Free Republic

The government has long struggled with foreign involvement when it comes to the education of imams who lead Muslim communities across Germany. Now, a new educational association, with start-up funding from Germany’s interior ministry, is set to launch on November 21. Even though some Muslim organizations have been training imams for their own communities in Germany, the majority of imams working in the country are affiliated with the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB). Among Germany’s nearly 4.5 million Muslims, around 3 million are of Turkish origin. […] DITIB is Germany’s largest Islamic umbrella group, with 900 affiliated mosques. Its...

Lawmakers from Germany’s grand coalition government said on Wednesday that they were considering introducing a “mosque tax” for German Muslims, similar to the church taxes that German Christians pay. Thorsten Frei, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) told Die Welt daily that a mosque tax was “an important step” that would allow “Islam in Germany to emancipate itself from foreign states.” In Germany, church taxes are collected from practicing Catholics and Protestants in order to fund church activities. They are collected by the state and then transferred to religious authorities. In the absence of a similar tax,...

In a local election on Sunday, the residents of Kaufbeuren, a small town in Bavaria, voted against providing public land for the construction of a mosque. At issue was the question of whether the city would provide the local branch of the nationally active Turkish-Islamic religious association DITIB with a 5,000 square meter (54,000 square foot) plot in an industrial area. At least 45 percent of the approximately 34,000 voters took part in the election. A minimum of a 20 percent turnout was necessary to make the vote valid. The city must now break off its negotiations with DITIB. According...

The German government has criticized the country’s biggest Islamic association for refusing to take part in a Muslim “peace march” against terrorism Saturday. The Turkish-Islamic Union said Wednesday that the demonstration in Cologne would send a wrong signal by suggesting international terrorism is mainly a Muslim problem. The union, known by its acronym DITIB, also said Muslims observing the Ramadan-month fast couldn’t be expected to march for hours in the summer sun. …