Mosques in Germany: Negotiating Integration

Introduction

Imagine walking through Venice and running into one of the many churches that are spread throughout the floating city. Everything seems normal, but something catches your eye. It is a writing on the main door, ‘La Moschea della Misericordia’. Moved by curiosity, you decide to step inside. After pushing through a crowd of tourists, you finally distinguish five men kneeling towards Mecca, praying in the middle of the baroque building. This scene unfolded during the Venice Biennale in 2015, when the artist Christoph Büchel arranged a mosque inside the deconsecrated church of Santa Maria Della Misericordia. Thanks to the free entry to the Pavilion, many members of the Venetian Muslim community started to pray there, since the only prayer room the city had until then was in the suburb of Marghera. After the protests of the citizens and the public opinion, the municipality revoked its authorization and dismantled the Pavilion. While Italy remains closely tied to Catholicism, similar tensions have emerged even in more secular European countries. One of the most famous cases was in 2012 in Cologne, where the construction of the Central Mosque was strongly criticized. Although Germany in 2006 had the highest number of mosques in Europe¹, many of them were arranged in buildings that had different purposes in the past. Garages, old shops, and storehouses became the centre of religious activities in Muslim communities. Public resistance often intensifies when mosques are purpose-built and their religious identity is immediately visible. Mosques specifically constructed to serve religious functions within a community embody both the tangible presence of Islam in the urban landscapes of the so-called Global North and the social and political agency of the local Muslim community. The social clash seems to happen when the urban majority acknowledges the presence of what is considered to be extraneous. Inspired by these media cases, the research aims to focus on the mosque as a living and integrated part of the German urban fabric. For this reason, it will try to answer the following questions: How is the mosque lived as an urban space within the Muslim communities in Germany? What is its role in the interaction between Muslims and the non-Muslim majority? To explore these questions, the paper examines the practices and everyday activities that take place within mosques in Berlin, Stuttgart, and Cologne. It argues that the mosque is a space where multiple identities—religious, social, and urban—are actively shaped and negotiated. By centering the perspectives of interviewed Muslims, this study seeks to move beyond a Western-centric framework and shed light on the strategies and compromises through which Muslims navigate belonging in contemporary German cities.

1. Mosque as a Place of Belonging

1.1. Empowering the individual

When it comes to studying Muslim communities, it is necessary to consider the variety of practices, beliefs, and traditions that are included in the group studied. Considering Germany, the ethnographic study The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin² provides an instance of this heterogeneous and complex group of people. The interviews conducted between 2004 and 2007 reveal that women decide to go to the mosque to understand and practice Islam, but also to meet people of the “same kind”³. This quoted expression becomes clear when the author shows the different components of the Muslim community in Berlin and the reasons behind choosing one mosque over the other. She notices that there are various factors that influence the selection of the most appropriate mosque community to follow: proximity, ethnicity, traditions, and national roots. It appears clear that the identification with a Muslim community intersects with other identity factors that are more visible when a community criticizes another. When two
Muslim women, Amal (a German convert who was married to an Arab imam) and Latifa (of Turkish origins) attended prayer in a Turkish mosque, they both perceived a common identity of being Muslim and a different tradition. While Amal expressed her disappointment in the duration of the prayer because it was excessively short, Latifa defended her tradition, saying “It is how we do it”⁴. With the last sentence, Latifa identified herself not only through her Muslimness but also through her national tradition. The city’s multicultural and multi-ethnic landscape creates a dynamic space where diverse identities interact, intersect, and sometimes clash. Islam, in this context, is lived and experienced in multiple ways; it is neither monolithic nor homogeneous—an idea often perpetuated by Orientalist narratives⁵. Rather than a singular, fixed entity, Islam encompasses a spectrum of identities that merge, evolve, and coexist. Indeed, considering the nationality of Muslims in Germany in 2008, the majority had Turkish origins (63,2%), followed by South-Eastern European (13,6%), with a smaller percentage from the Middle East (8.1%), North Africa (6.9%), and South Asia (4.6%)⁶. The conversation between Amal and Latifa perfectly depicts this various context. Moreover, it represents the complex process of identification of Muslims in the German city.
The concept of identity is strongly connected to the ideas of space and place. Part of the human identity consists of their origins and the place they belong to. In this context, the Turkish mosque represents a place of belonging for Latifa, who sees in it an invisible transnational connection with her roots. It provides her with an individual and common understanding of her feelings of belonging through religious practice. Therefore, the intersection of Muslim and Turkish identities emerges and creates a new awareness of urban differences. With its walls, the mosque delimits a place where different identities collide, melt, and form new ways of understanding who the individual is, not only a Muslim.
Obviously, this religious and social space cannot be considered the only area where Muslims express their communal and individual identity in an urban context. Since Islam is heterogeneous, one cannot consider only pious Muslims as representative of Islam. There are indeed Muslims who rigorously practice religious rituals and others who do not. For this reason, the mosque does not represent the totality of Islam in a city. For instance, the development of the Muslim space can be seen in a concentration of halal restaurants in a neighbourhood. However, in the above-explained case, it is clear that the mosque is one of these places and it has both a religious and social meaning. In the case studied, the mosque is the place of religious and cultural belonging. Another factor that determines the choice of one mosque over another is its didactics. Women base their decision on what the imam teaches and the strictness or flexibility of their preaching⁷. 
The modality of the Islamic knowledge transmission contributes to shaping the community’s understanding of Muslim identity and, for this reason, gives them the agency to acknowledge who they are. A clear example of this empowerment within the mosque context is shown in Knowledge, Empowerment and Religious Authority Among Pious Muslim Women in France and Germany⁸. In this comparative study, the authors interviewed women who have an educational role within Muslim communities. The access to transmitting knowledge as receiver and giver is perceived by the interviewees as an act of piety and women’s empowerment. The act of receiving knowledge is noticeable in the interview of a nurse, the leader of a Quranic group. She recalls the importance that a conference had on her piety. According to her, the imam reflected on how stronger the religious belief was in the past Muslim heritage and how nowadays it has weakened⁹.
On the one hand, receiving this knowledge gave her the motivation to become more pious because of the emotions that it raised in her. Even though this interview was conducted in France, the authors are able to see common patterns in Germany as well. Receiving knowledge from the religious authority has an emotional impact on their Muslimness. The felt emotions push them to be “Islamically correct”¹⁰, therefore, to perceive themselves as ‘more Muslim’. On the other hand, teaching Islamic knowledge is perceived as da‘wa, translatable as invitation or call to Islam¹¹.
Consequently, transmitting knowledge means becoming more pious and at the same time challenging the male authorities. For this reason, this double action of the female teacher has an individual and social power. On the one hand, it strengthens the Muslim identity of the individual. On the other hand, it gives women the agency to participate actively in the community.

1.2 Empowering the social

From the comparison between these two different ethnographic works, it is possible to notice that the mosque becomes a place of belonging, where different identities are interconnected and intersected. Piety, national roots, level of education, and gender come together in the space of the mosque and intervene in the self-awareness of these women. From her interviews, Bendixsen notices that in the last few years of her research women started to identify themselves more as part of the ’umma¹² rather than with their parents’ roots¹³. In this context, many of them started to attend prayers in Arabic or German. Even though Arabic is perceived as more accurate, German-speaking mosques can be more accessible to those who do not have Arab origins. Additionally, more and more mosques conduct the prayer in German. The increasing number of Muslims born in Germany and the decision made by the mosque community to be more inclusive can be seen as a result of the growing second generation of Muslim immigrants. This phenomenon becomes more interesting if compared with the policies of integration for immigrants developed in Germany from the early 2000s.
Immigrants started to come to Germany after World War II as a working force to rebuild the country. Even though they were initially considered transient workers, they soon started to gather their families in Germany. Under these circumstances, in 2000 the citizenship law was reformed so that part of the long-term residents and their children could obtain a German passport. Among them, a large majority was constituted by Muslim Turks¹⁴. The policies for obtaining German citizenship were undoubtedly helpful to integrate these communities, but the government enacted other social manoeuvres to build a common identity. The language was one of the most important aspects. With the Integrational Summit in 2006, Germany elaborated the first plan for the integration of immigrants. The main purpose of the Summit was to address the educational deficits of the integration system and find a solution to this issue. Particular attention was given to the role of the language¹⁵. The results of this new phenomenon can be seen in the choice of those women who decided to pray in German-speaking mosques. It is not a case that the policies have been enacted in the same period of the study. The increasing perception of the Muslim community as ’umma and the number of German-speaking mosques are indicators of a new growing identity shaped also by a new approach to integration. Therefore, the mosque is a space for belonging that includes a sense of membership to a specific, transnational community, as well as to a more rooted German community.

2. Mosque as a Place of Social Blending

This last observation provides a broader perspective on the mosque. It has been explained how the mosque helps individuals to shape their identity. Considering the outcomes of the integration process in the mosque community, it is possible to locate it within the context of German cities. It indeed shows the influence that the environment of the mosque and the individual in it are subjected to in a non-Muslim majority country. Not considering the mosque as an isolated entity from the rest of the city is essential. It is precisely because it is a social space that it interacts with the larger city community. The mosque has a role in the individual and collective life of Muslims, but it is also important as an urban organism. Indeed, mosques are not only prayer spaces but also centres of social activities.
An ethnographic work conducted in Stuttgart describes the social function of the Hussein Mosque inside and outside the Muslim community¹⁶.The physical description the author provides of the building portrays a home atmosphere. The abundantly decorated prayer room is the only environment that recalls the religious function of the building. The offices are furnished as living rooms, with desks for the administration, couches for a dozen people and TVs. Even the garden, whose view from the window ‘enhances the sense of a comfortable home setting’¹⁷, is provided with a wooden structure where people can sit. Clearly, these spaces were made to host people and activities. Indeed, it is possible to have Qur’anic classes, especially for children and youths. It is a space where Muslims can gather and socialize. 
An interesting thing is the presence of a dormitory on the upper floor. It was founded based on the positive experience of the dormitories in Turkey to provide shelter to young students. In 2007, it hosted ten school-age boys who managed their days by studying school subjects and Islamic studies, praying, and cleaning the mosque. Even though their daily schedule was mostly focused
on activities inside the mosque, except for going to school, the dormitory was not an isolated environment from society. Indeed, the main motivation for this choice may be summarized in the words of the mother of one of the boys: “I want him to succeed in school and not to hang around on the street. Too much happens out there. One of my son’s old friends already fathered a child. I want something different for my son. They help here with his schoolwork, and they closely watch him. I appreciate that”¹⁸. According to the woman, the mosque provides a safe environment where her son can be protected from life on the street. Moreover, she implies that life inside the mosque would ensure him successful school results. This is an element that emerges in several interviews.
For instance, an older career member remarks how no one wants to pursue a religious career because ‘It pays nothing compared to what they can make with a good university degree’¹⁹. It appears clear that life in the dormitory in the Hussein Mosque is thought to be a door to a successful life in the urban society, inside and outside the mosque. It not only provides the basis for a pious life, but also allows young boys to access the outside society.

This openness to the rest of the society can be noticed in other activities organized by the Hussein Mosque. In June 2007, at the annual Village Festival, the mosque was represented in the parade for the first time²⁰. Most of the associations of the neighbourhood of Zuffenhausen participate annually in this parade. According to the author, it was one of the few moments of the year in which the diversity of ethnicities and cultures of the neighbourhood was visible altogether. The community of the Hussein Mosque that year decided to participate in the parade, selling kebabs and Cokes. As the author notices, the participation in parades and festivals displays a meaningful relationship between the community and the neighbourhood. It shows the trust and collaboration
of the different communities in the city, including the Hussein Mosque. This inclusion was not the same for other Mosques. Especially after 9/11, a general suspicion has grown towards Muslim communities in Germany. More and more mosques were under public attack because they were accused of building radical and fundamentalist communities. The Hussein Mosque has been able to be included in the life of the neighbourhood because it has taken manoeuvres to implement the visibility of the community. The participation of the Hussein Mosque’s community in the Festivals gave outsiders the chance to acknowledge its presence and overcome the suspicion toward Muslims.
As the case of the Hussein Mosque has shown, the mosque is not only a space of belonging but also the place through which the Muslim community can enact a negotiation of city belonging. It is considered an acceptable part of the urban community as long as it is visible and well-represented on the public scale. Because of the escalating Islamophobia in the West after 9/11, Muslims feel the pressure to represent the ‘good’ Islam. Rogozen-Soltar describes a similar situation in her study about the Muslim community in Granada²¹. She outlines different kinds of visibility that converts, and Moroccan Muslims have to achieve to represent Islam. The formers rely on the institution of the mosque, with Arabic classes and guided visits to the Mezquita Mayor. Moroccan Muslims instead become themselves representatives of Islam. This quest for visibility to a good representation of Islam also exists in Germany. The Muslim community in Stuttgart gained acceptance from the non-Muslim majority only through the positive representation of their institution. However, the mosque has to negotiate its visibility. As will be explained in the next chapter, public opinion does not always accept it.

3. Negotiating Visibility

As has been explained above, the mosque has an important role in Muslim communities in Germany. It is a space of piety and belonging but also a way of admission to the urban society. However, the establishment of mosques in the urban context has had to conform to a more suspicious environment after 9/11. For some mosques, such as the Hussein Mosque, it was possible through increased visibility of their community and activities. They started to participate in parades and organise Open days. On the anniversary of the reunification of Germany on the 3 rd of October, the so-called Open Mosque Day has been established, where every mosque can open its doors to the public, symbolizing the unity of Islam and Germany. As reported in Kuppinger’s study in Stuttgart, in 2006, the Hussein Mosque did not participate because it had its own open house in spring²². It is not the only case where the administration of a mosque decides to open its doors more than once a year. For instance, on the homepage of the Cologne Central Mosque’s website, it is possible to immediately see the weekly schedule of the tours²³. One can book a tour by choosing one of the four days available (Wednesday, Friday, and the weekend), even though, in some cases, ‘appointment requests during the week, Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.’²⁴ can be organised.

Considering the context in which the Cologne Central Mosque was constructed, its openness is noteworthy. The project indeed raised many controversies in 2007, and it started to have a deformed representation in public opinion. The mosque was funded by the Diyanet İşleri Türk-İslam Birliği (DITIB, Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs), one of the most important Islamic organizations in Germany. Although it is partially funded by the German Ministry of Interior, it has strong connections with Turkey, from where the Imams arrived after the formation period. For this reason, the mosque was perceived as a threat to the country by the media, especially since it was built not far from the Cologne Cathedral, a historical symbol of Germany’s unity. Nimet’s words, the leader of the Mosque, are significant:

“[…] We didn’t build a mosque just in Cologne, we built it in the Catholic heart of Germany and at the same time we are one of the mosques closest to the center, so that when you look from here you can see the dome. We are not in any backyard, we are not in any suburb, so it means we are not just visible, we are existing near the center.”²⁵

Nimet highlights the importance of the location of the mosque and its visibility. It is not hidden in a backyard or a garage anymore. On the contrary, it takes its place in a significant area of the city, like the centre. Therefore, the problem lies in the physical presence of the mega-mosque in the German city. Zareena Grewal notices that cultural identity is understood in geographic terms in the context of the nation. For this reason, Islam in the ‘West’ is considered a foreign entity that belongs to the so-called ‘Orient’²⁶. From this orientalist point of view, Islam is perceived as not belonging to Europe and the US and representing the ‘Other’ within the national borders. This concept can be applied in the context of Mosque construction in Germany. The Cologne Mosque represented the presence of the Other within a non-Muslim majority urban context and was recognized as a threat to the national identity. This urban phenomenon perfectly exemplifies what seems to be a national trend in Germany. The national narrative and the politics put effort into the homogenization of the country through teaching German or building mosques in the cities.

However, there is still the perception that Islam is extraneous, oriental, and different. Indeed, in astudy conducted by the German Institute for Human Rights, on the question of whether “Muslim culture fits into our Western world”, three-quarters of the interviewees responded negatively⁶. This shows that there is still the idea of incompatibility between Western and Oriental, two categories that still exist. Islam, considered non-Western, is perceived as a cultural, as in the case of Cologne, and a security threat. It is starting from this perceived difference that Muslims have to negotiate their presence in Germany and German cities. Indeed, they do it by showing what is inside the mosque, with the Open Mosque Day and by participating in the neighbourhood’s initiatives, as in the case of the Hussein Mosque. A different case is the Mosque of Penzberg. Due to its multicultural environment and history that
is not tied to Catholicism like that of Cologne, its construction was accepted by the city community. Its architecture represents the way in which the Mosque has been trusted. Indeed, the architecture consists of four glass walls that allow people to see inside. Betul, the female leader of the mosque, asserts:

“The whole building has about 60% glass surface and you can see that we have no curtains. In the evening, everything is not closed, but the light is on, one can look in, we have nothing to hide. This transparency also suggests that Muslims and Islam are transparent. People have nothing to conceal. We are what we are and we can openly show it, physically illustrate it.”²⁷

Betul associates the transparency of the building with that of her community. The mosque is the urban representation of Islam; thus, the Muslim community has to negotiate its visibility. The building is not as imposing as the one in Cologne, and it allows people to see what is inside. The community had to adapt itself to an Islamophobic environment and compromise to fight against the external suspicion. At the same time, to be a ‘good mosque’ it needs to moderate the visual presence of Islam in the city and allow to see what happens through the walls.

Conclusion

As this essay has demonstrated, mosques as institutions have a significant role in the Muslim community and the urban society in German cities. The academic studies about the role of the mosques have focused mainly on their political and economic role in the cities, while they have avoided explaining how the living community interacts and negotiates its presence in a day-by-day context. This study has applied this approach starting from the institution of the mosque. From the analysed ethnographies, the mosque is lived as a place of belonging where Muslims can reinforce their piety and their role in society. The development of the individual identity in this environment is crucial to understanding the significance of this social space. Indeed, the context of the city offers a plurality of communities to Muslims who can better express their identity. In this cultural mix, the national and transnational elements combine and bring out the problems that Muslims face when it comes to integrating into a non-Muslim majority environment. After 9/11, suspicion against Muslims increased. Islamophobia and the perception of Islam as a foreign entity within the national borders have brought Muslim communities to compromise in order to fit into the urban fabric. They had to negotiate their visibility to give a ‘good’ representation of Islam. In this process, the cultural heterogeneity of Muslim communities fails, and the individual community becomes the model of a whole religion. This visibility is acquired in several ways. Mosques organise initiatives and socio-cultural activities inside and outside the mosque to lower the level of suspicion of the community and, simultaneously, to claim their presence in the city. Another symbolic way to represent Islam is through the construction of mega-mosques. The controversies analysed in the essay highlight that mosques are perceived as symbols of the cultural and political power of Muslims in the city. The paradox lies in the double standard of Islam representation, for which the mosque must not be imposing in the city landscape, but it has to be ‘transparent’, visible from the outside.
Certainly, this phenomenon has also had positive outcomes in the integration of Muslim communities, and this study has dealt with only a part of the lives of Muslims in the cities. The effort put into integrating Muslims into the social fabric is certainly more advanced compared to other countries, but it is necessary to highlight that Islam is still perceived as foreign, a part of orient in the west. Acknowledging these contradictions underlines that this process is still far from an actual integration.

Immagine in copertina By © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39813393

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3. Ivi, 93.[↩]
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13. Synnøve K N Bendixsen and E.J. Brill (Lejda, The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin: An Ethnographic Study (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013): 97.[↩]
14. Petra Kuppinger, Faithfully Urban Pious Muslims in a German City (Berghahn Books, 2015):14-6.[↩]
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24. Traslation of ‘Terminwünsche bitte unter der Woche, Mo.-Fr., 10-17 Uhr.’ In http://www.zentralmoschee-koeln.de/besucheranfrage/.[↩]
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