There no longer seem to be Muslims in singular. They are invisible as individuals, as people to whom their membership in the local soccer club or their work as a nurse might be more important than their Bosnian or Afghan background. Muslims rarely exist today as teachers or locksmiths, as lovers of Neil Young or Munir Bashir, Muslims rarely exist as religious or gay, as atheists and Opel workers – not because this does not exist, but because they are no longer perceived as such.
Every single Muslim is being held responsible for suras in which he does not believe, for orthodox dogmatics whom he does not know, for violent terrorists whom he rejects or for brutal regimes in countries from which he himself has fled. Muslims have to distance themselves from Ahmadinejad in Iran, from the Taliban in Afghanistan, from suicide bombers and honor killers, and yet nobody believes them when they do distance themselves, because everything is being equated: Islam and Islamism, belief and delusion, religiousness and intolerance, individual and collective.
As a comparison: There is ongoing debate about sexual abuse in Catholic schools, and questions are being asked about the structures which have made abuse possible. But it is not expected of random believers to distance themselves from such deeds, and nobody would challenge the believing Catholic German Tv entertainer Harald Schmidt to condemn the practices of Jesuit fathers unknown to him.
It used to be called racism when properties were ascribed to collectives, but today dim-witted prejudice counts as "fear that must be taken seriously." What makes this new racism look so elegant rhetorically is that the discomfort vis-à-vis Muslims is never articulated as discomfort vis-à-vis Muslims. Rather, the attacks always appear in the guise of liberalism and as a defense of modernity. It is the values of an enlightened, sympathetically pluralistic way of life that are being brought to bear against Islam.
As part of this approach, those properties and convictions are ascribed to Muslims that a modern society must castigate as intolerant. A typical example is the immigration test of the CDU-governed state Baden-Württemberg in Germany, in which the question of naturalization was made dependent on the immigrants' attitude towards homosexuality, or that of the state of Hesse, which aimed to assess a modern idea of womanhood.Who would not defend the modern ideas of coexistence? After all, this is the consensus upon which our Basic Law and our social order are based.
It somehow sounds better and more emancipated than the ideology of people who cling dogmatically to repressive ideas of family and sexuality. Implicitly, one's own liberal progressiveness is always asserted.Forgotten are the attempts of the CDU to vote against Registered Partnership, forgotten the backwardness of the idea of family of the Christian Democratic Union, the clinging to the institution of marriage as one between a man and a woman or the denial of the right of adoption to homosexual couples.
It is an odd alliance of atheist-critical feminism and Christian conservativism, which instrumentalizes the head scarf as a projection screen for justified criticism of the abuse of women on the one hand and for a phobic shying away from otherness on the other. Under the circumstances, it is sometimes surprising to see who is suddenly so preoccupied with women's rights, and it stands to reason to suspect that contempt for women is noticed above all when we are dealing with Muslim forms of patriarchy and machismo, as if they were not equally disgusting when practiced by non-Muslims. It remains unclear how many non-Muslim inhabitants of Baden-Württemberg or Hesse would be stripped of their citizenship,if they, too, had to pass the test of their enlightened tolerance. It is always only the others who are intolerant and illiberal.
Thus, a discussion around Islam in Europe has flared up which no longer incites only the minds of those on the right wing but has reached the center of society. The mistrust of Muslim Europeans is no longer stirred up only by the shrill representatives of right wing-nationalistic parties, such as Nick Griffin of the British National Party (BNP) in England, who demands a repatriation of "non-indigenous" Britons, or Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands, who compares the Qur'an with Hitler's "Mein Kampf." Rather, the achievement of such parties is that suddenly, the center of society discusses lines of conflict dictated by the extreme right: in Switzerland minarets are to be outlawed, in France the full veil, and the media debates the "conquest of Europe" by Islam.
But what does this gaze at Islam have to do with Europe? What does the discussion say about us non-Muslims, Christians, Jews or atheists? If a minority can so unnerve the majority, how stable can one's own identity be? There have been Muslim fanatics before, as there have been honor killings and suicide attacks. But perhaps it is not a coincidence that the glance at the integration of European Muslims is sharpened exactly during the historical phase in which Europe is dealing with its own integration. Possibly, there is a connection between a gradual emancipation and simultaneous discrimination of the newly emancipated citizens. It could be that exactly the reform of the citizenship law under the red-green federal government in 1999 led to paradoxes regarding the recognition of Muslims. Whoever used to be perceived as a Tunisian or an Iraqi could be distinguished according to nationality.As soon as the immigrants were able to become Germans, they at least had to remain Muslims, otherwise they would have been indistinguishable. Only in the years after the legal recognition as citizens did it become clear that formal equality by no means implied social equality. Likewise, the French and Swiss discussions of Islam come at a time of national uncertainty.
If, however, the conflicts with Muslims have less to do with Muslims than with ourselves and with Europe, we should ask ourselves what characterized the European Enlightenment as well as the historical processes and principles which it established, what secularization, liberalism and tolerance really mean, and what these values demand in our relations with Muslims.
Originally "secularization" merely referred to the legal act by which the property and the worldly assets of the Church were diminished. In a broader sense, the term signifies the removal of Church authority from the realm of worldly reign. Thus, secularization does not question the practices of believers but establishes the political system as independent of Church influences. Secularization is not anti-religious but anti-clerical. Individual piety, but also the public visibility of religious symbols, are quite a different question.
Whoever wishes to prohibit the wearing of head scarves at public schools or the building of minarets should therefore not invoke secularism. This is one of the reasons why the champions of the head scarf prohibition do not recognize the veil as an expression of religious faith but declare it to be a symbol of suppression, just as the supporters of the prohibition of minarets define the mosque not as a house of God but as a room for spreading terror. What for one person is the rhetorical club of the danger of terror for another person is that of the suppression of women.
The problem is not so much the question of whether there are Muslim girls and women who are forced to wear the veil – this cannot be doubted – but rather, the question is, what suppresses? The piece of cloth itself? Or the patriarchal webs of relationships which ignore the autonomy of women? Does prohibiting the veil stop the structures of suppression? Or does this decision only complement the feeling of incapacitation through fathers and husbands by the feeling of incapacitation through society and state? The woman then no longer must or need wear the veil, but is she being liberated from the structures of suppression at the same time? Would not offers of vocational training or jobs to Muslim women be a more promising tool of emancipation than a burqa or head scarf prohibition? If we recognize a child's domestic neglect by his clothes at school, do we believe that ordering school uniforms would solve the problem?
The rationalism of the Enlightenment and the liberal individualism which critics of Islam like to invoke always orient themselves by the autonomy of the individual. What Enlightenment and liberalism defend is the self-determination of the individual: not by the Church, not by social class, not by background must the modern subject be determined; rather, the autonomous, free choice of the individual must be protected and defended by the state.
Whoever prohibits the head scarf as a matter of principle must therefore ask himself if it should really be unthinkable that a woman would choose to wear a headscarf out of her own free will. If a Muslim woman wishes to wear a headscarf, this must be equally worthy of protection in a liberal state as her decision to wear none. Whoever wishes to defend women should make a self-determined choice possible for them, should punish violence against women (whether Muslim or not) and condemn those who abuse them.
There remains the danger, rightfully named by the supporters of a ban of the burqa, that the social milieu in which women wear the burqa perhaps does not allow for such a free choice. This is a serious objection. But if women, as discussed in France, are forbidden to wear the burqa in busses or subways, will the women who are forced into the burqa really be allowed by their husbands to go out on the street unveiled? Or will they have to stay at home? In this context, the journalist Hilal Sezgin has made the suggestion in the paper "Frankfurter Rundschau" that women wearing the burqa should rather have interpreters put at their disposal in order to widen their room to maneuver.
The heritage of the Enlightenment means defending a scope for development in which individual ideas of happiness can be realized without the state being allowed to intervene. In this respect, secularization was always coupled with the principle of freedom of religion. The political system, the laws of the state, the education system were to be secular and beyond the influence of the Church, but within this political order the citizens were to be allowed their own religiousness, their own world view, their own idea of the good life.
This heritage means the possibility to orient oneself rationally or irrationally, religiously or not religiously, it means the freedom to yearn for a different world but to accept the rule of law and the freedom of religion of others. This freedom to wish to transcend oneself or reality is what allows people to be creative. It may be religious or atheist visions that let us rise above ourselves, but we would languish in our communities and in our joy of life if we were to curtail them.
A freedom of religion which in fact accepts a forced atheism as the only form of modernization is none. A freedom of religion that refers only to the Christian religion is not one, either. In truth, tolerance is always the toleration of something that disgusts and irritates you. Tolerance checks dislike, not affection. And in modern, pluralistic societies with the most diverse existential, sexual or aesthetic tendencies, the toleration of practices and convictions of others is demanded from everyone: the flagellations at the Easter processions in Seville appear as perverted to some as the SM games at the Christopher Street Day parades in Paris or Berlin to others; the male gaze that forces young girls under the veil seems just as sexist to some as the one that makes them squeeze themselves into high heels and bare themselves seems to others; the idea of the eucharist is as strange to some as the belief in 72 virgins in Paradise is to others; the Wagnerites at Bayreuth seem as strange to some as the St. Pauli soccer fans at the Millern Gate. Whoever thinks that only Muslims believe in improbable stories should occasionally attend a mass or visit chat rooms on the internet. For similar ways of life or convictions one does not need tolerance.
Of course there is a real and necessary critique of radical fundamentalism and violence, whether it is initiated by Muslims or by Christians (whoever thinks there are anti-semites or religiously motivated criminals only among Muslims should have a look at the St. Pius Brotherhood or the violent evangelical abortion opponents). But the difference between enlightenment and racism is manifested in whether it is discriminating practices and crimes that are condemned or entire groups within society. It is not people of other faiths that endanger the heritage of the Enlightenment but the ideologues that convert political or social questions into religious or ethnic ones. Racism and xenophobia are enemies of the European idea just as much as religious furor and terrorism.
The European ideals of the Enlightenment, of secularization, of tolerance and the rights of the individual seem to fall into oblivion more and more in Europe. They are presently being defended in the most honest way not in Berlin or Paris but in Tehran. It is young women in head scarves who are fighting against a religious-fundamentalist regime, young people who shout "Allahu akbar," Allah is great, and risk their lives fighting despotism. They are the proof that enlightenment and human rights, tolerance and freedom of religion, must be universally valid, for believers and non-believers, Muslims or Christians, Jews or atheists. This we should remember in Europe.
Copyright: DIE ZEIT
Translation: Marisa Elana James and Barbara A. Schmutzler
