however, these commissions are only consultative, and when it comes to delivering building permits or ordering the closure of a mosque, the ultimate decision lies with the mayor. Financial donations from foreign benefactors are legal and are covered by French tax law, though the authorization of the departmental prefect is required in the case of donations that involve property transfer (République française 2004).
Contrary to what official laïcité may suggest, French municipalities have found ways to subsidize Muslim prayer spaces. Thanks to their status as 1901 associations, many mosques and prayer spaces have received funding for their “cultural” activities from local municipalities, while another frequent method is to offer Muslim associations long-term leases (bail emphythéotique) at greatly reduced rates, if not practically free. Indeed, Roland Ries (2010), former and current mayor of Strasbourg , explicitly mentions the long-term lease option as an exemplary solution to the question of providing aid to Muslim groups while still respecting both French and local Alsatian law.
The long-term lease represents a policy tool capable of being used by public authorities in the religious field in lieu of more direct forms of financial aid, which are not legally permitted. At the same time, similar tools can be hijacked for quite the opposite purpose. For instance, the tactics that some municipalities employ in order to prevent the construction of mosques can range from quietly discouraging landowners to sell to mosque associations to illegally employing the “right of first refusal” (droit de préemption), which only applies in cases where a prior project of public or general interest has already been planned for a particular site (Herrgott 2004).
In Germany, there is a federal law concerning building norms and each Land has its own building code, which is overseen by specific authorities at the level of the district (Kreis) or city. In North Rhine-Westphalia , for instance, there are no special regulations for mosques, and according to the state government, they are to be treated the same as churches and other “places of assembly” (Versammlungsstätten): that is to say as “special buildings” (Sonderbau), meaning that they are subject to a more extensive safety inspection by public services. A Land-level parliamentary enquiry on Islam in 2001 raised the question of whether local urban planning departments factor mosques into their development programmes, whereupon the government responded that such issues are an exclusive competency of the municipal level (Gemeinde) and that it had no information on the subject (Landesregierung NRW 2001). Nevertheless, federal legislation on urban planning specifically states that municipal authorities are to “especially take into account […] the recognized needs of churches and religious organizations of public law for church services and pastoral care.” Another article stipulates that the right of first refusal (Vorkaufsrecht) cannot be invoked when “churches or religious organizations of public law” have bought the land for their own needs (Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960). Of course, since almost no Muslim federation in the country has obtained this status these special regulations do not apply, raising once again the charges of bias and unfair treatment.
Though political opportunity structures and legal institutional frameworks go a long way in explaining certain elements of Western European Muslim fields, in the end the favourable predisposition of the municipality towards a mosque project is a central factor in determining whether or not it will be built. Moreover, the transnational character of the Muslim field means that in these cases of partial governance, there is ample room for foreign actors and home states to assume a greater role in local religious affairs. The following cases of mosque projects in Duisburg and Strasbourg illustrate how the partial governance of receiving states and the transnational religious governance of home states converge in local contexts.
3.2 Duisburg: The “Wonder of Marxloh”
The DITIB central mosque in the working-class district of Marxloh, in the city of Duisburg , is one of the largest mosques in Germany. It stands out precisely for the lack of conflicts surrounding its construction, which has led to it being nicknamed the “Wonder of Marxloh” by press and public authorities. Moreover, unlike the vast majority of mosques in Germany, it is one of the first and only mosques to have benefitted from not only state funding, but funding from the European Union (EU ) as well.
The mosque association was founded in 1985 in an old canteen for coal workers in the northern part of the city, which is dominated by the steel and coal industries. An advantage of this particular association was the involvement of a “young, pragmatic generation of women and men between 30 and 40 years old, who had grown up in the Ruhrgebiet and knew the rules of the game and the codes of their German homeland” (Spiewak 2009). One of the most prominent members of this group was Zülfiye Kaykin, who became manager of the mosque’s meeting centre (Begegnungsstätte) in 2005 and then state secretary for integration in the state government in 2010.
The association began to consider plans for the construction of the mosque at the same moment that deindustrialization and a crisis in the steel industry had led to the loss of thousands of jobs. By the end of the 1990s, five districts of Duisburg had been included in a joint federal—Land programme entitled “Social City” (Soziale Stadt), which led to the creation of a local public corporation, the Duisburg Development Firm (Entwicklungsgesellschaft Duisburg, EG-DU). While plans for financing the mosque’s construction had originally focused on the usual mix of bank loans and contributions from the local community, a member of the development firm gave Kaykin a new idea: instead of building a “normal mosque,” she should create a “meeting centre,” which would be eligible for funding from the European Social Fund. The active support of municipal authorities would prove to be a key factor in obtaining this funding over the following years (Interview, DITIB Duisburg Meeting Centre, 10 November 2010, Duisburg).
The DITIB-Marxloh association had also learned from earlier conflicts over Islam in Duisburg and from the outset sought to involve a wide variety of local actors in an advisory council, bringing together “local institutions, associations, Christian churches, political parties, the University of Duisburg-Essen, business people, neighbours, and the EG-DU” (D. Yilmaz 2010). The Islamkonferenz and news media reports all emphasize the importance of this council, which ensured that members of the local community participated in the planning process of the mosque, avoiding problems before they started and promoting cooperation and transparency (Topcu 2009).
Construction for the mosque was completed in 2008. Both the groundbreaking and the official opening ceremonies were attended by the local state minister-president and the president of the Diyanet, while the opening ceremony attracted 10,000 visitors and 160 members of the press. In 2006, the meeting centre was founded as a separate association, meaning that once built the mosque housed two different associations: the DITIB mosque association (DITIB Türkisch Islamische Gemeinde zu Duisburg-Marxloh e.V.), which was in charge of religious services and counted around 900 families as members, and the DITIB meeting centre (DITIB Begegnungsstätte Duisburg-Marxloh e.V.), which was responsible for educational, outreach, and dialogue activities. This distinction is important, because a mosque association would not have been eligible for state and EU funding, whereas an intercultural meeting centre promoting integration and education fell perfectly within the criteria of the European Social Fund and the “Social City” programme. As a result, the DITIB meeting centre received approximately 3.4 million euros from the EU and the Land, while the other half of the 7 million euros came from fund-raising activities and members’ contributions (Z. Yilmaz 2010).
The DITIB Central Mosque of Duisburg-Marxloh
(From left to right, top to bottom: the exterior of the mosque with its tall rows of windows and the four flags at rest (the EU , Germany, Turkey, and DITIB); the richly decorated interior of the mosque; an EU plaque that reads: “Meeting Centre in the Mosque. European Union. Investment in our future. European Fund for Regional Development”; the view of the nearby Catholic church; and the three painted domes in the library symbolizing interreligious cooperation: seven-leafed olive branches for Judaism, roses for Islam, and lilies for Christianity. Source Author)
However, not long after construction of the mosque had been completed, a conflict broke out between the meeting centre and the mosque association, resulting in Kaykin’s departure. As the director of the meeting centre recounts, “there really was a war. [People were] really washing dirty laundry in public […] it was a bad situation” (Interview, DITIB Duisburg Meeting Centre). The conflict arose as a power struggle between the two associations, which was intimately linked to the genesis of the project and the changes in the respective resources and symbolic capital of both groups over time. Initially, the meeting centre made a claim to overall leadership thanks to its German social capital, which had succeeded in securing funding from local, regional, and supranational sources. This accomplishment offsets the fact that the meeting centre had 10 times fewer members than the mosque association. However, the funding was only for the construction and the initial start-up phases, meaning that financial problems quickly ensued. Moreover, the meeting centre was not a Muslim association and counted very few members of the mosque association in its ranks. There was thus a latent potential for conflict between these two associations given their different interests: one group was primarily focused on the Turkish Muslim field and providing religious services, while another saw the mosque as a focal point for a wider variety of social and cultural activities oriented towards German society in general.
The conflict is also symptomatic of German partial governance. Given that the state cannot assist financially with the construction of a mosque, its funding necessarily had to encourage non-religious activities in a religious building. Paradoxically, it is only when the activities of religious actors are not exclusively religious that state authorities find a way to finance them. These non-religious activities were perceived as forms of German cultural capital that displaced the primary mission of the mosque, leading to a conflict between two different visions of the role that a mosque should fulfill. Moreover, it also set off a generational conflict concerning the desired forms of cultural capital in the mosque, as half the members of the mosque association were senior citizens who considered DITIB’s traditional mix of Turkish nationalism and Turkish cultural capital to be essential in uniting the diaspora and preserving its Turkish identity.
At the same time, the example of Ender Acar, one of the mosque’s two imams, illustrates well that the question of generational conflict and cultural capital is not as straightforward as it seems. Acar, a “very different” imam, who composes Sufi (tasavvuf) music and has released three albums, attracted the attention of the mosque association president due to his artistic talents, which the latter saw as beneficial to the youth and children who attended the mosque (in Ergül 2012). Despite being characterized by German observers as a conservative and a “resolute Turkish patriarch” (Deuter 2011), the mosque president was in fact welcoming of an innovative and artistic approach to reaching younger generations—as long as that approach combined religious capital with Turkish cultural capital, as opposed to the vision promoted by the meeting centre. Of course, such a situation does not preclude cooperation: as the meeting centre director told me, “Before, it was more so the case that the meeting centre had the power, and we decided. And then for a while the mosque […] said ‘no, we decide.’ Now, it’s basically balanced.” For the director, the situation is simple: the two associations “have to work together, like a married couple. [We] live under one roof; [we] have to get along” (Interview, DITIB Duisburg Meeting Centre).
The case of the DITIB central mosque in Duisburg -Marxloh is instructive concerning the potential consequences of the partial governance of the Muslim field in Germany . Despite the general lack of financial resources for religious activities, local actors with sufficient social capital can succeed in securing funds through their professional networks as long as they can recast religion in sociocultural terms. Indeed, given the limited policy options state authorities have in the religious field, their aid may result in an exclusive focus on sociocultural considerations. This approach holds its own perils: the conflict in the Marxloh mosque was primarily with respect to the forms of cultural capital most acceptable in the mosque and its appropriate role in the community. In other words, it was not a conflict over what constituted legitimate religious capital, but rather what cultural capital was legitimate in the Turkish religious field.
3.3 Strasbourg: The Genesis of the Great Mosque
The case of the Great Mosque of Strasbourg (Grande Mosquée de Strasbourg) presents a number of similarities with that of Duisburg . Both mosques are amongst the largest to be built in Western Europe over the last fifteen years and demonstrate the difficulties and challenges that Muslim communities face in their attempts to construct representative and visible places of worship.
The cases differ, however, in the way that partial governance influenced their creation and evolution. The DITIB-Marxloh mosque demonstrated a significant degree of cooperation with local authorities, while in Strasbourg the Great Mosque quickly became the object of local political rivalries. Even more importantly, the Duisburg mosque endured unexpected conflicts as a result of how German and European financial capital was translated into forms of cultural capital that were not readily accepted by the members of the mosque associations. In contrast, the Strasbourg mosque is a striking example of how the limits imposed by partial governance may incite not just local Muslim actors, but even municipal officials to seek out the support of home states in governing local Islamic affairs.
The story of the Strasbourg mosque begins in the early 1990s, when Abdellah Boussouf, a Moroccan national who had recently completed a Ph.D. at the University of Strasbourg, became president of one of the main mosque associations in the city. Boussouf, who had long been a member of a group close to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and was close to Moroccan authorities, was convinced that Strasbourg as capital of Europe, “owed it to itself to possess a mosque worthy of its European stature” (in Edom and Bâ 2008, 12). In 1993, the Socialist mayor of Strasbourg Catherine Trautmann came out in favour of a grande mosquée and over the next years, the first meetings and consultations took place. By 1997, Boussouf had created an association that officially submitted the mosque project to the city the following year.
After numerous rounds of negotiations, the municipal council voted in favour of Boussouf’s project in 2000. However, political pressure forced the interim mayor Roland Ries to accept a separate proposal by Algerian university professor Ali Bouamama as well. According to a member of the local prefecture, Bouamama “really had no project,” but was supported by Robert Grossman and Fabienne Keller, two local centre-right politicians who sought to gain support in the upcoming municipal elections by relying on Muslims of Algerian origin (Interview, French Interior Ministry Z, 7 April 2014, Paris ). Bouamama was presented by these politicians and local media as the symbol of an integrated, “French” Islam, while Boussouf and his association were denounced as fundamentalists who supported a “foreign” Islam (Frégosi 2001).
Keller’s victory in the municipal elections of 2001 furthered this antagonism. The new mayor lay out numerous conditions for delivering the building permit: foreign donations would not be accepted; the mosque had to represent a Republican “French Islam”; and the minaret, a cultural centre, and a third of the prayer space had to be removed. Moreover, the city sent a three-page letter in 2003 that provoked consternation at the national level, demanding that sermons be in French and not Arabic, and that the leaders of the mosque project be more visible in fighting crime (Ternisien 2003). The actions of the municipal government in Strasbourg under Keller show the range of policy tools at the disposal of local authorities in France when they wish to intervene in the religious field, even when they are on the borderline of legality.
The first stone for the mosque was laid in 2004, but the persistent difficulties with the municipality were followed by problems with a contractor in 2008. The return of Socialist Roland Ries as mayor the same year had an immediate positive impact on the project, while the association in charge also elected a new president with a mandate to “finish the construction of the mosque,” put in place a “global strategy,” and “find the funds necessary to keep it running” (Interview, President Strasbourg Mosque, 30 November 2012, Strasbourg). Significant funds were still needed when construction resumed in 2009, but in part thanks to Boussouf , who had been named secretary-general of the Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME) two years before, Morocco was quick to respond. With this funding assured and a favourable local government back in place, the mosque was finally completed and officially opened its doors in 2012.
In the end, the mosque cost over 10 million euros. Public funding was shared between the city of Strasbourg (858,400 euros), the departmental general council (686,500 euros), and the regional council (685,500 euros), which together accounted for 22% of the total cost. The local community and fund-raising efforts over the years had generated approximately 25% of the total, while foreign funding ended up covering the remainder, with the lion’s share coming from the Moroccan Habous ministry (3,934,000 euros), followed by Saudi Arabia (900,000 euros) and Kuwait (500,000 euros) (Grande mosquée de Strasbourg 2012). On the website of the Habous ministry, the article dedicated to the Great Mosque proudly states that it was built “largely thanks to Morocco ” and the “significant contribution […] decided by His Majesty King Mohammed VI , Commander of the Faithful” (Ministère des Habous et des Affaires Islamiques 2012).
Morocco ’s contribution to the mosque is not, however, as self-evident as it seems. In fact, Moroccan authorities were initially not in favour of the project back when it was proposed during the 1990s. According to a member of the French interior ministry, it was entirely “Boussouf’s project, to be sure, and Trautmann was alone on it,” given that the interior ministry was skeptical and Moroccan authorities were not interested. This was because the idea for the project came about during the time that Moroccan King Hassan II had adopted a hostile position towards the integration of his subjects abroad, “and the Great Mosque of Strasbourg was a sign of that integration” (Interview, French Interior Ministry Z).
The ascension of Mohammed VI as new king in 1999 signalled an important change. According to the same interior ministry official, for Mohammed VI , the Strasbourg mosque was a “symbol of European Islam,” that stood out thanks to the favourable position of the local municipal authorities (at the time). In order to discuss further the details of the project, a representative of the city of Strasbourg travelled to Morocco in 2000 with a mandate to secure the support of Moroccan authorities. Meetings were held with the heads of the Habous ministry and the FHII, as well as with one of the king’s counsellors. The main goal was to propose a particular type of funding to Moroccan authorities, modelled after that which had been used to fund the European Parliament, and in doing so ensure that the mosque would be able to have the financial resources needed for its construction (Interview, French Interior Ministry Z).
The role of public authorities here is even more remarkable than with the DITIB mosque in Duisburg . While in the German case, favourable municipal authorities had helped to secure funding from the EU and Land levels, in Strasbourg local governmental actors took it upon themselves to directly approach the Moroccan state so as to negotiate on the mosque’s behalf. This example underscores once again how interstate cooperation in the domain of Islamic religious affairs is not only grudgingly accepted by French and German state authorities, but is at times actively pursued by receiving state actors.
The Great Mosque of Strasbourg
(From left to right, top to bottom: the exterior of the mosque; the interior of the main prayer space; the plaques in French (left) and in Arabic (right) that hang on either side of the main entrance; the finely crafted minbar and zellij tiles behind it; the Qur’ans donated by the Moroccan Mohammed VI Foundation, written in Moroccan-style Arabic script and beginning with a preface by “His Majesty the King of Morocco […] Commander of the Faithful”; and a road sign integrating the mosque into the local urban landscape. Source Author)
The opening ceremony for the Great Mosque of Strasbourg was attended by 1200 people representing the local community and religious groups, different levels of the French state, the EU , and the foreign states that had supported the mosque. However, in Valls’ speech (2012), thanks are given to everyone except Morocco , Kuwait , and Saudi Arabia , though the representatives of these states stood right next to him at the ceremony. In contrast, Valls repeated the term “French Islam” (Islam de France) 14 times during his speech, and he exhorted this French Islam to “take up its responsibilities and organize itself so as to take care of real problems [together] with the state” (Valls 2012). Valls’ silence concerning home states and other foreign Muslim states is as symbolic as it is ironic: while he emphasized the role played by immigrants and young French Muslims in “building” French Islam, the mosque he stood next to was built largely thanks to foreign donations.
The president of the Great Mosque was well aware of the political suspicions surrounding foreign funding in my interview with him. He highlighted that the process had been “transparent from the beginning” and that the request for funding had been sent “to all Muslim countries without distinction”; most importantly, he emphasized the mosque association had decided that it would not accept funds that came with conditions. The countries that answered, “that didn’t ask questions, they didn’t impose any conditions on the funding, were Morocco , Saudi Arabia , and Kuwait ,” and today the mosque is “a French mosque, a European mosque, governed by French laws and managed by people of French nationality,” with no risk of foreign interference (Interview, President Strasbourg Mosque). Despite the mosque president’s comments, transnational forms of religious governance do not need to be coercive: the funding and other donations accepted from the Moroccan state are in and of themselves elements that colour the Islam presented at the Great Mosque . Morocco also pays the salary of one of the mosque’s two imams, whom the Habous ministry sent for a four-year period in 2008 (Interview, President Strasbourg Mosque).
However, the most relevant insight that can be drawn from the case of Strasbourg does not concern the involvement of Morocco in religious affairs abroad, but rather the fundamental incongruity between the discourse and behaviour of French state authorities. Due in large party to partial governance, the multiple levels of the French state end up simultaneously denouncing and soliciting home state involvement in local religious affairs. This increasingly convoluted stance reflects the state’s inability to effectively govern religious affairs as an object of public policy, as well as its even more perplexing tendency to aggressively affirm its secularity while claiming the right to decide what constitutes “national Islam.”
4 Conclusion
Public authorities in both France and Germany have multiple opportunities to intervene in the Muslim religious field, thanks to the simple fact that religion affects a wide range of social issues. Nevertheless, the policy instruments that receiving state authorities have at their disposal do not directly address religion, but rather its derivative aspects that can be understood through other domains of public policy. This “partial governance” of religious affairs is especially in contrast to systems of religious governance in Morocco and Turkey, where religion exists as a distinct policy domain and administrative category within the state apparatus.
The recent drive of French and German governments to “nationalize” or “institutionalize” Islam has occurred in response to concerns regarding national security and immigrant integration and has led to the creation of instances of dialogue and representation in both countries. The CFCM and the Islamkonferenz have both had positive effects in terms of identifying problems and developing policy measures capable of addressing issues that affect Muslims on a daily basis. However, they have also shown the limitations of these initiatives, whether due to the complicated degree of coordination needed between multiple levels of government or because of the many political interests that are involved.
A broader consequence of partial governance in the religious field is that despite the many areas in which French and German state authorities do have the capacity to intervene, there will always be others where they will be at a loss. Even if state authorities in both countries were able to help Islam “catch up” with the other established religious groups, they cannot create ex nihilo a set of religious authorities considered legitimate by Muslims. In cities such as Duisburg and Strasbourg , the genesis and development of mosque projects highlight the influence that different policy instruments can have at different moments, as well as the consequences of their absence or misuse.
Receiving state authorities have limited options for taking action in the religious field, which leads to the ultimate paradox of policies that aim to nationalize Islam: due to the lack of local religious capital and the prevailing state suspicion of many local Muslim actors, French and German state authorities voluntarily decide to increase their level of cooperation with Morocco and Turkey concerning religious affairs. While not secret, the role of receiving states in promoting this form of interstate cooperation is not common knowledge and stands in stark contrast to the official discourse of politicians and state officials in France and Germany who criticize the involvement of foreign states in local religious affairs. The incongruity between discourse and action is nowhere more striking than with regard to the process of sending imams abroad, which has been thoroughly institutionalized and normalized in the bilateral framework of diplomatic relations, and which is the topic of the next chapter.
Note
- 1.
The Central Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland, ZMD) brings together Muslims of many different ethnicities, many of whom are close to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Association of Islamic Cultural Centres (Verband der Islamischen Kulturzentren, VIKZ ) is the federation of the Süleymancılar in Germany .