Since the turn of the millennium, Turkish and Moroccan religious policies abroad have undergone a series of important changes. The catalysts for these changes have come from all sides: internal political developments in both countries, especially Turkey; French and German policies aimed at “nationalizing” Islam; the fallout from Islamic terrorist attacks in Western Europe and North America; and the coming of age of a new generation of French and German Muslim citizens.
This chapter focuses on the principal initiatives that the Moroccan and Turkish states have promoted in their religious fields abroad over the last 20 years. I analyze the interests that have motivated these developments as well as the way that they have been received and conditioned by both French and German authorities, and classify them under three main themes. The first addresses the question of religious radicalization, and how it serves to motivate and justify state intervention in the religious field that goes beyond national security concerns and results in the delegitimization of non-state religious actors. The second concerns home state attempts to control the production of “correct” Islamic knowledge through the training of new state-approved religious authorities. Finally, the third examines the consequences of home state religious policies for transnational Muslim fields, with a focus on the tensions provoked abroad by political developments at home, as well as the ambiguous role played by forms of cultural capital and national Islamic traditions in the religious fields abroad.
1 Negotiating Change: Securitization and National Interests in the Muslim Field
1.1 The Securitization of Islam in France and Germany
The idea that Islam constitutes a threat in Western Europe comes with a great deal of historical baggage (Said 1979). It conjures up the picture of civilizational clashes, which has been bolstered in recent years by 9/11 and the horrific ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks, as well as the increasing popularity of far-right nationalist politicians. Though this book does not focus on Islamic terrorist activities, the national security considerations that they raise have had a deep-seated impact on the governance of Muslim fields in Western Europe. The framing of Islam as a security problem, or in other words its “securitization ” (Cesari 2009), colours how state agencies understand developments in the Muslim field and the actions they take in response. In turn, the perceived danger of radical Islamic fundamentalism constitutes a trump card for home states , who know that receiving states will be more receptive to interstate cooperation if they believe it to be in their own national security interests.
For interior ministries and intelligence agencies, there is a level of cooperation concerning criminal and terrorist activities that operates on a different register from regular diplomatic relations. As one Turkish diplomat in Berlin recounted, police and secret services in both Turkey and Germany frequently cooperate and have their own channels of communication that bypass diplomatic services (Interview, Turkish Embassy Germany, 7 April 2011, Berlin ). Nevertheless, scandals such as the DITIB espionage affair in 2016 can lead to tensions between erstwhile allies at all levels and severely hamper bilateral cooperation. The same is true between home states such as Algeria and Morocco , where police cooperation before 2000 was hindered due to mutual distrust (Laskier 2008).
The head of cabinet for the minister of the Moroccan community living abroad related that Morocco authorities try to explain to Western European governments that “it’s better to deal with the state when it comes to religious questions and Morocco,” because the Moroccan state has a system that is tolerant and transparent. However, and more menacingly, “if we aren’t involved with you […] there will always be other people willing to do it instead of us. Nature doesn’t like a vacuum. And what those people are going to do, well we don’t know. So all the more reason to work together” (Interview, MCMRE , 9 June 2011, Rabat). The majority of my home state interviewees, no matter whether diplomats or religious actors, all underscored this point: if home states are not in charge of religious services abroad, someone else will be, and there is no assurance that they will share the same interests as French and German authorities.
A former Turkish ambassador to France similarly highlighted this point while he expressed his frustration at the French state’s attempts to limit the number of imams sent by Turkey. If there are fewer Diyanet imams in France, that does not mean that there are fewer mosques; to the contrary, these mosques will take matters into their own hands, and then “it’s as if the imamate becomes an out of control institution, and that turns into an extraordinary problem.” On the other hand, the Diyanet is “under the control of the embassy […], these imams won’t carry out any activities against you, against laïcité . That’s why if you deal with these issues with the embassy as your interlocutor, it will be much more to your advantage” (Interview, Former Turkish Ambassador, 23 November 2011, Istanbul). Home state authorities thus present interstate cooperation to Western European governments as an indirect means to control the local Muslim field, while simultaneously casting doubt on the interests of all non-state religious actors.
Returning to Morocco , there is a visible agreement between Habous officials who maintain that there is “no extremism” amongst the delegations sent abroad (Interview, Habous Liaison Official, 16 June 2011, Rabat) and German diplomats who stated that they were not worried about extremists, because the king “has no interest that there be any problems here” (Interview, German Embassy Morocco, 5 June 2011, Rabat). Similarly in the other direction, the religious affairs counsellor of the Diyanet in Germany found it “unrealistic” that the German police might run background checks on the Diyanet imams, because “they trust us. When we know something, we don’t let those people come here.” Moreover, he pointed out that Turkish authorities are better equipped than German ones to check and evaluate such questions (Interview, Diyanet Religious Counsellor Germany, 28 September 2011, Cologne ). This element of self-policing goes beyond the imams and extends to the mosque community itself. A top DITIB representative in Germany stated that “our eyes are open,” and if an individual were to be spreading any kind of extremism, both Turkish officials and local DITIB members would intervene (Interview, DITIB Representative, 23 March 2011, Cologne ).
Radical Islamist figures have at times benefitted from asylum in Western European countries, such as Cemaleddin Kaplan in Germany or “Londonistan” preachers like Abu Qatada; however, following 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks these figures have come under heightened scrutiny and many have been incarcerated or deported. Western European officials nevertheless face a daunting task as they view the Muslim field: they are expected to differentiate between potential terrorists and fundamentalist yet non-violent believers without necessarily having sufficient linguistic or contextual knowledge of the religious and political fields in which these actors operate. As a result, they may simply decide to rely on home states , which are presumably better prepared to make this decision. However, the task becomes increasingly complicated if local religious actors are engaged in movements that challenge the regime back home, meaning that home states may perceive both sets of actors as similarly dangerous though the latter may be non-violent and pro-democratic. Groups tied to Milli Görüş and the Muslim Brotherhood have frequently elicited such ambiguity, which is compounded by the fact that their leaders may find themselves in prison or in power depending on the political situation back home.
In the case of Morocco , the diplomat in charge of religious affairs in France asserted that political Islam is not in the interests of France and “is fought against by everyone”: moderate Muslims and Western European authorities alike, because they “see in this vision of things a danger for economic, political, and geopolitical interests” (Interview, Moroccan Religious Counsellor, 23 May 2011, Paris ). This perspective goes beyond an understanding of security threats as terrorist or criminal activities. Political Islam, which in the case of this interviewee refers to Al ʿAdl wal Iḥsān , represents a more generalized threat that cannot be combatted solely by police surveillance and coercive state force. Instead, the danger posed by those who do not follow the “middle way” (juste milieu/wasaṭiyya) must be controlled or co-opted by the Makhzen and not given the chance to present themselves as the true defenders of Islam in opposition to the state.
At the Habous ministry, the religious field is regulated by an established legal framework. Religion is supposed to be neutral, as well as codified, so that when the ministry intervenes, “it’s to put things in order and not leave these highly symbolic places to those who have neither the qualification nor expertise.” The ministry is responsible for combatting religious extremists such as Salafists and others who are seen as political actors who instrumentalize religion for their own goals. However, the ministry’s role is not to act as a police force or to “control from a distance,” but rather to “enlighten” (Interview, Habous Cabinet Member I, 30 May 2011, Rabat). Similarly, the Diyanet’s head of foreign affairs highlights that Western European religious fields are characterized by their lack of religious experts, which leads to a dangerous vacuum where civil society associations take up the task. From the perspective of Turkish history, the involvement of these non-state actors is an “unsuitable practice,” because religious questions are a “domain for specialists (uzmanlık alanı) (Interview, Diyanet Foreign Affairs Director A, 17 March 2009, Ankara). Both religious officials reflect a perspective that goes well beyond anti-terrorism policies and police surveillance of criminal activity. According to their statements, the Muslim religious field can only be securitized by correct knowledge, which only state-approved (and employed) religious actors are capable of providing. Moreover, both display a general suspicion of non-state religious actors, who are portrayed as both unpredictable and uncontrollable.
The securitization of Islam in France and Germany has a wide range of consequences for all Muslims who live in both countries, due to the stigmatization and generalized suspicion that have accompanied the perception of Islam as both a problem and a threat to public order. On a more abstract level, however, it ties into a larger strategy employed by states in the face of the potential risks posed by transnational non-state actors: by increasing their cooperation, home states extend their governance of religious fields beyond their own borders, while receiving states can rely on foreign policy in order to gain an indirect means of controlling parts of their own Muslim fields. The perception of Islam as a security issue facilitates cooperation between police and intelligence services in order to restrict the field of action of non-state actors. Yet it goes even further by implicitly inviting the intervention of home state religious institutions, which are charged with the task of “enlightening” citizens abroad and ensuring that their state-approved version of Islam has the broadest reach possible. Recent developments in the case of imams sent to France demonstrate the enduring influence of this mindset, despite French authorities’ misgivings concerning home state involvement.
1.2 Export Imams Revisited
The religious activities of the Moroccan and Turkish states abroad aim first of all to reinforce the legitimacy of state-approved (or employed) religious authorities in the Muslim fields where their citizens and their descendants reside. This constitutes a goal in and of itself, but also in opposition to rival non-state religious groups that have progressively succeeded in establishing themselves amongst Muslim diaspora communities in foreign countries. The increased attention that both Morocco and Turkey have brought to bear on their religious fields abroad since the beginning of the 2000s is exemplified by the cases considered in this section. Moreover, these cases demonstrate the potential for cooperation and tension between home states and receiving states as national interests evolve concerning transnational religious fields, especially with regard to the generational change that involves young French and German Muslims in both countries today.
1.2.1 Moroccan Long-Term Imams
In 2008, France and Morocco concluded an agreement that established the framework for Morocco to send a delegation of 30 imams to France for a period of four years. The agreement took the form of an exchange of official letters between the French ambassador in Morocco and the Moroccan Minister of Habous and Islamic Affairs, between August and October 2008, following discussions that were held between the two states earlier the same year.
In the French ambassador’s letter, the Habous ministry is asked to present a list of candidates who, if “accepted by the competent authorities in France,” will be authorized to work as “Muslim religious ministers” under the authority of the Ministry of Habous. It stipulates that these imams are to be admitted for a “maximum period” of four years, echoing the Turkish case, and enrolled in a higher education diploma programme that covers the basics of laïcité , which French state officials and academics had organized for imams at—of all places—the Catholic University of Paris. Finally, the agreement leaves the door open for the procedure to be continued in the future (Ministère des Affaires Étrangères 2008).
The first step for this agreement came from the Rally of Muslims in France (Rassemblement des musulmans de France, hereafter the Rally), which had carried out an informal survey and had determined that beyond the Ramadan imams there was additional need for imams across the country (Interview, Rally President I, 9 October 2012, Paris ). After agreeing on the initial number of 30 imams with the Habous ministry, bilateral negotiations began with French authorities. The former president of the Great Mosque of Strasbourg , who had recently been appointed to the CCME, was the person who effectively led the discussions and who submitted the idea because he was well situated in both France and Morocco and had good contacts with members of the interior ministry (Interview, CCME Secretary-General, 9 June 2011, Rabat). French authorities responded with a degree of ambivalence: on the one hand, the backing of the Moroccan state meant that the 30 imams came with the guarantee that they would already have been screened and would stay under home state supervision. On the other hand, the idea that Morocco now intended to start imitating Turkey and Algeria with regard to sending imams was looked upon critically by French authorities, who insisted that Morocco provide financial support for them and included the obligation for them to attend the diploma programme on laicïté (Interview, BCC Counsellor, 17 September 2010, Paris). Moroccan officials, conversely, saw the precedent that had been established with Turkey and Algeria as a justification for their sending long-term imams abroad as well (Interview, Habous Cabinet Member I).
The Habous ministry established a set of criteria for these 30 imams with the goal of “choosing the best”: they were required to have completed a university degree, be competent in the Islamic sciences, and know a little French (Interview, CCME Secretary-General). The imams’ contracts were equally for four years with the Habous ministry, meaning that they would be “employees (salariés) of the ministry,” which provided a guarantee for all parties involved. They would be paid a minimum of 1200 euros a month, while the associations that manage the mosques would be in charge of finding housing (Interview, Habous Cabinet Member I). They would also be able to receive social security benefits from the Caisse d’Assurance Vieillesse, Invalidité et Maladie des Cultes (CAVIMAC), a health insurance and retirement fund specifically designed for religious ministers of all faiths in France.
Though seemingly an incidental detail, being able to sign up for social security benefits has proven to be a major complication for Diyanet imams because a work contract needs to have been established between the mosque association and the imam ahead of time. Conversely, Diyanet imams do not have any official contract with the DITIB mosque association to which they are appointed, precisely because their contract is with the Turkish state, which is responsible for paying their salaries. In the case of the 30 Habous imams, however, this problem was resolved by a clever manoeuvre: the Rally was made the official employer of the imams, while the Habous ministry transferred the funds necessary for their salaries to the Rally’s accounts. It is for this reason that a consul-general described the process to me as the Habous ministry “making the imams available” to the Rally, similar to the procedure used for Ramadan imams (Interview, Moroccan Consul-General, 15 March 2012, Marseille ). The Habous ministry’s activity report describes the initiative as contracting out 30 of the “most highly qualified imams to the RMF […] with the aim of strengthening the supervision (al-tā’ṭīr) of religious affairs in the mosques that are looked over by the Moroccan community” (Ministère des Habous et des Affaires Islamiques 2009, 131). Consequently, a contract was also drawn up between the Rally and the individual imams, whereby the former becomes responsible for paying their salaries (with Habous ministry funds) and determining the mosque to which they are to be appointed.
Thanks to the cooperation with French authorities, the visa requests and residency permits were delivered without problem, which was equally the case for those imams who left with their families. The imams hold a “visitor” residency permit for the four years, thanks to negotiations with the French interior ministry, which thereafter gave the necessary instructions to the préfets. The bilateral state discussions between diplomats, ministry employees, and religious officials covered all the necessary details concerning the immigration status, housing, benefits, and work contracts in advance, so as to make sure that these imams would not be in a “position of absolute instability” that characterizes the situation of most imams in France (Interview, CCME Secretary-General). During my visits to the Great Mosque of Strasbourg in 2012 and the Bilal mosque of Clichy-Sous-Bois in 2014, this was indeed the case: in both instances, the mosque’s main imam was a member of the Habous ministry delegation who was paid by the Rally, while the local mosque association provided housing (Interview, President Strasbourg Mosque, 30 November 2012, Strasbourg). In the case of Clichy-Sous-Bois, though the association had to cover rent costs, the possibility of having an imam practically for free was so enticing that they “came to an agreement” with the former imam and replaced him with the imam sent from the Habous ministry (Interview, Bilal Mosque President, 29 May 2014, Clichy-Sous-Bois).
The explanation for why the initiative to send 30 long-term imams occurred for the first time in 2008—and not earlier for instance—was rarely directly answered in the interviews. The majority of my respondents simply spoke of the important need for more imams or stated that such a demand had not existed before. Nevertheless, it is clear that since King Mohammed VI launched the restructuration of the religious field in Morocco , there has been a succession of major developments concerning the religious field abroad. The interstate agreement with France on long-term imams can thus been seen as part of a coordinated strategy directed towards the religious field abroad that includes the consolidation of the Rally in France as the main Muslim association tied to Morocco, as well as the creation of the European Council of Moroccan Ulema (CEOM) at the European level (see below). For the Habous ministry, France’s acceptance of the long-term imams also responded to the time-honoured tradition of distrusting non-state religious actors: “For France, the problem posed was either we let the mosques deal with these problems—and in that case we’ll have imams who are a little extremist, who have anti-Western tendencies, and who influence the youth. […] Or, we decide to solve this problem by speaking to the [home] countries,” who are reliable interlocutors, with whom conventions can be established (Interview, Habous Cabinet Member I). In other words, from the Moroccan perspective the logic of securitization explained best France’s acquiescence despite their initial hesitation. Leaving mosques to themselves is presented as a danger capable of leading to rising extremist tendencies amongst Muslim youth, thus providing a supplementary justification for home state intervention.
The structural organization of this initiative also demonstrates how the Moroccan state has shifted responsibility to Moroccan Muslim associations abroad instead of exclusively relying on the diplomatic networks of the state. The network has expanded to include federative associations in different countries, such as the Rally in France , the Central Council of Moroccans in Germany (ZMaD) in Germany, the Rally of Muslims in Belgium (RMB), and the Islamic Cultural Council of Catalonia in Spain. These actors are themselves aware of the change and mention how “one feels that [the Moroccan state] is trying to organize from Europe, from those structures” instead of from the consulates or embassies (Interview, ZMaD Representative, 15 July 2013, Paris ). Moreover, these associations are run and presided over by local religious actors, and not home state officials, as is the case in the network of DITIBs and Diyanet foundations.
Nevertheless, the linguistic abilities of the long-term imams have posed a significant problem. Very few of the 30 Habous imams were capable of speaking French, which meant that only four or five were able to follow the diploma programme in laïcité at the Catholic University of Paris (Personal Communication, BCC Counsellor, 1 June 2011, Paris ). When the four-year term was coming to an end, the Habous ministry decided to renew the initiative; however, the religious counsellor at the Moroccan embassy personally intervened to ensure that the imams would be recruited in France and could speak French. Along with linguistic capabilities, these imams would know the “habits and customs of the country” and be capable of providing “the discourse that needs, that demands, the youth of the second or third generations.” The counsellor acknowledged that there is “indeed a problem for the future for the Muslims of France, who are now French” in that they “need a discourse that is inherent to their situation and answers that are inherent to their situation” (Interview, Moroccan Religious Counsellor).
The Rally president highlighted the same points, calling this second group of 30 imams the “Francophone imams,” while mentioning that they would need to prove that they were legally residing in the country, with a residency permit or French nationality. The third step would be for the Rally to establish its own training institute for imams (Interview, Rally President I). The Rally began a campaign to recruit this second group of imams in France, and in 2012, I conducted an interview with an imam of Moroccan background who had applied to be hired within this programme. Nevertheless, the replacement of the Rally by the Union of French Mosques (Union des mosquées de France, hereafter the Union) as the main partner of the Moroccan state in 2013 has had a direct impact on these projects, which have not made any progress since. Not only have the long-term imams passed under the control of the Union, but the loss of home state symbolic and financial support has meant that the Rally’s plans for an imam training institute have been put indefinitely on hold.
Morocco ’s initiative to send a group of long-term imams to France may not have overjoyed some French authorities—especially when they discovered that the majority could not speak French—but it was nevertheless supported by the French state. Moreover, the delegation of 30 well-educated and home state -paid imams was readily welcomed by Moroccan mosque associations, and in cases such as the Bilal mosque of Clichy-Sous-Bois , even led to the replacement of the former imam with a newly arrived Habous employee from Morocco. Perhaps even more strikingly, the organization and implementation of this project took place entirely independently of the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM) and the official discourse on nationalizing Islam in France . Instead, the process leading up to the interstate agreement shows how diplomatic and bilateral channels of communication continue to remain central to how the French state approaches the governance of Islamic affairs, while the development of this initiative demonstrates Morocco’s capacity to adapt its religious policy instruments in order to increase its influence over the Moroccan Muslim field abroad.
1.2.2 The 2010 Franco-Turkish “Declaration of Intent”
France is one of the only states to have established a quota for how many Diyanet imams are permitted in the country. As a result, the number of imams has become the subject of numerous negotiations between the two states since at least 1991, which have taken the form of verbal agreements, letter exchanges, and joint declarations. Most recently, an agreement in 2005 and a formal “declaration of intent” in 2010 have provided the framework for French and Turkish cooperation in the religious field.
A first agreement concerning religious affairs was concluded in 1991 (Godard and Taussig 2007). In the years thereafter, the subject came to constitute one amongst many issues of both states’ yearly bilateral consular talks , but only in the last decade has it taken a more official shape in the form of an accord and a joint declaration. After rising from a total of 50 to 71 imams during the 1990s, a new agreement was negotiated in 2005 that permitted the Diyanet to raise the number of its long-term religious officials in France by ten per year until 2010, thus arriving at a total of 121. The 2005 agreement provided the framework for Franco-Turkish cooperation in religious affairs for the next five years and came on the heels of years of bilateral negotiations.
According to a French diplomat who followed the issue at the embassy in Ankara, the renegotiation began when the Turkish ambassador formally asked the then French Minister of the Interior to raise the quota. The French minister agreed to augment the total number by a maximum of 50 imams on the condition that they be able to speak French and referred the issue to the French embassy in Ankara to work out the details. According to my interviewee, there was actually not much work to be done: the diplomat was in contact with the head of the Diyanet’s foreign affairs department and because the main issues had already been agreed upon by higher authorities, there was no need to negotiate. The Diyanet official had apparently attempted to ask for more than 50, but the diplomat indicated that the number constituted a “red line.” The condition that the imams speak French was to be solved by providing three-month-long French courses at the Institut Français in Ankara (described in greater detail in Chapter 6), paid for by both France and Turkey and beginning in 2008. The Diyanet official had mentioned the precedent of the six-month courses that were organized with German authorities, but the French did not have the necessary funds to pay for a more extensive programme (Interview, French Foreign Ministry, 11 May 2009, Paris ).
Another important aspect of the 2005 agreement concerned the Diyanet’s short-term imams. In order to circumvent the quota, the Diyanet had been “illicitly” bringing imams into France on tourist visas, much to the consternation of French authorities. According to the diplomat, when confronted on this issue the Diyanet countered that the personnel were needed, so the agreement in a sense officialized an ongoing practice. Nevertheless, the diplomat gave voice to the French state’s disapproval by stating that there would be consequences if the Diyanet continued exceeding the quota.
A summary of this agreement that I received from the French interior ministry includes the points mentioned above, along with a few others: the Diyanet was to speed up the establishment of a scholarship programme for young Turks living in France in order to study Islamic theology in Turkey and then encourage Turkish associations to hire them after their studies; a follow-up committee was to be formed between the French interior ministry, the Turkish embassy in Paris , and the leaders of the DITIB in France; and the Diyanet committed to sponsor a partnership between the University of Strasbourg and a theology faculty in Turkey so as to create an institution of higher Islamic learning in France. Finally, as an annex to the agreement, the final point mentions that “France will grant one-year residency permits to 29 temporary [Turkish] state employees who are present today in mosques but who must return every three months to Turkey for their stay in France to remain legal”—referring once again to the Diyanet’s short-term religious officials (Interview, BCC Counsellor).
The next development occurred in 2010 with the establishment of the most formal agreement to date: a “declaration of intent” (déclaration d’intention/niyet deklarasoynu), that was signed by the French ambassador to Turkey and the director-general of consular affairs for the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The main subject of the declaration concerns yet another rise in the “delegation of religious officials authorized to reside in France” from 121 to 151, by notably including 30 short-term imams (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti and République française 2010). However, French authorities included three conditions. The first concerned the “appointment of religious officials of French nationality” by the Diyanet in France and calls for their education to take place not just in Turkey but in France as well, echoing a point already included in the 2005 agreement. The Diyanet’s religious counsellor expressed agreement with this condition, but pointed out that “we’d already started the preparations for this much earlier,” referring to the Diyanet’s international theology programme that had begun four years before the declaration (Interview, Diyanet Religious Counsellor France, 19 October 2011, Paris ).
The declaration’s second condition is to progressively reduce the number of Diyanet imams and replace them with religious officials trained in France. Nevertheless, this issue continues to be problematic: on the one hand, even the creation of “French” Islam seems to necessitate cooperation with foreign religious authorities; on the other, the declaration included no concrete plan as to how or where these “imams made in France” were to be trained. However, according to the vast majority of my interviewees, the answer to this problem was to have been resolved by the DITIB theology faculty in Strasbourg , which had been evoked in the 2005 agreement as well (Interview, BCC Counsellor). Numerous Diyanet officials echoed this sentiment and explained to me that the Strasbourg Theology Faculty was “fruit of that agreement” and gave the possibility to train imams in France (Interview, Diyanet Director Turks Abroad). Consequently, it is all the more surprising that the faculty raised so much suspicion amongst French authorities and was unceremoniously shut down after only three years of operation (see below).
The third and final condition is that the Diyanet (“the sending authority,” in the language of the declaration) systemically provide both social and medical insurance to the families of religious officials sent to France. As mentioned above, the lack of a work contract with a local association has been a cause of numerous headaches for Diyanet imams and their families, who in the past have not received their residency permits because they did not have the proper French documentation showing they had social or health coverage. The declaration concludes by stating that the length of stay may be extended from “four times one year to five times one year” (though in practice this still poses problems), while presenting the agreement as part of an ongoing process that “will be examined during the next consular meetings.”
The 2010 declaration of intent, just like the 2005 accord that preceded it, is a reflection of the continuity that exists in the negotiations between Turkey and France concerning Islamic affairs in the French Muslim field. At the same time, it is a moment of crystallization that requires the involvement of multiple state and government officials, which, in the view of one French diplomat, could rely on a certain “political dynamism” resulting from a “convergence of interests” (Interview, French Embassy Turkey, 14 November 2011, Ankara). Even the idea of reducing the number of imams appealed to both states. Turkish diplomats did not hesitate to point out that sending imams is “unnatural” and “not a long-term solution,” but that “it’s the receiving states that ask us to send imams so as not to leave Turkish Muslim communities in the hands of self-designated imams” (Interview, Turkish Embassy France ).
The idea that the current situation is untenable, or at least that “export imams” will be replaced by locally born and raised religious authorities, has been around for decades. Nevertheless, contrary to the ever-increasing influence of Turkish and Moroccan state religious policies abroad, I found this discourse to be surprisingly widespread amongst my interviewees from both countries. In the case of Morocco , the high financial costs of providing religious services abroad were mentioned by diplomats and religious bureaucrats alike. In the words of one diplomat, an imam sent to France costs the state ten times more than usual and “Morocco’s not a Gulf country, we don’t have any petrodollars!” (Interview, Moroccan Religious Counsellor). Indeed, it’s with the “money of the Moroccan taxpayer that we send [imams] to supervise European and French Islam” and every imam sent abroad is one less for the 42,000 mosques back home (Interview, CCME Secretary-General). Turkish officials similarly believe that given the declining numbers of Turkish citizens abroad “with time [the number of imams] will gradually diminish” (Interview, Turkish Embassy Germany, 7 April 2011, Berlin ). The Diyanet’s representative similarly mentioned that having over 800 imams in Germany is “cumbersome” for Turkey and that the goal is to reduce instead of raising the number of religious personnel abroad (Interview, Diyanet Religious Counsellor Germany).
Nevertheless, Diyanet officials realize that in the short-term there are important political considerations that condition agreements such as the 2010 declaration of intent. The French state’s strict approach and quota are perceived as partly directed towards North African Muslim countries and at achieving a balance between these states and their communities in France . Most importantly, France “does not want there to be a precedent. They don’t want Turkey to constitute an example for other Islamic countries, which would lead to them saying: yes we want two or three hundred imams from Morocco or Tunisia” (Interview, Diyanet Religious Counsellor Germany). In light of the French interior ministry’s misgivings concerning long-term Moroccan imams, as well as Morocco’s use of Turkey as an example to justify the new imams, this assessment appears quite plausible. Consequently, the potential tensions that arise regarding interstate cooperation in governing religious affairs are not restricted to bilateral relations and multiple foreign policy considerations may be at play in what appears to be an isolated decision.
The cases of the 30 Moroccan long-term imams and the renegotiated agreements on Diyanet imams in France show how both home states continue to succeed in implementing their policy instruments abroad. Moreover, even in the face of occasional resistance from receiving state authorities, they have managed to emphasize the shared interests and benefits of interstate cooperation in the religious field by raising the spectre of uncontrollable non-state religious actors. The Diyanet even managed to continue sending its short-term imams with service passports to France on three-month tourist visas, despite the disapproval of French authorities, and then obtain official status for them in the next round of bilateral state negotiations.
At the same time, the Turkish and Moroccan states are not interested in indefinitely paying for religious services abroad, and both have been taking steps towards assuring the permanency of their status as a legitimate religious reference through other initiatives, such as the Moroccan CEOM or the Diyanet’s international theology programme . Indeed, it would be paradoxical to argue that reducing the number of Diyanet imams represents an achievement for French negotiators when they were the ones who asked states like Morocco and Turkey to send imams in the first place. Finally, the fact that neither state is hostile to the idea proves that alternative venues of influence exist.
2 Expertise and “Correct” Islam: Religious Authorities and Control of the Field
The legitimacy of a religious actor depends on the kinds of capital he or she possesses (social , religious , symbolic, cultural , financial ) and how effective those kinds of capital are in the religious field. By adopting a theoretical perspective on different forms of capital, I aim to advance a central argument of this book: the ultimate goal of home state religious institutions is not to forcibly control the religious field, but rather to define which kinds of capital are necessary to be considered a legitimate religious authority. In doing so, home states privilege a legal-rational understanding of religious authority, which ultimately serves to reinforce the position of state religious institutions in the Muslim field.
The key words here are expertise and professionalization. My interviews with diplomats and religious officials alike show that there is a firm and generalized belief that radicalization, fundamentalism, and Islamic terrorism, all result from a lack of religious education and are the product of self-proclaimed imams. The religious field thus seems to have an inherently dangerous quality if not supervised by qualified individuals. As expressed by one Moroccan diplomat, Morocco reaches agreements with different states “in order to make sure that religious affairs are well supervised (bien encadré), that the people who are preaching are professionals, experts, because if not there’s a danger of abuses (dérive)” (Interview, Moroccan Consul-General). Another Moroccan diplomat echoed this point of view: “‘self-taught’ imams, you never really know what they’re going to say, do; moderate Islam, that’s the Moroccan tendency” (Interview, Moroccan Vice-Consul, 15 March 2012, Marseille ).
The image of the uncontrollable self-taught and self-proclaimed imam in Western Europe provides a convenient foil for the professional and well-trained religious officials of the Turkish and Moroccan states. Frégosi (2004) speaks of competition between three new figures in the French Muslim field: the “social counsellor” imam, the Islamic legal expert, and the charismatic speaker/activist. State-approved imams correspond to both the first two categories due to their legal-rational understanding of religious authority and are contrasted with the charismatic speakers, who are denounced for their lack of proper erudition and ostensibly politicized view of Islam.
The lack of professional religious training is emphasized by a former foreign affairs director of the Diyanet, who uses this criterion to discredit the claims of other Turkish Muslim organizations to religious legitimacy: “Milli Görüş, the Süleymancılar , etc., now, are they capable of talking about religion? In my opinion, they are not. Why? Because when you look at their organizations, at their association statutes, at who’s leading them, they aren’t religious scholars (din adamı), they aren’t qualified as theologians. It’s a striking phenomenon” (Interview, Diyanet Foreign Affairs Director). The same official went on to make a comparison I heard multiple times in different interviews, asking rhetorically if he could be at the head of a sports organization if he knew nothing about sports and could not even run. Home state religious officials such as the director admit readily that establishing religious authorities in Europe is not easy; however, in their perspective non-state religious actors distort the very definition of a religious authority.
Since Ali Bardakoğlu became Diyanet president in 2003—and in a similar fashion since Ahmed Toufiq became Minister of Habous and Islamic Affairs in 2002—academics have become more visible in the structures of both organizations, and academic grades have increasingly been emphasized as a source of legitimate religious capital. Similarly, in both cases holding a university diploma has been made a prerequisite for long-term religious officials. The biographies of many top Diyanet officials and theology professors are often interchangeable and follow a similar pattern: early education at an imam hatip high school; diploma from a theology faculty; appointment as a Diyanet imam (din görevlisi); a first experience as a Diyanet imam abroad; higher appointments, such as müftü; followed by higher academic degrees and titles, such as a Ph.D., assistant professor (doçent), or full professor; and finally even higher positions as an “expert” (uzman), foreign attaché, or department head for the Diyanet.
The ubiquity of university titles amongst top Diyanet leaders reflects their importance in assuring upwards career mobility for state religious officials in Turkey. At the same time, it also displays the extent to which the modern university system has become an integral part of the Turkish religious field, despite the fact that theology faculties are in many cases still fairly young. Other than the emblematic and still preeminent theology faculty of the University of Ankara, the majority of these faculties date from the 1980s, after which the Higher Islamic Institutes were converted into university faculties (Paçacı and Aktay 1999). This evolution constitutes a unique model linking higher education, Islamic learning, and religious governance, which has the potential to grow rapidly due to the Diyanet network’s engagement in founding similar theology faculties in Azerbaijan and Central Asian countries. Moreover, despite the many ties between these faculties and the Arab world, they remain quite distinct from globalized centres of Islamic learning such as Al-Azhar in Egypt, the Qarawiyyin in Morocco , or universities in Saudi Arabia .
During several of my interviews with Diyanet officials, I somewhat provocatively asked whether the theology professors at Turkish universities constituted a new class of ulema for Turkey today. The head of foreign affairs dismissed the notion out of hand and explained that “in the classical sense,” there were in fact no longer any ulema anywhere in the Muslim world because their legal power, economic resources (especially in the form of the waqf), and control over domains such as education had all been taken over by the modern state. More to the point, neither the Diyanet’s religious officials nor Turkish theology experts in general have any constitutional authority, meaning that they do not have the same powers as the ulema once had: “they are not alim, they are professors; they are academics (akademisyen)” (Interview, Diyanet Foreign Affairs Director B, 23 November 2011, Istanbul).
Conversely, the head of the directorate for Turks abroad paused after hearing the question, then half-jokingly answered: “in Turkey today there is no ulema, but there are alim” (Interview, Diyanet Director Turks Abroad). 1 The director’s statement contains a few clever twists. In fact, an Arabic speaker would have a hard time making sense of the statement, given that in Arabic ʿālim is the singular and ulema is the plural of the same word, meaning “scholar, learned person,” though heavily connoted as referring to Islamic theologians or scholars of Islamic sciences. For that reason, the response highlights an important development concerning Islam and religious authority in Turkey: the ulema as a powerful social institution no longer exist, but there are still Islamic scholars in a system of higher education that studies religious sciences.
At the same time, the director’s enigmatic answer points to an important tension. The ulema—in Turkey and elsewhere in the Muslim world—were responsible for determining what constituted the “correct” interpretation of Islam, which they would make known in the form of fatwas (“juridical opinions”). In the case of Morocco , one of the king’s first reforms in the restructuration of the religious field was to ensure that Ulema High Council had the monopoly over official fatwa-issuing. Fatwas in Turkey carry no legal weight but have become increasingly utilized by the Diyanet during recent years. However, beyond the issue of religious legitimacy and authority at home remains the question of who represents a religious authority for the Muslim fields abroad? In order to address the concerns over their lack of influence over Western European Muslim fields, home states have launched numerous initiatives with the goal of training or establishing a particular group of religious actors for the diaspora. The following sections analyze these initiatives, which reflect the transnational nature of religious fields while also demonstrating the persistence of national boundaries between them.
2.1 Experimental Initiatives Abroad
2.1.1 The Strasbourg Theology Faculty
The Strasbourg Theology Faculty was founded by the French DITIB in 2011 and closed in 2014. It represents Turkish authorities’ most serious attempt yet to train religious authorities on Western European soil. A DITIB brochure described the main goals of the faculty as: “training self-reliant and participatory theologians who can take on social responsibility, produce original thinking, and make a special point of producing, implementing, and spreading knowledge in every area” (DITIB Fransa 2012). The initial plan was to select 30 candidates every year and progressively build on a core of students at the bachelor’s level before expanding the faculty to a master’s level programme. The programme was designed to last five years, and thanks to a partnership with Istanbul University, the students were to receive a Turkish bachelor’s degree from its theology faculty .
The students were required to hold a French high school diploma (baccalauréat), be under 25 years old, and have no difficulties with continuing their studies at the university level. The latter condition meant more specifically not having a criminal record or belonging to any “radical currents” (Interview, Director Theology Faculty , 29 November 2012, Strasbourg ). The application forms for the programme listed on the Paris , Strasbourg , and Lyon DITIB websites since 2011 have been available exclusively in Turkish, though curiously one of the questions on the application concerns the candidate’s proficiency in Turkish. All candidates are also required to present a recommendation letter from the Diyanet imam of their local DITIB mosque, which is then sent to the Diyanet’s religious attaché or the counsellor who passes it on to the selection committee. Finally, successful candidates must also pass an oral interview before being officially admitted (DITIB Fransa 2014).
The director of the Theology Faculty was the Diyanet’s religious attaché in Strasbourg , who had substantial academic credentials as he was himself a full professor who had served in administrative positions in a theology faculty in Turkey. When I spoke with him in 2012, there were only 25 students who were enrolled in a preparatory class that was designed to improve their knowledge of Arabic and the Qur’an. All students at the time of my visit were of Turkish origin. Two young women of Algerian origin had also applied; however, they did not pass the oral interview. While the director asserted that the faculty was open to all, the preference for students of Turkish origin was no secret: “there is a reality. In this first step, we are expecting that the students will be of Turkish origin. Why? Because there’s a need. We first have a need for 250 imams (görevli). Not just DITIB, but other […] civil society organizations as well” (Interview, Director Theology Faculty). From the beginning, despite its general emphasis on Muslims in France, the faculty’s status as an extension of the Diyanet network had the effect of limiting the vision of the Strasbourg Theology Faculty solely to the Turkish Muslim field.
Up until the founding of this faculty, DITIB had not been especially present in the city of Strasbourg . Milli Görüş had represented the largest current of Turkish Islam in the city, symbolized by the immense Eyyub Sultan mosque, while DITIB mosques were generally to be found in the surrounding Alsatian towns and villages. The geographic division between the two groups has changed radically as a result of the significant financial investments made by the French DITIB and the Diyanet network, which encompass far more than just the theology faculty . The main building cost over two million euros and has been joined by three neighbouring buildings that were purchased for student residences, a mosque, a private high school based on the Turkish imam hatip model, and a convention centre. The overall cost of this Islamic “Franco-Turkish campus” covering 10,000 m2 has been estimated at a minimum of 15 million euros (Sauvaget 2013; Personal Communication, French Interior Ministry, 6 November 2013, Paris ). The funding for the project came from several sources: first, the Turkish Diyanet Foundation, which was one of the most important contributors with upwards of four million euros, despite the fact that it rarely provides financial support for religious associations in Western Europe. The rest came from DITIB associations across Europe (six and a half million euros), Turkish businesses and donations (three and a half million euros), and a bank loan (one million euros) (Gandanger 2015).
There is a consensus amongst my Turkish interlocutors that the Strasbourg Theology Faculty was founded as a result of the 2010 Franco-Turkish declaration of intent. Nevertheless, there seems to have been a high degree of miscommunication with French authorities. The massive scale of the project took French authorities by surprise, provoking hostility and guarded reactions at various levels of government. A French diplomat revealed that the imam hatip high school project in particular had been “initiated solely by Turkish authorities” and moreover asked me if I had any additional information, in case I might “know more about that subject than us [French authorities]” (Interview, French Embassy Turkey). One municipal counsellor was quoted as saying “I fell out of my chair […] I knew nothing at all about this, no one ever spoke about this at city hall,” while a representative of the mayor countered by saying that local authorities had in fact been notified and pointed out that there was little the city could say about a project that was “promoted by an autonomous official structure and that works on the basis of discussions between the Turkish administration and the French government” (Rose 2012).
The confusion extended beyond the city government to the Ministry of Education and its local branch (rectorat d’académie) for the region of Strasbourg . When I spoke with a member of the education ministry in late 2011, he stated that the rectorat had received no advance warning regarding the theology faculty and added that it was illegal as it had started running without receiving the approval of the ministry. Furthermore, the official had never even heard of the 2010 declaration of intent. The lack of communication and coordination between ministries was an important source of frustration for my French interviewee, who emphasized that in contrast Turkish authorities were much better organized. In addition, he was highly critical of the curriculum that Turkish authorities had drawn up for the planned private imam hatip school (Interview, French Education Ministry, 8 December 2011, Paris ). Moreover, a member of the interior ministry mentioned that DITIB in Strasbourg had called on its members to vote for the centre-right during the 2014 municipal elections, which he believed would cost it the support of the left-wing local government (Interview, French Interior Ministry Z, 7 April 2014, Paris ). Yet another interior ministry official stated his displeasure at seeing members of the COJEP in the inner organization of the theology faculty (Personal Communication, French Interior Ministry Y, 6 November 2013, Paris ). 2
Initially, the faculty had also hoped to form a partnership with Strasbourg University, where there has been a master’s programme in “Islamology” and Islamic law since 2009. The programme is at present the sole outcome of the many attempts to found an Islamic faculty of theology in Strasbourg , all of which have sought to take advantage of the special legal provisions found in Alsace -Moselle. However, the programme is “non-confessional” and not designed to train religious personnel, which is at odds with the goal of training imams for France. It soon came to light that the Turkish Council of Higher Education (YÖK) would not validate the partnership between the Strasbourg Theology Faculty and Istanbul University unless France recognized the former as an academic institution. As summarized by one Diyanet official, the French response was “this is none of my business. I can’t accept a theology faculty if it’s private,” and “since France didn’t accept, YÖK didn’t accept” (Interview, Diyanet Director Turks Abroad II, 12 August 2014, Paris /Ankara). By mid-to-late 2014, the Strasbourg Theology Faculty had closed its doors.
Since the faculty had not obtained the necessary recognition, the 181 students who were already enrolled would not have been able to receive a valid diploma. Even if they had completed their education in Strasbourg and wished to work as a Diyanet imam thereafter, the Diyanet could not have officially hired them according to its own internal regulations. Consequently, the Diyanet took an audacious yet logical step: “we took the kids and brought them to Turkey so that they wouldn’t be caught in a fix. We placed them in the theology faculties at Istanbul and Marmara University, half at one, half at the other” (Interview, Diyanet Director Turks Abroad II). The students were thus incorporated into the Diyanet’s international theology programme and succeeded in completing their education in Islamic theology—but in Turkey. The Turkish ambassador to France mentioned during a hearing with French senators in 2016 that only ten students had returned to France after finishing their studies and that he personally wished to see the faculty reopened before his term ended. The head of the Coordination Committee of French Turkish Muslims (CCMTF), in his own hearing with the same senators, highlighted that the issue of recognizing the diplomas was above all a political problem and that it was “now or never” for French authorities to find a solution (Akil and Oğraş in Féret et al. 2016).
At the same time, DITIB France has gone ahead with its other projects: in October 2015, the Lycée Yunus Emre took the place of the closed theology faculty . Similar to the faculty, the high school has had difficulties with French educational authorities and up until a month before its opening it was still negotiating with the rectorat. Although it is operated as an independent private high school (lycée privé hors contrat), the leaders of the project believe that many parents will be attracted by the mix of the French national curriculum in science and economics, language options (including Arabic and Turkish), and religion courses based on the Turkish imam hatip model; indeed, the school was designed for between 300 and 350 students (Wendling 2015). Meanwhile the convention centre, named the “Diyanet Akademi,” has quickly become the preferred venue in recent years for large-scale meetings of Diyanet religious officials and DITIB members from across Europe and offers hotel-like accommodation with a Turkish breakfast buffet.
The case of the Strasbourg Theology Faculty is somewhat misleading. On the one hand, it shows the lack of coordination between different instances of the French state along with the capacity of certain French authorities to limit the activities of home states on their territory. On the other hand, the closing of the Strasbourg Theology Faculty did not result in the transfer of these students to an imam training programme elsewhere in France; quite to the contrary, the faculty’s Franco-Turkish students left for Turkey, where they continued their education at Turkish theology faculties . Moreover, those who wish to return to France as Diyanet imams continue to have the same options as before they left. As a result, this case relativizes the apparent capacity of the French state to influence the training of religious authorities for the French Muslim field, due to the simple fact that the religious field’s borders are transnational. Not only does the story of the Strasbourg Theology Faculty reinforce the argument that receiving states are only able to partially govern religious affairs, but it shows the creative ways by which home states can use the transnational nature of the religious field to their advantage.
2.1.2 Islamic Theology Centres at German Universities
In 2010, following recommendations from the Islamkonferenz , the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) launched an initiative that led to the founding of four Islamic theology centres involving several universities in Germany (Tübingen, Münster /Osnabrück, Frankfurt/Gießen, and Erlangen-Nuremburg). These new centres have raised similar issues concerning the politics of higher Islamic education in Germany.
On the one hand, there is a model of a direct partnership with the Diyanet, as exemplified by the programme at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. For many actors, this course of action seems both logical and practical, given the long-standing cooperation with Turkish authorities and the Diyanet and the institutional framework of theology faculties at Turkish universities. Similarly, when I visited the theology faculty at Ankara University in 2011, there were job offers for professorships in Islamic studies posted on the faculty bulletin boards sent by German universities. On the other hand, German state officials and university authorities have generally sought to counterbalance the weight of Turkish Islam, especially as represented by the Diyanet, by hiring professors from other backgrounds. The perception that these theology programmes represent a kind of Trojan horse that could lead to even greater Turkish state control over Islam has led to criticism in the German parliament. In response, government representatives generally repeat that it is not the Turkish Diyanet, but rather the German DITIB, that participates in the academic councils that oversee these programmes.
The new Islamic study programmes present the challenge of adequately responding to the market. If graduates are unable to find employment after they finish, the federal initiative to train imams that are “made in Germany” will be missing half of the equation. The main Muslim federations in the country not only constitute important actors of the religious field, but also potential employers for those who wish to work as an imam, preacher, or religious instructor after their studies. As a result, tensions surrounding these programmes frequently revolve around the power of the Muslim federations to decide what constitutes legitimate Islamic knowledge for the classroom, which they can attempt to enforce by closing doors on employment opportunities for graduates.
The difficulty of finding a working balance has already been put to the test twice at the University of Münster . In 2004, Sven (formerly Muhammad) Kalisch became the first professor for Islamic religion at a German university with the goal of educating future religious instructors. However, Kalisch began stating that he doubted the Prophet Muhammed had ever existed, leading to a complete divorce with the main Muslim federations and the intervention of the state minister for science and research, who relieved Kalisch of his responsibilities to train religious teachers (Am Orde 2008). When I contacted him in 2011, Kalisch made clear to me that he had never taught Islamic religious pedagogy, though he had contributed to the training of religious teachers as an Islamic theologian. Nevertheless, after a certain period of “philosophical and spiritual” development, he had come to the realization in 2010 that he “was no longer a Muslim” and left the programme (Personal Communication, Former Islamic Theology Professor, 9 March 2011).
The BMBF began its initiative for theology centres soon thereafter and the University of Münster recruited a recent doctoral graduate of the University of Vienna of Palestinian background to lead its revamped programme for Islamic religious pedagogy. After having recovered from the fiasco surrounding the first professor, the local DITIB association renewed its ties with the university: the association president promised to hire a graduate of the programme for the city’s central mosque and suggested that students do their internships there as well (Interview, DITIB Münster President, 14 March 2011, Münster). The weight of the Muslim federations within the programme’s academic council is significant: the new professor told me that he had only been offered the job at the university once the associations had given their approval and that their decision had not based on academic criteria, but rather his religiosity (Interview, Director Islamic Theology Centre, 15 March 2011, Münster ).
Nevertheless, the relationship soon soured after the professor published a new book that was heavily criticized by the main Muslim federations. Both DITIB and the Coordination Council for Muslims (KRM) issued official press statements calling for him to be replaced (DITIB 2013), with the latter assuring that “graduates of the Münster institute in general and of [the professor’s] programme in particular […] will not have any confidence within the Muslim community and will be associated with untenable theological positions” (KRM 2013). The training of religious teachers and imams shows the difficulty of finding a balance between academic freedom and the exigencies of religious doctrine and is furthermore exacerbated by what is at stake: the religious teachers and imams who graduate from these faculties will potentially constitute the next generation of German Muslim religious leaders. The positions they take and their influence over the Muslim field are thus of interest to Turkey, Germany, and the individual Muslim federations, highlighting the additional layers of political interests regarding the training of local Muslim religious authorities.
2.1.3 The European Council of Moroccan Ulema (CEOM)
The creation of the European Council of Moroccan Ulema (CEOM ) in 2008 in Brussels constitutes the most direct initiative the Moroccan state has taken in attempting to establish a class of religious authorities in Europe. In a sense, Morocco has sought to skip the step of founding theology faculties and go straight to “the instauration of a Moroccan religious reference in Europe for the benefit of the Moroccan Muslim community,” as laid out in the decree that created the organization (Kingdom of Morocco 2008a, 1641). The CEOM is based on the model of the ulema councils in Morocco, which are responsible for overseeing religious affairs in specific geographic areas, and is similarly placed under the authority of the king and the Ulema High Council. It consists of an ulema council and a locally founded Belgian association, which despite the unique transnational context reflects the division of labour between the ulema councils and the Habous ministry in Morocco.
The distinction in Morocco between councils of religious actors and an administrative body for religious affairs does not exist to the same degree in the Turkish system of religious governance, explaining perhaps why the number of theologians in upper administrative positions at the Habous ministry is comparatively lower than within the Diyanet. For instance, the directors of the mosques and Habous divisions during the last years have both been engineers with many years of experience in state finance, planning, and investment. Furthermore, the director of Islamic education is a professor of French literature who was dean of the faculty of literature at the University Mohammed V . The latter profile resembles the background of Ahmed Toufiq , who was a history professor and director of the national library before becoming Habous minister, and that of the cabinet member responsible for Moroccans abroad, who holds a Ph.D. in philology and was also a professor before joining Toufiq’s cabinet (Interview, Habous Cabinet Member I). The presence of literature and humanities professors within the ministry is rather striking, especially when compared to the academics within the ranks of the Diyanet, who virtually all hold their degrees in different branches of Islamic theology.
The profile of the secretary-general of the CEOM follows in this vein. After receiving a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris , he went on to become a university professor in Anglo-American studies in the Moroccan city of Oujda. The CEOM secretary-general has become a visible figure of Moroccan Islam in Europe: he has given numerous media interviews, organized iftars with diplomatic and political leaders, and represented the Central Council of Moroccans in Germany (ZMaD ) in the second phase of the Islamkonferenz . The CEOM remains nevertheless a relatively small association; including the secretary-general, it only had four employees and one chauffeur in 2013, and is based in a relatively small building in Brussels. The yearly two-million-euro funding from the Habous ministry goes to pay for these costs, as well as the salaries of the 19 members of the ulema council, who are located in different countries across Europe: four members in France, the Netherlands , and Spain; three in Belgium; two in Italy; and one in Germany and Sweden (Interview, CEOM Secretary-General, 15 June 2013, Paris ).
The individual ʿālim were named to the council by royal decree in Morocco , following a selection process carried out by the Habous ministry. None of these religious figures were sent from Morocco to European countries, but rather were already “established and visible, that was the only criterion. In other words, they are people who are accepted, in their context by both the [Muslim] community and European society” (Interview, CEOM Secretary-General). This factor constitutes another significant difference with Turkish religious policies abroad, given that the Turkish state employs solely members of the Diyanet abroad—and increasingly, graduates of the Diyanet’s International Theology Programme .
The president of the CEOM’s ulema council is Tahar Toujgani, originally from the city of Tetouan and imam of a mosque in Antwerp. For Dassetto, who highlights that the average age of the association’s members is 52, the CEOM “represents well, both institutionally and individually, the older religious establishment of the first generation of immigrants, close to Moroccan authorities” (2011, 141). Nevertheless, this is only partially true: for example, in the case of France , until recently there were three younger ulema members (all of whom were also members of the Rally): Amine Nejdi, of the As-Salam mosque in Nancy; Ahmed el-Habti, of a mosque in Épinal; and Nezha Gaouize, one of the only women on the council.
In his mid-to-late 40s, Amine Nejdi is one of the youngest CEOM ulema members. Nejdi has a doctorate in neuroscience and is based in Nancy, and is one of the most visible and active faces of the Rally: other than giving talks at conferences across the country—which frequently find their way to YouTube—he is also the president of the CRCM for the Lorraine region. In contrast, Ahmed el-Habti, though not much older than Nejdi, received a traditional religious education in Morocco before continuing his studies in Saudi Arabia . Two years thereafter, el-Habti arrived in France, where he eventually became the head imam of a new mosque in Épinal. Nezha Gaouize similarly has a background in Islamic religious sciences and received a master’s in Islamology from a university in Saudi Arabia . She regularly gives talks on religious themes to female groups during Rally conferences.
These three individuals were joined by a fourth member in 2013: Sidi Mounir al-Qadiri al-Boutchichi, the next-in-line to lead the Moroccan boutchichiyya order after his father Sheikh Sidi Jamal al-Qadiri al-Boutchichi. The younger Sidi Mounir completed two doctoral degrees in 2005: the first at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE)—Sorbonne in religious studies (one of his thesis committee members was none other than Ahmed Toufiq ), the second at Dar al-Hadith al-Hassaniyya in Islamic sciences. Sidi Mounir has been member of the Rally and has participated in numerous international conferences on Sufism, and his addition to the council reflects the impressive weight of the boutchichiyya order in Moroccan state religious institutions, at both home and abroad.
The profiles presented by these figures of the Moroccan religious field are, if nothing else, much more eclectic than those of Diyanet officials. On the one hand, there are individuals with advanced academic degrees in non-religious fields who nevertheless occupy top positions in either the managerial aspect of religious affairs or even as religious authorities. On the other hand, amongst those who have a background in Islamic theology on the CEOM’s ulema council there is a marked difference between those who have pursued studies in Saudi Arabia , where the Wahhabi current of Islam is critical if not openly hostile to Sufism, and others such as Sidi Mounir, who are tied to the most important Sufi order in Morocco. It is an open question whether these individuals all share the Makhzen’s vision of Moroccan Islam and if they will be able to convince the diaspora that they constitute a cohesive and authoritative religious body for Moroccans abroad.
The goals for the CEOM are both extensive and ambitious. Other than establishing a Moroccan religious reference in Europe, the decree founding the council stipulates that it is expected to “contribute to the spiritual tranquillity of this community and the immunity of young Moroccans living in Europe against deviant currents of thought”; establish dialogue with European actors based on the “Moroccan religious model as a specific model”; and spread tolerance and dialogue amongst Muslims and the Moroccan community. It is supposed to achieve these goals thanks to research activities and coordination with other actors that will “orient” Moroccan Muslims in Europe and “ensure the oversight of mosque activities […] and the supervision [encadrement] of the religious life of the Moroccan community living in Europe” (Kingdom of Morocco 2008b).
The language employed in these documents reflects the perception of Moroccans abroad as being in danger of succumbing to radical influences if left alone. The need to preserve the “spiritual security” of Moroccans in Europe implies that there is a set of other actors, such as political Islamists, Salafists, or terrorists, who are ready to fill the notorious vacuum in the religious field if the state takes no action. At the same time, the goals of the CEOM go much further than simply policing the religious field abroad. Moroccan “cultural heritage” (patrimoine culturel) within Islam is presented as the solution to these dangers, meaning that preserving national religious traditions and thus forms of Moroccan cultural capital in the religious field abroad is not just desirable, but constitutes a prerequisite to establishing “moderate” forms of Islam in Western Europe.
The activities of the council are grouped along three main axes: research, communication, and training (CEOM 2014). Research activities generally refer to the seminars organized by the CEOM in Brussels on themes related to Islam and Europe, while the communication axis has focused on publicly organized events such as iftar receptions, which have been attended by diplomats, local politicians, and EU officials. This axis was also reinforced by the creation of the CEOM’s official website in 2013, though it curiously remains accessible only in Arabic and lacks basic information, such as the members of the ulema council or links to partner associations in Europe. On the other hand, the website provides links to Moroccan state religious institutions, as well as sites with familiar figures such as Belmadani and Al-Kamali, and a French-language site on the Maliki school. This last site includes sections detailing the list of “misguided groups” (sectes égarés) in Islam, ranging from the historical Kharijites to the Ahbashi movement, and from the Turkish Alevis and the Syrian Alawiyya to the Ahmadis. Moreover, an entire section is dedicated to Wahhabism , which is qualified as a “dangerous movement,” especially for youth (Doctrine-Malikite.fr 2008). These Internet resources all reflect the network of religious authorities that share and participate in diffusing the Moroccan state’s official interpretation of Islam.
The CEOM’s training axis is directed at imams already in Europe and to a lesser degree youth. It has organized workshops on subjects such as the “Future of Muslim Youth in Europe,” while thousands of imams across Western Europe have taken part in the CEOM’s training seminars, which generally last multiple days and follow a programme developed by the secretary-general called “Initiation to the Fiqh of the [European] Reality” (Madkhal ila al-Fiqh al Wāqaʿ) (Interview, CEOM Secretary-General). The geographic extent of these seminars shows that the CEOM has succeeded in establishing links in the Moroccan religious field across Western Europe, especially in Belgium, Germany , and Spain. However, at the time of the interview the CEOM had surprisingly few activities in France , which my interviewee attributed to the fact that the Rally was “absorbed in more political issues” such as the CFCM elections. A more likely explanation is that the CEOM was waiting for the dust to settle considering that the Moroccan state was in the midst of transferring its support from the Rally to the Union; indeed, in recent years numerous events have been held in France at the Évry mosque and in coordination with the Union.
The CEOM represents a highly ambitious initiative by the Moroccan state to establish a new class of Moroccan religious authorities in Western Europe. Its goals and missions reflect an ambition that could portend the foundation of a new continental network like that of the Diyanet; however, in comparison with the Turkish case, the CEOM possesses neither the human nor material resources to expand beyond its programme of occasional seminars and workshops. On the one hand, the strategy it employs seems to follow that of the past: many members of the ulema council are not new faces, but rather individuals who are well established in the Muslim fields of the countries in which they reside. On the other hand, many have yet to gain any prominence beyond their local contexts and as a whole they reflect a rather eclectic mix, raising doubts as to the impact this initiative may truly have in terms of establishing a religious reference for Moroccan Muslims in Europe.
2.2 Transnational Initiatives at Home
2.2.1 The International Theology Programme of the Diyanet
In contrast to the above-mentioned initiatives that have been pursued in Western Europe, both Turkey and Morocco have created programmes to train religious authorities for the Muslim field abroad at home.
The idea for the Diyanet’s International Theology Programme (Uluslararası İlahiyat Programı, UİP) first appeared in the final declaration for the 2004 Religious Council and was evoked in the 2005 agreement with French authorities discussed earlier in this chapter. The programme began in 2006 when the first small group of students was admitted to Ankara University. Due to the initial low number of students, one French official doubted whether the project would succeed, especially in light of the high number of female students who would not be able to work as imams (Interview, BCC Counsellor, 17 September 2010, Paris ).
The goals of the UİP are stated as training “capable, competent, and highly representative human resources” who are “knowledgeable about Islamic theology,” able to give “guidance in the process of integration,” and who are “deeply aware of the religious, cultural, social, and psychological needs of our people living in European countries” (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı 2014, 5). The language of the brochure remains influenced by its bureaucratic authors, using terms such as “training capable human resources,” while the Diyanet has increasingly started using the term “our people” (insanımız) instead of exclusively “our citizens” (vatandaşlarımız) in these publications, reflecting the increasing number of Turks abroad who are either double citizens or are not citizens of the Turkish republic at all.
The UİP receives “serious support” from the Turkey Diyanet Foundation, such as funding for scholarships, accommodation in the foundation’s student residences, and the creation of the new May 29th University, where “especially students coming from Europe will study” (Interview, TDV Foreign Relations Director, 7 November 2011, Ankara). The financial and institutional support provided by the foundation is an important selling point in the brochures, which emphasize that costs for room, board, and basic education are all covered by the scholarship.
Students who wish to apply for the programme have to fulfill a number of conditions. They must be high school graduates in their countries of origin; they must be citizens of their countries of origin; they must be 25 years old or younger; they must not be married (added in 2014); and they must not have already been accepted and broken off their studies without reason (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı 2014). The DITIBs and Diyanet Foundations receive the applications and carry out an initial appraisal of the candidates (DITIB 2011), though the main organizers are the religious attachés and counsellors abroad.
The programme is quite strict with regard to the question of holding foreign citizenship: any student who renounces the citizenship of his or her country of origin in order to become a Turkish citizen may have their scholarship partially or fully suspended (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı 2014). The implications of these requirements seem logical within the framework of the programme, but unprecedented in other respects: not only does the Turkish state require these students to hold foreign citizenship or permanent resident status, but it penalizes any attempts at becoming a normal Turkish citizen. The UİP is thus designed on the one hand to accommodate the official status of young Turks living abroad, but it is equally fashioned so as to incite them to return to their “new” countries of origin. Indeed, at this point the notion of “country of origin” seems distinctly ambiguous.
However, until the revision of the Diyanet’s legal framework in 2010, it was not possible for the Turkish state to hire the graduates of the programme as religious officials abroad if they were not Turkish citizens. The importance of these changes was highlighted by all the Diyanet officials with whom I spoke. When I asked about the impact of the 2010 revision, the director for Turks abroad immediately brought up the UİP, emphasizing that “it is much easier for us to do our job now” and that with the competencies provided by the new law “we will now be able to appoint them as officials abroad. And that will be a really fantastic development” (Interview, Diyanet Director Turks Abroad). The state has no way of actually forcing these students to become imams or religious officials, and many have opted to continue their studies at the master’s level or even higher after having finished. Nevertheless, this is not a source of concern for the officials with whom I spoke. On the contrary, when speaking about the first graduates of these programmes, one official mentioned that “some are back, and we support that they continue their university studies. But we will naturally hire these people eventually” (Interview, Diyanet Religious Counsellor Germany, 28 September 2011, Cologne ).
The new trend began with the first graduates in 2011: though many began master’s degrees, one was hired as a religion teacher in Belgium; by 2014, three graduates of the programme had been appointed as religious officials to France and three more were in the process of being appointed. For the Diyanet, the process is clear: “after they finish at the [theology] faculty, we do a test, and the competent ones, we appoint them as an imam over there. They return to their countries, the countries of which they are citizens” (Interview, Diyanet Director Turks Abroad II). Nevertheless, many graduates have expressed dissatisfaction with the Diyanet’s support for professional development after the programme. For instance, one graduate I spoke with criticized the hiring process in particular, explaining that it only consisted of reading the Qur’an out loud for 15 minutes and answering religious questions (Interview, UİP Graduate, 15 July 2017, Paris ).
The sociocultural profile of these students represents an invaluable asset for Diyanet officials. After having met a group of these students myself, I noticed that one of the German-Turkish students had the habit of addressing his French-Turkish colleague as “monsieur” (while speaking in Turkish), but with a distinctly German accent. Though a minor detail, it struck me as an unmistakable example of how these students are all European citizens, fluent in the languages and customs of their respective societies, but are also firmly attached to their identity as Turkish Muslims. At times, it felt as if the UİP were a kind of religious Erasmus programme, which reinforced simultaneously the Turkish, Muslim, and European identities of these students. As explained by one official, in their vision for the future the Diyanet religious official going to France “will have already been born and raised there, he will have attended high school, have no problems with the language, and will know the culture very well,” while in Turkey the same individual will receive “a theological education, they will learn Arabic and their Turkish will become much more advanced, and in addition they will improve their English” (Interview, Diyanet Director Turks Abroad I).
The Diyanet’s international theology programme is set to have an important impact on the Muslim fields of the Turkish diaspora through the establishment of a new class of religious authorities. The programme benefits from an impressive array of support: from the symbolic support of the Turkish state to the financial and institutional support of the Turkish Diyanet Foundation. Perhaps most importantly, it is backed by several of the most important theology faculties in the country, which is of central importance in equipping these transnational Turkish imams with the religious capital needed to be considered legitimate Islamic authorities upon returning to their European countries of origin. The potential impact of the programme is not to be underestimated: instructed and socialized in the same environment in Turkey, the graduates of the UİP will conserve their ties with their colleagues from other European countries, constituting a network of young Euro-Turkish religious scholars and actors across the continent. While some may decide to work as professors and instructors in the new Islamic education sectors abroad, many will return to DITIB mosques as Diyanet employees. At the same time, the programme still faces a number of challenges given that few of the hundreds of graduates have decided to return to their country of origin and the Diyanet has yet create sufficient positions to employ those that are interested in returning as religious officials. Nevertheless, it is very likely that these graduates will not only preserve their transnational ties with Turkish state religious institutions, but will also contribute to establishing a frame of reference for legitimate religious authorities modelled on what they learned in Turkey.
2.2.2 The Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams
In Morocco , the move to train imams for the diaspora has arisen alongside regional foreign policy concerns. During King Mohammed VI’s visit to Mali in 2013, just one year after the conflicts that had engulfed the north of the country, an agreement was signed with President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta to train 500 Malian imams in Morocco. Over the following months, Morocco received requests from other sub-Saharan states to train their religious personnel as well.
In order to respond to these international requests and the ongoing training necessities of the ulema pact initiative, the Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams was officially opened in Rabat in 2015. The institute is located in the university district of Irfane, down the road from the Mohammed VI Foundation for the Welfare and Education of Imams, and is tied to the Qarawiyyin University. The director is Abdeslam Lazaar, who led the training programme for the Malian imams, while professors include high-level members of the Habous ministry such as Abdellatif Begdaoui Achkari, head of Minister Toufiq’s cabinet. The institute comprises a mosque, modern and well-equipped classrooms, a library, computer rooms, sports and recreation facilities, and a dormitory with enough space to house 700 students (Huffington Post Maroc 2015).
In September 2015, a few months following the inauguration of the institute, French President François Hollande visited Morocco and the two states signed an agreement whereby French citizens would be similarly included in the imam training programmes. The organization of the programme in France is carried out by the Union and its regional branches and offers both a two-year “basic training” (formation initiale) programme as well as a three-month “continuing education” (formation continue) programme, which is designed for individuals who already work as imams and Muslim chaplains. A flyer on the Union’s website explains the details along with the modalities for applying, and the fact that each student admitted benefits from a monthly scholarship of two hundred euros as well as free room and board (Ministère des Habous et des Affaires Islamiques 2016a). All costs for the French imam training programme are borne by Morocco.
Though initially one of the smallest national groups at the institute at slightly less than 50, the number of French students is growing and was deemed important enough to receive a visit in 2016 from a special French senate committee tasked with conducting an in-depth review of Islam in the country. In a news broadcast on the visit, the senators seemed positively impressed by the imams, and one member of the delegation, André Reichardt, even went so far as to exclaim “if there were many more students who wished to become imams in the world and who sounded like him [a student of the program], I think our problems would be resolved, voilà!” This appraisal was echoed by Jean-Pierre Filiu, a well-known French scholar of the Middle East, who was invited to give a talk on the topic of global jihad a few months later at the institute, and who wrote that the students “are intent on combatting jihadist propaganda” and that “this ‘French’ cohort is motivated and determined” (Filiu 2016).
In their final briefing, the senatorial delegation restated their positive impressions; however, it would be an understatement to say they were favourably disposed in advance: one month before the trip, the same committee had held a hearing with the Moroccan ambassador in which the French senators commented variously on the “excellent relations” between both states; Morocco ’s “precious contribution” to helping spread a “modern and open Islam” in both France and West Africa; and its “full transparency” regarding imam training and remuneration thanks to interstate agreements. Near the end, the conversation was capped off by one senator who praised the Moroccan model as an example for the Muslim world and went on to say “if all Muslim states functioned as Morocco, the problem of French Islam would not be posed in the same terms” (Féret et al. 2016).
The unfettered praise on the part of French senators for Morocco contrasts greatly not only with the hearings they held with religious and diplomatic actors from other states, but more generally with French discourse opposed to the involvement of foreign states in the affairs of “French Islam.” The senators’ report acknowledges the contradictory position of the French state while partly justifying it by citing an interior ministry official who emphasizes that an advantage of the “consular” imams is that “other than being paid directly by their state of origin, they are also controlled by these states and none of these imams are a source of radicalization” (emphasis in the original, Féret et al. 2016, 37–38). Indeed, still reeling from the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 and Nice in 2016, French authorities have struggled to find new ways to address the issue of Islamic religious governance due to electoral worries over the growing far-right and the legal hurdles posed by the Law of 1905. Instead, the current strategy repeats the decades-old practice of cooperating with foreign state authorities such as Morocco , Algeria, and Turkey, in an attempt to indirectly control the evolution of Islam in the country.
3 Nationally Bounded Transnational Muslim Fields
A central tenet of this book is that home state political dynamics structure the Muslim fields in France and Germany, and any analysis that attempts to understand these fields must equally take into consideration the internal politics of the countries of origin. Home states, receiving states , and non-state actors are all involved in diffusing models of religious authority that best suit their interests. Moreover, the specificity of Islam as having originally been a religion of migrants also leads to religion being perceived as part of a larger cultural identity, which Turkey and Morocco actively seek to preserve. The continuing echo of home state political conflicts in the religious fields abroad, as well as the instrumentalization of cultural capital in home states ’ policies aimed at preserving national identity in diaspora contexts, will be the final points considered in this chapter.
3.1 The Ripple Effects of Home State Politics: Changing Alliances in the Muslim Field Abroad
3.1.1 The Makhzen’s Divorce with the Rally
As detailed in Chapter 4, Morocco had not until recently relied on a religious organization such as DITIB in order to organize its activities in the religious field abroad. The creation of the Rally in 2006 announced the beginning of a more coherent home state strategy towards Islamic affairs in France, with the association taking on a central role through a direct partnership with the Ministry of Habous and Islamic Affairs.
The Habous ministry has reinforced its control over Islamic affairs in Morocco since the beginning of the reform of the religious field in 2004, while the second wave of these reforms in 2008 increased the ministry’s presence abroad with the creation of the CEOM and the sending of 30 long-term imams to France. For the first time ever, the Moroccan state conferred the payment and supervision of these imams on a Muslim federation—the Rally—instead of relying on individual mosque associations or the diplomats of the foreign affairs ministry. The repeated victories of the Rally in CFCM elections appeared to reflect a certain degree of Moroccan prominence in the French Muslim field (despite the boycotts of the GMP and the UOIF ), as well as the association’s claim to represent close to 550 mosques in France (Interview, Rally President I).
However, in 2012 there were rumblings that these developments were not going as smoothly as it seemed. A proposed reform of the CFCM led to the perception that the large federations were acting in collusion and provoked strong opposition from numerous regional CRCMs and several major mosques including those of Évry and St-Étienne, both close to Moroccan authorities . In 2013, the Union of French Mosques was founded, giving as its official address the same as the Évry mosque. The president of the Union was none other than Mohamed Moussaoui, a former member of the Rally and president of the CFCM from 2008 to 2013.
The creation of the Union led to numerous changes in quick succession. My analysis of the French governmental journal (Journal Officiel) highlights the remarkably coordinated fashion by which at least 11 Union-linked regional associations (“Union des Mosquées de la Région,” or “UMRs”) were founded across the country during a three-month period at the end of December 2013. A look at the addresses given by these regional branches reflects the historical evolution of the Moroccan Muslim field in France: for instance, the Union branch in the region of Midi-Pyrénées replaced the Rally regional association located at the same location, while the Union branch in the Nord region is situated precisely where the local amicale for the Nord region had been based. These ties demonstrate the gradual evolution of the home state -linked network from the amicales to the Rally, and from the Rally to the Union. Moreover, the speed and systematic fashion by which the Union associations were created attest to a level of organization and adaptability that Moroccan authorities had not possessed in the past.
The replacement of the Rally by the Union also occurred with regard to the 30 long-term Habous imams sent by Morocco to France. The payment and supervision of these imams were transferred to the Union in 2013, with the subsequent result that Moroccan financial support for the Rally all but evaporated. While the Rally received approximately 1.5 million euros to pay the salaries of the imams in 2012, the following year the same amount was attributed to the Union (Ministère des Habous et des Affaires Islamiques 2013, 2014). Similarly, it is the Union that now supervises Moroccan Ramadan delegations, organizes events in coordination with the CEOM , and plans to found a training programme for imams in France.
However, at the local level, the impact of these changes between co-opted national federations can be minimal. For instance, the Bilal mosque in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-Sous-Bois has had an imam sent from the Habous ministry since 2008. Financial considerations had figured greatly in the Bilal mosque’s request for an imam paid by the ministry, and their former imam was quietly replaced when the possibility first arose. The mosque is one of the largest in the Parisian banlieue and has a high degree of symbolic importance, given that it was at the centre of the 2005 riots that spread across the country and attracted an immense degree of international media attention. The president of the mosque association served as Rally president of the Île-de-France–Centre region between 2011 and 2013; however, the conflict between the Rally and the Union seemed to interest him little when I visited the mosque in 2014.
According to the mosque president, the only real noticeable impact of the Habous ministry’s decision to change its partnership from the Rally to the Union was that it was now that latter that paid the imam’s salary. Otherwise, there had been no effect on the local attendance, the mosque association leadership, or the imam himself, who in the end was still a Habous ministry employee (Interview, Bilal Mosque President). In other words, the most significant change at the mosque (i.e. the arrival of a long-term imam from Morocco ) came about as a result of an evolution in Morocco’s religious diaspora policies , while the dispute between associations proved to be merely a peripheral question of logistics.
The primary reason for the Habous ministry’s decision to end its partnership with the Rally was the latter’s perceived proximity to the Moroccan Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), especially following the PJD’s electoral victories in Morocco in 2011. When asked directly about its links to PJD, the Rally president reacted both surprised and irritated and attempted to play down the loss of support from the Habous ministry by stating that “in every ministry there are individuals in favour of one organization or another” (Interview, Rally President II). At the Habous ministry, I was told that it was a “sovereign decision” made by the minister, and that speculation on the relationship between the Rally and the PJD may be appropriate for journalists or political scientists, but “a [state] official cannot answer. […] Our mission is clear: not to interpret or give out labels […] but to stay within the limits of our mission” (Interview, Habous Ministry II).
The reticence of my interviewees to go beyond vague and non-committal statements demonstrates that the political reality of competition within the Moroccan transnational religious field sits uncomfortably with the aseptic and technocratic visions that were generally presented to me. However, in blatant contrast to my Moroccan interlocutors, and as if to further underscore the extent of interstate cooperation, representatives of the French interior and foreign affairs ministries explained to me rather matter-of-factly that their Moroccan counterparts had informed them that they were reorienting their activities through the Union instead of the Rally due to state’s concerns over the PJD at home (Personal Communication, French Interior Ministry Y, 6 November 2013; Interview, Foreign Affairs Religious Counsellor, 2 April 2014, Paris ).
The examples of the Rally and the Union, just like the FNMF before them, demonstrate a key trait of the Moroccan system of governing Islam abroad. Moroccan Muslim federations abroad rely on home state support in order to secure religious capital and present themselves as legitimate religious authorities in local Muslim fields. As a result, they are inherently unstable and dependent on home state authorities and are highly vulnerable if home state authorities decide to shift their support to another actor. The lack of financial resources and competent religious personnel constitutes an ongoing reality in Western European Muslim fields, meaning that it is exceedingly difficult for these associations to find the same support elsewhere. On the one hand, this state of affairs fits perfectly with the Moroccan state’s traditional strategy of co-opting actors and shifting alliances in order to maintain control of the religious field. On the other, it also shows that for local mosques such as that of Clichy-Sous-Bois , changes in the names and acronyms of French Islamic associations matter little; what does matter is the support provided by home state religious authorities.
3.1.2 The AKP in Power: New Friends and New Enemies
Since the rise of the AKP , Turkey has come to represent a litmus test for the arguments I advance in this book. The AKP’s dominance of Turkish politics since 2002 and its increasingly authoritarian rule, especially following the failed coup d’état in 2016, have resulted in rapidly changing alliances in the Muslim field abroad. Turkey’s extension of internal political conflicts to its diaspora communities has led to increasing tensions with the country’s main Western European allies in recent years, calling into question the overall stability of interstate cooperation in governing religious affairs.
The first major shift occurred after the AKP came to power, blurring the traditional distinction between Milli Görüş and the DITIBs abroad. In 2003, then Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül issued two circulars to embassies and consulates abroad concerning cooperation with Turkish associative actors. The circulars were criticized by the Turkish media as they were seen as a sign of support for both the Milli Görüş network and followers of Fethullah Gülen (Hürriyet 2003), both of which had been instrumental in the AKP’s rise to power (Hendrick 2009). Questions were raised in parliament by the CHP representative Mustafa Özyürek, who asked whether the AKP was trying to render Milli Görüş a “respectable organization” at the same time that German authorities were listing it as a possible security threat (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi 2003). 4 Gül answered that the memorandum was a response to diplomats who had expressed hesitation about participating in activities organized by Milli Görüş associations and had requested instructions from the foreign affairs ministry. The memorandum thus “made known to our foreign missions that as long as [Turkish citizens] were not involved in activities that constitute a crime against our country, it is appropriate to act according to the need of the state to embrace all citizens in their relations with our citizens [abroad]” (Gül 2003, 757).
Despite the strong secularist stance of the foreign affairs ministry, the reaction to the circulars in my interviews with Turkish diplomats was surprisingly positive. In general, these diplomats emphasized their duty to serve all citizens irrespective of their religious or ethnic background. For one ambassador, “if a member of Milli Görüş is one of my citizens, I’ll have contact with [him], even if I don’t accept Milli Görüş as an official institution, because I – as the state – do not have the right to interfere with [his] beliefs. I’m secular” (Interview, Former Turkish Ambassador). Another diplomat took the stance that this development was long overdue, given that it was not a question of support but rather establishing contact. Before the circulars, non-official religious groups “were considered lepers,” and Turkish diplomats had effectively blacklisted swaths of the population abroad depending on who was in power at home. For instance, other groups such the Milliyetçi (ultra-nationalists) had been excluded depending on who was in power: “if the MHP was in power we wouldn’t, if they weren’t then we would.” The policy change represented an evolution from the lingering mindset following the 1980 coup d’état that there were “enemies everywhere, and especially abroad.” In contrast, Turkish diplomats are now “in contact with the Fethullahçı, with Milli Görüş, etc. and every time we organize things together I don’t grow a beard and [they] don’t become atheists” (Interview, Turkish Embassy France, 20 October 2011, Paris ).
There has been a clear rapprochement between Milli Görüş and the Diyanet since the AKP has come to power. Turkish diplomats and Diyanet religious counsellors now regularly attend Milli Görüş iftars across Western Europe, where they are joined by representatives of other Turkish religious, political, and business organizations. However, the most telling sign of this change has been that certain Milli Görüş associations have switched over to DITIB. For instance, in the case of Canada, until around 2008–2009 there were three mosques with Diyanet imams (Toronto, Montreal, and Windsor) and three mosques that were affiliated with Milli Görüş (Mississauga, Hamilton, and Montreal). By 2010, the three Milli Görüş mosques had all sent out requests for a Diyanet imam, which were accepted by 2012, while a religious services attaché was appointed to Toronto in 2014. For a Diyanet imam at a Toronto mosque, the rise of the AKP was unmistakably the reason for these changes, which he supported by citing his prior experience as a Ramadan imam in Germany where he witnessed the cleavages between Turkish Islamic currents (Interview, Diyanet Imam Z, 18 April 2014, Toronto).
This is not to say that Milli Görüş is about to disappear; by its own statistics in 2018, it represents 518 mosque associations across Western Europe and has 127,000 members (IGMG, n.d.). However, there are other examples of mosque associations that have changed affiliation to DITIB, such as in the city of Montfermeil in the Parisian suburbs. During my visit, the members of the mosque community highlighted the numerous advantages of joining DITIB, such as to “make things more official” and “easier with the [French] state.” At the same time, the rise of the AKP was once again accredited for “helping to bring together the community,” and that in the past there had been a “real division” between Milli Görüş and DITIB (Interview, DITB Kuba Mosque, 29 May 2014, Montfermeil ).
Nevertheless, my visit to the Kuba mosque came about a few months after a corruption scandal broke out in Turkey that marked the beginning of the end of the alliance between the AKP and the Gülen movement. Top AKP officials and especially then Prime Minister Erdoğan accused the followers of Fethullah Gülen of orchestrating a conspiracy against the state, and in the first months of 2014 the Turkish parliament passed a law closing down the movement’s network of preparatory schools (dershane). The members of the mosque became noticeably uncomfortable when I asked about the Fethullahçı, but then responded with a mixture of hostility and sadness. Mosque members mentioned that a few supporters of Gülen occasionally came to pray, but all agreed that there was no real dialogue any more. One member then characterized recent events as a “ coup d’état against the state,” and “as a Turk, I can’t accept that” (Interview, DITIB Kuba mosque).
While the conflict between DITIB and Milli Görüş had apparently been resolved for my interlocutors in France thanks to political developments in Turkey, their hostility towards the Gülen movement already in 2014 presaged the virulence of the current situation. The fact that the Gülen movement does not run mosques, nor provide mosques services, means that there are fewer opportunities for horizontal competition than in the case of groups such as Milli Görüş and the Süleymancılar . On the other hand, the educational sector, including private schools and afterschool help (where the Gülen movement is particularly present), has now come to represent a new field of competition with regard to Turkish diaspora communities. Already in 2013, there were indications that the Diyanet was screening candidates for the international theology programme for suspected sympathies towards the Gülen movement (Uslu 2013).
The failed coup attempt in 2016 has had far-reaching consequences for politics in Turkey as well as for the religious field abroad. The AKP government and President Erdoğan have placed full responsibility for the coup on the Gülen movement, which they have declared a terrorist organization. Purges of state institutions have been carried out, targeting both individuals involved in the coup attempt and AKP opponents more generally, while the state has mobilized its secret service abroad. The German interior security agency took the exceptional step of reporting on the Turkish secret service in its 2016 yearly report, stating that Turkish agents were “presumably intensifying their own intelligence-gathering and tracking activities of the Gülen movement in Germany” after requests for sympathizers to be extradited were turned down by the German government (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz 2017, 278).
Concrete evidence arrived in December 2016, when the Green parliamentarian Volker Beck approached public prosecutors with documents showing that Diyanet imams were spying on Turks and sending back information on members of the Gülen movement. The documents obtained by Beck included a copy of a circular sent to religious officials abroad in September 2016 by the Diyanet Director for Turks Abroad in which he calls on the Diyanet’s employees to report on the Gülen movement abroad (Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2017). According to a Turkish newspaper, the reports were carried out in 38 different countries by Diyanet religious officials and submitted to the Turkish parliamentary commission investigating the attempt coup. The religious officials, who in many cases even signed their names, meticulously documented the names of individuals, schools, businesses, associations, and foundations tied to the Gülen movement (Lıcalı 2016). The “DITIB Espionage Affair ,” as it has come to be known in Germany, led to police raids of Diyanet religious officials’ houses and a court case that was eventually suspended due to lack of evidence—and the fact that several imams under investigation had already left the country.
DITIB initially played down the severity of the accusations and explained that it was a “simple mistake”: Central Asian states had requested information on the Gülen movement in their countries from the Diyanet, which had erroneously sent the request for information to all of its officials abroad instead of only those in Central Asia (Alboğa in Berger 2016). An apology for the “mistake” followed, as well as an official statement in which DITIB emphasized that it was not the employer of the imams, but that it had demanded an explanation from the Diyanet. The latter had carried out internal investigations and found that “several religious officials had exceeded their responsibilities concerning a circular that did not apply to European states” and had taken the corresponding measure of terminating their posting abroad (DITIB 2017). German authorities have on the whole accepted DITIB’s account and have resisted calls to suspend cooperation with the association, though they have criticized its lack of transparency, such as during the last session of the Islamkonferenz in 2017.
The fallout from the conflict between the AKP and the Gülen movement has led to other complicated questions of internal and foreign politics for both Germany and Turkey. For instance, a pair of Diyanet imams were dismissed from their posts by the Diyanet and called back to Turkey in 2016 for their suspected proximity to the Gülen movement. The imams decided to take DITIB to court in an attempt to stay in Germany; however, the courts found there was “no labour relationship” with DITIB and thus there was nothing that could be done (Die Zeit 2017). There have even been reports of Diyanet imams considering applying for asylum in Germany.
The public image of the Diyanet and DITIB in Germany has suffered greatly as a result of the espionage affair while the question of cooperation with Turkey in general has become ever more politicized. During the 2017 elections, in a show of bravado the SPD candidate Martin Schulz went so far as to state that he would “terminate the agreement” with Turkey concerning Diyanet imams (as well as Turkey’s bid to join the EU ). Indeed, across Western Europe relations with Turkey have deteriorated, most notably in the Netherlands where Turkish ministers were expelled in 2017 for campaigning in diaspora communities, while many politicians have criticized the leverage Turkey holds thanks to a controversial refugee deal struck with the EU in 2016.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has endeavoured to follow a more reserved approach and indeed the general framework of interstate cooperation in religious affairs has continued: for instance, 350 Diyanet imams were admitted to Germany as usual during 2017 (Parth 2018). Nevertheless, the cases of Milli Görüş and the Gülen movement over the last years, just as in the case of the Rally in France, have shown in a rather spectacular fashion that it is impossible to contemplate the future of religious fields abroad without taking into account the consequences of internal home state politics. Furthermore, both cases equally demonstrate that as religious fields became ever more politicized, the ability of home states to intervene in Muslim fields abroad also depends on ensuring good relations by convincing receiving states that home state involvement is in both of their interests. Failure to do so can lead to mounting tensions, as is currently the case between Germany and Turkey.
3.2 Home State Financial and Cultural Capital in the Religious Field Abroad
The religious public policy of Turkey and Morocco in France and Germany does not establish a clear limit between religion and culture, and instead promotes both as constituent elements of a state-promoted national identity. Herein lies one of the most important distinctions between these policies and those of other transnational Islamic movements: instead of directing their activities towards the global Muslim community (ummah), the principal concern of the Turkish and Moroccan states is the nation.
On the one hand, this focus seems logical in that both states have a constitutional obligation to protect the interests of their citizens residing abroad; in other words, religion is included as part of a set of diaspora policies aimed at strengthening ties with the community abroad for a host of symbolic, economic, and political reasons. On the other hand, it is striking that while both Turkey and Morocco have an active religious foreign policy directed towards other regions of the world based on their shared Islamic faith, in the countries where their respective diasporas are to be found, they concentrate solely on the religious affairs of their national communities. This factor shows clearly that home state religious services in France and Germany are considered first and foremost as a diaspora policy . In other words, the interests of Turkey and Morocco in governing Islam in these countries is fundamentally distinct from their religious activities in other geographic regions, where different foreign policy questions may be at issue (cf. Sambe 2011; Belhaj 2010 for Morocco; Kösebalaban 2011; Balci 2003 for Turkey).
The ties between diaspora groups with home states become more tenuous with the arrival of new generations, who may no longer speak their parents’ (or grandparents’) language and are not as familiar with the “old country.” In some case, they may no longer be citizens; however, in many cases they are still Muslims. As Roy (2004, 20) point outs, “the novelty brought by the passage of Islam to the West is the disconnection of Islam as a religion from a specific culture.” Consequently, the use of cultural capital in the religious policies of both states, bolstered by state funding in the case of Morocco and the vast network of religious officials in the case of Turkey, takes on a paradoxical role. Cultural capital becomes both a source of legitimacy for state-approved forms of religious authority and an invisible boundary between Muslims of different national and ethnic backgrounds; moreover, it represents a potential source of interstate tension due to its ambiguous position vis-à-vis receiving state policies aimed at “integrating” Muslims and their religion.
3.2.1 Exporting a National Recipe for “Moroccan Islam”
Since the beginning of the reform of the religious field, the Moroccan state has embarked on a programme to promote a singularly national form of Islam that is based on four main ingredients: the king’s role as “Commander of the Faithful”; the Maliki school (maḍhab); the Ashʿari doctrine (ʿaqīda); and respect for Sufism (taṣawwuf). These ingredients make repeated appearances in official publications and declarations concerning religion in Morocco : the Habous ministry website displays all four elements under the heading “Islam in Morocco” and they are all mentioned in the first paragraph of the decree that founded the CEOM in 2008. These particular religious characteristics taken together represent the strategy adopted by Moroccan authorities to reassert national particularities in its promotion of a distinctly “Moroccan” Islam at both home and abroad.
Moroccans abroad are active in a multitude of different religious currents and organizations, many of which have a much more pan-Islamic outlook than those tied to ʿ Adl wal Iḥsān or the Sufi boutchichiyya, or Turkish Muslim associations in general. For instance, the Tabligh movement—though Pakistani in origin—initially established its base especially amongst Moroccan immigrant youth in France and led these young Muslim to adopt an “ostentatious Islamic identity” that symbolized their “double national disaffiliation” with both home and receiving countries (Khedimellah 2001). Similarly, the French UOIF , close to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Tunisian Ennahdha, has long been led by Moroccans. Each of these groups appeals to a different audience, but for Moroccan authorities they all present a similar challenge: ensuring that national identity takes precedence by promoting a distinctly Moroccan understanding of Islam.
Moroccan national Islam has been analyzed by Burke (2014) as a construction of French scholars and ethnologists during the protectorate. In Chapter 3, I more modestly argue that it is rather the modern institutional structures of Moroccan state Islam that were derived from French colonial policies. The official association of specific theological currents to Moroccan Islam works to discursively exclude the possibility of interpretations considered deviant by the state, ranging from Salafi Jihadism and Wahhabism to Shiism. Similar to the case of Turkey, Moroccan state authorities create orthodoxy by framing it within a nationalist tradition. Habous officials contend that Morocco has a unique model when it comes to Islam and politics because it has always been a kingdom ruled over by the Commander of the Faithful (amīr al-mu’minīn). Moreover, dogmatically Morocco has “always been Maliki,” and the “public management” of religion is not at issue: “the nation has conferred the management of religion on the amīr al-mu’minīn, he has solved the problem […] the religious sphere is settled, in that sense” (Interview, Habous Cabinet Member I).
Moroccan Financial Subsidies Abroad 2015
Country | City | Beneficiaries | Amount (€) |
|---|---|---|---|
France | Union of French Mosques (UMF) | 2 million | |
Évry-Courcouronnes | Évry-Courcouronnes Mosque | 1.4 million | |
Saint-Étienne | Great Mosque Mohammed VI | 600,000 | |
Strasbourg | Great Mosque of Strasbourg | 200,000 | |
Mantes-la-Jolie | Othman Ibn Affan Mosque | 1.6 million | |
Germany | Raunheim | Moroccan Friendship Circle/Sadaqa mosque | 100,000 |
Frankfurt | Central Council of Moroccans in Germany (ZMaD) | 100,000 | |
Italy | Turin | Moroccan Religious Exhibition, Venaria Palace | 230,000 |
Spain | Barcelona | Barcelona Mosque | 300,000 |
Catalonia | Union of Islamic Cultural Centres in Catalonia | 300,000 | |
Islamic Cultural Association Al-Nur | 200,000 | ||
Community of Leading Muslim Women of Spain | 200,000 | ||
Catalonia | Federation High Committee of Muslims and Culture Catalonia | 300,000 | |
Catalonia | Islamic Cultural Association “Forgiveness” Catalonia | 300,000 | |
Madrid | Islamic Centre in Fuenlabrada | 300,000 | |
Belgium | Brussels | European Council of Moroccan Ulema (CEOM) | 2 million |
Brussels | Rally of Belgian Muslims (RMB) | 100,000 | |
Chile | Coquimbo | Mohammed VI Centre for Dialogue of Civilizations | 370,000 |
Netherlands | Union of Moroccan Muslim Associations in Holland | 100,000 | |
Total | 10.6 million |
Examples of large-scale mosques that have been constructed abroad with Moroccan financial aid in recent years include the French mosques of Strasbourg, St-Étienne, Blois, and Mantes-la-Jolie . Indeed, as a French senate report made clear in 2016, over the last decade Morocco has become the largest foreign state contributor to Islamic organizations in France, ahead of both Algeria and Saudi Arabia (Féret et al. 2016, 57–60). State funding in these cases has been used to justify certain national prerogatives in the religious field, such as in the case of the Mohammed VI Great Mosque of St-Étienne, which is the second mosque in France after the Évry mosque to officially become the property of the Habous ministry and thus of the Moroccan state (Interview, Habous Cabinet Member II, 23 October 2014, Paris /Rabat). The mosque took eight years to build and received between five and six of the eight million euros necessary for its construction from Morocco (Le Bars 2012). The inauguration was attended by local political and religious leaders, as well as the Moroccan Habous Minister Ahmed Toufiq and the Habous cabinet member for Moroccans abroad.
The opening of the mosque was marred, however, by a group of protesters who called for greater transparency and denounced the dismissal of the former imam, who was sent back to Morocco after 17 years at the mosque. Despite rumours that the imam had been sent back to Morocco because he was considered radical by French authorities, according to the mosque president, the problem was simply that the imam’s salary had come from the Hassan II Foundation (FHII), which could no longer afford to continue paying (Marchiche in SaphirNews 2012). The spokesperson for the mosque called it an “administrative decision” and stated that since the imam was an “employee” of the Moroccan state, he could be called back to Morocco just like “an ambassador” (Oumouden in Magassa-Konaté 2012a). By the end of the year, the president of the mosque had signed another agreement with the Habous ministry in order to promote greater cooperation, notably by sending religious scholars for conferences from Morocco and securing more financial support from the Habous ministry.
At the same time, in 2013 several French-language Muslim websites published a copy of the statutes of the “Moroccan Socio-Cultural Centre of Saint-Étienne,” the association in charge of running the mosque. These websites denounced the influence exerted by the Moroccan state, which was visible through articles in the association’s statutes, such as “the Moroccan character of the association cannot be called into question,” and the fact that membership in the association required individuals “to be of French nationality with Moroccan origins or to be a Moroccan national” (Centre Socio-Culturel Marocain de Saint-Étienne 2012). However, there was in fact a long precedent for these nationalistic restrictions: 15 years before, the same association was in charge of a different mosque where membership similarly required Moroccan nationality (Bencharif 1996).
Another association, the “Friends of the Great Mosque Mohamed VI of Saint-Étienne” was founded in 2013 and declared its objectives to be promoting Moroccan knowledge, culture, and architecture, organizing cultural trips to the Morocco , and establishing conventions and partnerships with public or private establishments in France or Morocco (Annexe au Journal Officiel 2013). The mosque’s overt connections to the Moroccan state led a writer for one of the main French Muslim media sources to call it “a Moroccan embassy at the service of Muslims,” and later to ask whether it represented the “antithesis of French Islam (Islam de France)” (Magassa-Konaté 2012a, b). Moreover, contrary to the case of the Strasbourg mosque, the French translation of the plaque in front of the Great Mosque of St-Étienne does include King Mohammed VI’s title of amīr al-mu’minīn.
Similar to the case of Turkey, it is not just culture but rather the persistence of Moroccan nationalism that is determinant in maintaining ethno-national divisions within the French Muslim field. For instance, the FHII continues to provide state-approved cultural capital abroad, notably through the organization of summer camps to Morocco and the funding of Arabic language instruction. From the construction of the Great Mosque of Paris , to the first headscarf affair in 1989, and now to training French imams in Morocco , the specificities of Moroccan Islam and culture represent integral elements to the development of Islam in France . However, one of the main motors of this national specificity has come from Morocco’s perennial rivalry with Algeria.
For instance, a Moroccan consul-general critically mentioned to me that Algeria was only interested in building large mosques, but then jovially remarked that Strasbourg had slipped through their fingers (Interview, Moroccan Consul-General). The interstate rivalry between these two home states is no mystery to local actors in charge of large mosque projects. In Marseille , which has historically had a large Algerian population, the head of the project for the Great Mosque of Marseille recounted to me that the king of Morocco had offered to construct the mosque “just like that.” The association ultimately declined because they were against having funding come from only one source, and because the president was very conscious of the symbolic importance of Marseille. As he mentioned, “for them, it’s about politics” (Interview, Marseille Mosque President, 16 March 2012, Marseille).
In other instances, national lines in the religious field are drawn according to which religious authorities are perceived to be legitimate. A very revealing moment for this kind of religious disagreement is during the main Islamic holidays and results from a mix of national allegiances and theological opinions. As Kepel points out, “mastery over Islamic time represents in reality an issue of power: he who determines the hour of prayer or the date of a holiday is considered to be in possession of legitimate authority” (1991, 276). Islamic religious authorities use different methods of calculation based on the lunar calendar and thus may disagree as to when a specific holiday begins. Consequently, this poses significant practical problems for Muslims who simply wish to know on what day to begin fasting during Ramadan, or celebrating for Eid al-Adha, and must decide which religious authorities to follow.
In 2013, the Great Mosque of Paris made the bewildering decision to change its mind as to the starting date of Ramadan on the very day that the holiday began. The surprise announcement caught many people by surprise and resulted in more than a few panicked phone calls between friends and relatives who were told to stop fasting immediately. On the other hand, for the majority of Turkish Muslims this confusion was irrelevant, given that they had already decided to follow the dates that had been determined by the Diyanet. Similarly, a representative from a regional mosque federation in the city of Nice told me that the “Moroccan” mosque was distinguished not only by the fact that its members were “just Moroccans and it’s only for Moroccans,” but also because it had followed Moroccan religious authorities and had started its celebrations for Eid al-Adha a day later than other local mosque associations (Interview, Muslim Union of Alpes-Maritimes, 5 October 2014, Nice).
Ultimately, the support for Moroccan national Islam both at home and abroad is part of a calculated strategy on the part of the Makhzen to reassert its control over the religious field as a preventative measure. As the secretary-general of the CEOM stated, “the organization of the religious field passes necessarily through Europe. If the religious field is disorganized in Europe, that can have grave consequences for Morocco . It destabilizes the Moroccan model of […] religiosity.” The prevention of Islamic terrorism and the safeguarding of Moroccan identity abroad represent the main interests that motivate Moroccan state religious policy abroad. The two are intricately tied together in the state-approved construction of “Moroccan Islam” that establishes a set of boundaries within Muslim fields abroad that give precedence to the nation and the monarchy over the global ummah. Though Moroccans in foreign countries such as France or Germany may be involved in many different Muslim organizations, the ultimate goal of the Makhzen is to ensure that Moroccan nationalism continues to be a force capable of uniting and co-opting the necessary religious actors whenever the state has need of them.
3.2.2 Celebrating the Nation in Foreign Mosques: Turkish Nationalism and Cultural Capital
Since the quasi-official adoption of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis as state policy in the 1980s, culture and religion have become largely synonymous in Turkish religious policy. For instance, the Turkish Diyanet Foundation’s monumental Encyclopedia of Islam, which was completed in 2013 after 30 continuous years of work, has been advertised by posters proclaiming: “every culture has an encyclopedia; this is our culture” (Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı 2008). Furthermore, Turkey has a constitutional obligation to “protect the ties [of its citizens abroad] to the homeland,” and this includes “cultural needs” (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti 1982), which are interpreted as including religious services.
Many of the Diyanet’s non-state competitors abroad very quickly understood the potential for growth by offering a variety of social services that went beyond religious necessities and responded rather to the general needs of migrants in foreign countries. DITIB began catching up in the 1990s and today, religion is far from the only focus at DITIB mosques: language classes and training programmes, sports events, local festivals (kermes), and more, all mark the daily life of mosque communities in Western Europe. The kermes, also translated as “charitable bazaars,” brings together a wide variety of religious and non-religious activities that can last multiple days and contribute to fund-raising efforts by local mosque communities. They are frequently organized with local businesses run by members of the community, providing an economic impetus for these religious and cultural diaspora community events.
The kermes can occur during religious holidays, such as during “Holy Birth Week,” in which case special Qur’an reciters may put on performances and the local Diyanet attaché may speak. On other occasions, the kermes may emphasize intercultural dialogue: many take place around 3 October in Germany, which is annual “Open Mosque Day” (Tag der offenen Moschee), and which coincides with German Unity Day in order to symbolize Muslim belonging in modern reunified Germany . The kermes festivals feature a wide variety of events and activities: Turkish food; games for children; martial arts shows; book stands; pony rides; conferences given by invited speakers; “Islamic music”; whirling dervishes; and prizes. At times, the musical element is given more importance and religiously inspired music is performed alongside “folkloric” dance groups and non-religious traditional Turkish türkü folk songs. These events go far beyond what more austere religious events would call for and demonstrate how Turkish cultural activities form a significant part of the social life of DITIB mosques.
Although kermes events in Turkey are commonly organized to support the construction of mosques, the extent of cultural activities organized by DITIB mosques abroad has no equivalent in Diyanet mosques back home. In a diaspora setting, the mosque serves a focal point for the local Turkish community, bringing together a network of social, cultural, and economic interests alongside religious considerations. Consequently, and in a paradoxical manner, DITIB mosque associations cannot limit themselves to only providing religious services: the demands of the local community go beyond the bare bones of prayer and Qur’an courses and include the transmission of language, traditions, and cultural practices, meaning that forms of Turkish cultural capital play a fundamental role in legitimizing DITIB mosques.
In a similar fashion, national holidays are frequently celebrated in DITIB mosques abroad whereas the same never occurs in mosques in Turkey. Events are held for important dates such as Republic Day (Cumhuriyet Bayramı) and Children’s Day (commemorating the opening of the Turkish Parliament in 1920), which are unsurprisingly not celebrated by Milli Görüş or Süleymancılar mosque associations. However, the latter two organizations still employ significant levels of Turkish cultural capital—starting with the language—that call into question the pan-Islamic discourse espoused especially by Milli Görüş. At the same time, neither of these Turkish Islamic groups promotes the official symbols of the Turkish state, whereas DITIB frequently has Turkish flags flying in front of their mosques (next to those of the association and the receiving country, see Chapter 5), as well as the occasional portrait of Atatürk . These distinctions show how the kind of Turkish nationalism that accompanies the use of Turkish cultural capital in the religious field constitutes a line of demarcation between DITIB and other Turkish Islamic currents that look critically on the secularist Kemalist heritage of the Turkish republic.
The central place of Turkish nationalism in DITIB mosques is best represented by other commonly held events, such as the ceremonies commemorating the Battle of Gallipoli (Çanakkale in Turkish) during the First World War or especially the “Competition for the Recitation of the Independence March” (İstiklal Marşı Okuma Yarışması), Turkey’s national anthem. The national anthem recitation competitions bring to the fore the intimate relationship between culture, nationalism , and religion within DITIB associations. In light of the German state’s attempts to promote a national “German” Islam, these events represent a potentially controversial manifestation of loyalty towards the Turkish state by local religious actors. During my field interviews with Turkish diplomats and religious officials, questions concerning these competitions gave rise to some of the most revealing statements on the process of Turkish migrant integration in France and Germany. Interviewees responded with a mix of hesitancy and frustration, seeking to contextualize these events and explain why they do not pose an obstacle to integration, but also emphasizing the unfair treatment of Turkish Islam by the German state. For instance, this included the latter’s tendency to look the other way in the case of other minorities, such as Christian communities in Germany who give religious services in other languages, or German religious groups such as the Evangelical Church, which also sends priests to foreign countries who preach in German.
The need to contextualize the national anthem recitation competitions took different paths. For some, it was simply a question of migrants feeling “homesickness” (Interview, Diyanet Religious Counsellor Germany); for others, it was important to understand the historical context of the national anthem and its Islamic references, because “religion is a considerably dominant factor in our culture […] cultural life and other social life are intertwined with religion, […] you can’t just separate between different compartments” (Interview, Diyanet Religious Counsellor France ). Another diplomat criticized the tendency to think of DITIB exclusively as a Muslim group: “DITIB is for Turks. There are no Syrians who come to DITIB, no Kuwaitis, no – I don’t know – Tunisians. They don’t. Maybe three or five show up for prayers, but that’s not the community (cemaat).” For this diplomat, receiving state attempts to create a national Islam were bound to fail and “will only produce tension,” because “Turks, when they assemble in a mosque as a community, they don’t bring together [all] the Muslims. First they gather the Turks. That [national identity] is what brings them together” (Interview, Turkish Embassy Germany ).
A final diplomat explained that aside from being normal expressions of migrant identity, these manifestations of nationalism should in fact be encouraged over the more dangerous alternatives: singing the national anthem was after all preferable to singing the praises of Osama Bin Laden. In this sense, Turkish nationalism as a part of Muslim identity constituted a form of ideological protection against the “imperialist” and “aggressive” viewpoints of Wahhabists and Islamists, “because if you look at Islamism, in terms of a political current, it’s a current that denies nations. […] There is only one nation, or rather community, and that’s the Muslim community” (Interview, Turkish Embassy France ). Consequently, home state nationalism and cultural capital are presented as a vaccine that can prevent Islamic radicalism from spreading amongst Muslim migrants and their descendants abroad.
Alongside religion, preserving the use of the Turkish language occupies a special place in Turkish diaspora policies and in DITIB mosques. Turkish politicians have often repeated during their speeches abroad that diaspora Turks must first learn their “mother tongue” before learning a second language, provoking the ire of local media and politicians. While visiting one mosque in Berlin , I watched while a DITIB member encouraged a group of 30 young Muslims to participate in an essay-writing competition for youth as part of “Holy Birth Week”; however, the essay had to be written in Turkish. The DITIB member, who had grown up in Germany and spoke without an accent in German, explained to me that with the generational change it was “vitally important” to promote the Turkish language because it was “a part of our own culture” (Interview, DITIB Berlin , 2 March 2011, Berlin). The fact that this competition would exclude the few young Muslims who were not of Turkish background was not seen as overly important.
Nevertheless, the question of who is being excluded in these instances represents the elephant in the room. Aside from Germans , who consequently find such activities “adverse to integration” (integrationsfeindlich), and Muslims of other backgrounds, even immigrants from Turkey are not all Turkish: the significant Kurdish minority is the most relevant in this respect. While Kurdish Turks may speak Turkish and attend DITIB mosques, their relationship to Turkish nationalism is to say the least much more problematic. Most of my interlocutors brushed off the question, stating that identification with Turkish national identity was “perhaps a little different” for Kurds (Interview, Turkish Embassy Germany), and more than a few of the DITIB mosque leaders I met did have Kurdish background. Moreover, in some mosques I was told that it was thanks to the AKP government’s erstwhile policies in favour of recognizing Kurds that both were now praying together, which would not have been possible ten years earlier (Interview, DITIB Kuba Mosque).
Nevertheless, worsening relations between Kurds and the AKP government in recent years and the Turkish army’s incursions in the Syrian civil war against Kurdish militias have greatly strained this relationship. The tendency of Turkish nationalism to celebrate and support the military has complicated even further this situation: for instance, in early 2018, Diyanet imams in Germany led prayers for the victory of the Turkish army in combat against Kurdish militias in the Syrian city of Afrin. The incident raised concerns in the German parliament and the government expressed its critical position, while indicating that it was up to the Länder to determine if such behaviour is becoming of a religious community (Özdemir in Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2018). German authorities have been increasingly concerned about the repercussions of the conflict abroad, especially after a series of firebomb attacks were carried out on Turkish mosques by Kurdish independence groups in the first months of 2018 in Germany.
Despite its potential to fuel ethnic conflict, the argument for promoting Turkish cultural capital in the religious field includes a set of assumptions that go further than may at first be apparent. According to my interviewees, Turks abroad who cannot identify entirely with either Turkey or their country of residence represent those who are most susceptible to Islamic fundamentalism, criminality, or a host of similar social problems stemming from an ostensibly failed integration. This perspective echoes Roy’s (2004) assertion that the disconnection between religion and culture (or “acculturation”) amongst the children of Muslim immigrants has led to an individualized understanding of the Islamic faith, that for many entails an identification with a neofundamentalist “global Islam” that shuns the cultural trappings and traditions of their parents’ Islam. The moment that the global ummah becomes more important for an individual than his or her national ethnic background is thus perceived as a possible first step towards radicalization. Similar to home state intervention in general, the emphasis on Turkish cultural capital in the religious field is perceived by state authorities as an antidote to the potential security dangers posed by an unregulated and uncontrolled Islam. Nevertheless, this approach also leads to the reinforcement of the cultural boundaries that serve to distinguish the Turkish Muslim field from other ethno-national Muslim fields in France and Germany.
4 Conclusion
While the rise of Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11 has led to increased interstate cooperation between security and intelligence services, state authorities on all sides still have deep-rooted concerns about those who might exploit the vacuum of religious authority in France or Germany. These concerns are discursively employed by home state authorities and go beyond the possible danger of Islamic terrorism, aiming instead at delegitimizing non-state actors as potential religious authorities in the eyes of the French and German states. Accordingly, as demonstrated in the case of France’s recent agreements with Turkey and Morocco on long-term imams, receiving state authorities’ occasional hostility to home state involvement is still not enough of an obstacle to preclude interstate cooperation.
For home states , the challenge has been how to move beyond the current system and involve second- and third-generation migrants in their governance of Islam abroad. While receiving states have been limited even in their most successful attempts, such as the Islamic theology programmes in Germany, home states have pursued numerous initiatives with the aim of establishing a new set of religious authorities in Muslim fields abroad. The transnational nature of these fields is exemplified by the transfer of the Strasbourg Theology Faculty’s students to the Diyanet’s International Theology Programme in Turkey , while equally revealing how receiving state authority over the religious field is bound by its own borders. Furthermore, the impressive growth of the UİP and the creation of a programme for French imams at the Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams severely challenge oft-repeated assertions that home state influence will be a passing phenomenon.
Nevertheless, Turkish and Moroccan religious policies in Western Europe are ultimately diaspora policies and do not seek to appeal to all Muslims in the countries where the diaspora resides. Religious fields abroad are perceived as transnational extensions of the religious field at home, meaning that home state politics continue to have a direct influence on the development of Islam abroad. Consequently, major developments in the French and German Muslim fields are rarely independent of events occurring in foreign countries, whether it be the simmering hostility between the Makhzen and the PJD, the no holds barred battle between the AKP and the Gülen movement, or even the Syrian civil war. The continued impact of these home state conflicts is strongly influenced by the use of cultural capital and home state nationalism within Muslim fields in foreign countries. Whether spread by financial subsidies or a legion of religious officials, the emphasis on national Islamic traditions and cultural identity in home state religious activities maintains ethno-national boundaries between Muslim groups and contributes to shaping specific frames of reference for what constitutes a legitimate religious authority abroad.
Notes
- 1.
“Bugünkü Türkiye’de ulema yok, ama alimler var.”
- 2.
The COJEP was formerly a youth branch of Milli Görüş in the Alsace region that broke away as an independent association in 1985, and now has branches in 14 different European countries.
- 3.
The original two (Ankara University and Marmara University in Istanbul), as well as Istanbul University, Uludağ University in Bursa, Erbakan University in Konya, and 29 Mayıs University in Istanbul (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı 2018).
- 4.
The German interior security agency (Bundesverfassungsschutz) has included Milli Görüş for many years on its list of organizations that pose a danger to the constitution (verfassungsfeindlich). Milli Görüş has long contested this characterization, which place it in the same class as violent terrorist organizations.