The German government and representatives of the country’s large Muslim community said on Thursday they had agreed a number of practical proposals to resolve conflicts between German schools and Muslim practises.

The government cannot legally enforce the proposals because, in Germany’s federal system, each of the country’s 16 states regulates education law.

Yet the proposals — agreed upon at a high-profile summit in Berlin aimed at boosting the integration of Germany’s Muslim residents — testify to an increasingly open and rational debate in Germany about Islam.

“These suggestions are not a cure-all, but should be seen as the groundwork for solutions that teachers, pupils and parents have to agree on together,” the German Islam Conference (DIK) said in statement.

(Photo: German Interior Minister Schaeuble chats with delegates of the Islamic Conference in Berlin, 25 June 2009/Wolfgang Kumm)

New official data shows that between 3.8 and 4.3 million Muslims live in Germany — a higher number than previously estimated –  meaning about 5 percent of the overall population.

Some 36 percent of Germany’s Muslims described themselves as strongly religious and 50 percent as moderately religious.

The DIK was set up to try to help Europe’s second biggest Muslim population after France integrate into mainstream Germany society, amid worries about the potential radicalisation of disillusioned young Muslims.

Proposals touched on sensitive issues such as Muslim pupils’ participation in sports and sexual education classes to religious holidays.

Delegates at the conference agreed that schools should try to offer separate swimming lessons to girls and boys and to ensure there are separate changing rooms to enable the participation of all Muslim pupils.

Given that legal school holidays in Germany are based on Christian customs, practical consideration should be given to Islamic religious holidays.

“Schools should take these holidays into account when fixing its calendar for the school year. This affects in particular the dates chosen for exams,” the DIK said.

Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and religious reflection, should be taken into account in particular when planning school trips, internships or school parties.

Regarding sexual education classes, these were necessary and compulsory, but schools should let parents know in advance how and what they planned to teach.

“In the class itself, teachers should be sensitive in their choice of words and carefully select the media, that they show with caution,” the DIK said.

(Photo: Muslim women walk in front of the newly built Ahmadiya mosque in the Heinersdorf district of Berlin, 16 Oct, 2008/ Fabrizio Bensch)

Tips were not only reserved for schools, however. The conference suggested that parents should make sure their children got enough sleep during Ramadan and that, if their daughters wore a headscarf, they should take care it did not lead to ostracism.

Germany seems to be treading a careful path in order to avoid the kinds of conflicts with its Muslim community that other countries have incurred, such as France which provoked controversy in 2004 by banning pupils from wearing conspicuous signs of their religion at school, including headscarves.

But will its tentative proposals be heeded without any kind of legal enforcement?

The Vatican has thrown down the gauntlet to the ultra- traditionalist Society of Saint Piux X (SSPX), which planned to ordain 27 new priests this month without approval from Rome. A statement by the Vatican press office today declared that the ordinations would be illegitimate. The four SSPX bishops were only readmitted into the Roman Catholic Church in January after 20 years of excommunication. If they go ahead and ordain the priests anyway, they could risk being disciplined — possibly even excommunicated — again.

The SSPX claims its fidelity to the old Latin Mass and rejection of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) reforms represent authentic Catholicism as opposed to the “modernism” practiced in the world’s largest church since then. It has also claimed to be loyal to the pope, although this was always hedged with reservations about his authority because of the doctrinal dispute over Vatican II. Having won its bishops’ readmission without making any concessions, it looked set to test the limits again by ordaining priests without Vatican permission.

The Vatican statement quoted a March 10 letter by Pope Benedict to Catholic bishops saying the SSPX did not have any official status within the Church and would have to negotiate it in discussions with Rome. “Until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church,” he wrote.

After quoting that, the Vatican statement said: “So the ordinations should still be considered illegitimate.” It added that there were “reasons to think that the definition of that new status is near” and that “doctrinal and, consequently, also disciplinary questions still remain open.”

(Photo: Pope Benedict, 17 June 2009/Max Rossi)

The statement comes at the last minute — 13 of the 21 were due to be ordained at an SSPX seminariy in Winona, Minnesota on Friday. The rest were planned in Ecône, Switzerland and Zaitzkofen, Germany on June 27. The ball is now in the SSPX’s court, to go ahead with them after all, or not.

Is Benedict listening more to his critics? His decision to readmit the SSPX bishops in January amid an uproar over Holocaust denial by one of them was a public relations disaster that reaped critical comments from several bishops’ conferences in Europe. In recent weeks, three German bishops — including Robert Zollitsch, president of their conference — openly criticised the planned SSPX ordinations and urged the Vatican to intervene. And now it has.

Several readers objected to the headline on our last post on this issue — “SSPX set to push the envelope against the Vatican again” and suggested that calling the ordinations a challenge was only my personal opinion. One quoted the great theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas at length to try to show the SSPX was not actually being disobedient by ignoring the pope’s warning that it could not “legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.” As a reporter covering the Catholic Church, I have to assume the pope’s words carry weight. Measured against that warning, the ordination plan did indeed amount to a bid to “push the envelope against the Vatican again.” With this statement, the Vatican has identified the plan as a challenge and declared it illegitimate in advance.

Roma locuta, causa finita? (Rome has spoken, the case is closed?) — let’s see.

What should a German pope say at Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem?

The chairman of the Yad Vashem council, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, was underwhelmed by Pope Benedict’s effort at the memorial this afternoon. “There certainly was no apology expressed here,” he told Israeli television. “Something was missing. There was no mention of the Germans or the Nazis who participated in the butchery, nor a word of regret.” Nor was there an “expression of empathy with the sorrow.” Lau also criticised Benedict for not specifically saying six million Jews were killed — even though the pope did use this figure earlier in the day during another speech.

While I don’t agree completely with Rabbi Lau, I also thought the speech was not up to the occasion. It was vague and evasive. It approached the Holocaust in an abstract way. Click here to see the difference between his approach and the more direct and powerful style Pope John Paul chose when he made the first papal visit to Yad Vashem nine years ago.

It is a unique situation when, within living memory of the Holocaust, a German is head of the Roman Catholic Church. He is visiting Israel as the head of a universal church, sure, but nobody can forget that he comes from the country that carried out the Holocaust. This is not to imply that he bears any personal blame. But most German clergy, politicians and average citizens acknowledge their country’s responsibility to admit its failures and pledge to never fail that way again. To do so is simply honest and to their credit – unlike for example Japan, which still struggles with admitting its own history.

So why can’t Benedict do it? What do you think he should have said?

(Photo: Benedict speaks at King Hussein bin Talal Mosque, 9 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

If Pope Benedict had delivered today’s speech on Christian-Muslim cooperation back in Regensburg two years ago, there might never have been a “Regensburg.” The name of the tranquil Bavarian university town where Benedict once taught theology has become shorthand for how a man as intelligent as the pope can commit an enormous interfaith gaffe. His long-awaited address today in the King Hussein bin Talal Mosque, Jordan’s magestic state mosque on a hilltop in western Amman, was an eloquent call for Christians and Muslims to work together to defend the role of faith in modern life. Rather than hinting that Islam was irrational, as Muslims understood him to say in Regensburg, he called human reason “God’s gift” to all. Christians and Muslims should work together using their faith and reason to promote the common good in their societies, he said, and oppose political manipulation of any faith.

The speech clearly sought common ground with its Muslim audience. It started off linking the massive pale limestone mosque to other places of worship that “stand out like jewels across the earth’s surface” and “through the centuries … have drawn men and women into their sacred space to pause, to pray, to acknowledge the presence of the Almighty, and to recognize that we are all his creatures.”

Benedict described the increasingly frequent argument that religion caused tensions and division in the world as worrying both to Christian and to Muslim believers. “The need for believers to be true to their principles and beliefs is felt all the more keenly,” he said in the speech in English. “Muslims and Christians, precisely because of the burden of our common history so often marked by misunderstanding, must today strive to be known and recognized as worshipers of God faithful to prayer, eager to uphold and live by the Almighty’s decrees, merciful and compassionate, consistent in bearing witness to all that is true and good, and ever mindful of the common origin and dignity of all human persons, who remain at the apex of God’s creative design for the world and for history.”

After praising Jordan’s work promoting interfaith dialogue, he said the greater reciprocal knowledge both sides had gained through dialogue “should prompt Christians and Muslims to probe even more deeply the essential relationship between God and his world so that together we may strive to ensure that society resonates in harmony with the divine order.”

Today I wish to refer to a task which … I firmly believe Christians and Muslims can embrace… That task is the challenge to cultivate for the good, in the context of faith and truth, the vast potential of human reason… As believers in the one God, we know that human reason is itself God’s gift and that it soars to its highest plane when suffused with the light of God’s truth. In fact, when human reason humbly allows itself to be purified by faith, it is far from weakened; rather, it is strengthened to resist presumption and to reach beyond its own limitations. In this way, human reason is emboldened to pursue its noble purpose of serving mankind, giving expression to our deepest common aspirations and extending, rather than manipulating or confining, public debate.”

(Photo: Benedict with Prince Ghazi (in robes) outside the mosque, 9 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

So has Benedict “made up for Regensburg” or managed to trump it with this speech? His critics here naturally didn’t think so. Sheikh Hamza Mansour, a leading Islamist scholar and politician, told my colleague Suleiman al-Khalidi that the pope had “not sent any message to Muslims that expresses his respect for Islam or its religious symbols starting with the Prophet.” Benedict had spoken on Friday about his deep respect for Muslims, but not specifically for Islam.

“I wouldn’t want to read too much into selecting a particular word or not,” Ibrahim Kalin, a Turkish Islamic scholar and spokesman for the Common Word group of Muslim intellectuals promoting dialogue with Christians, told me by phone from Ankara. The speech was “very positive,” he said. “He said many other things in this speech. He said Christians and Muslims pray to the same God. That’s an expression of enormous commonality. I would go by the context of what hes saying. It’s a long way from Regensburg speech.”

Kalin, who also teaches at Georgetown University in Washington, said this speech couldn’t “make up for Regensburg” but it did represent an evolution in the pope’s thinking about Islam. “He’s made substantial changes (in his thinking) but he’s not coming out and saying ‘I atone for my sin at Regensburg.’ Kalin said. He’s not saying that and he’s not going to say that. But reading between the lines, it’s happened gradually.”

Prince Ghazi bin Muhammed bin Talal, a leading Common Word signatory who was the pope’s host at the mosque today, brought up the Regensburg speech in his address. But he did this in the context of thanking Benedict for expressing his regrets “for the hurt caused by this lecture to Muslims.”

(Photo: Benedict inside the mosque, 9 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

Benedict’s Amman speech has gone a long way to putting Regensburg into context, and dialogue proponents like the Common Word group are helping him do it. But it’s a wild card that can still be drawn against him, especially by Islamists opposed to cooperation with Christians. “My guess is that he’ll give three, four or five more speeches like this to try to make people forget the Regensburg speech,” Kalin commented.

Berliners on Sunday voted against introducing compulsory religion lessons in schools. Social Democrat Mayor Klaus Wowereit has welcomed the result as a victory for “togetherness” and common values for Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim or aetheist children.

For details on the result, look at the Reuters story.

However, as Pro Reli leader Christoph Lehmann said, the campaign to boost the status of faith-based lessons in the German capital — a city with a long secular tradition — has put the subject firmly on the agenda and made it a talking point.

Celebrities and politicians, even conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel,have joined the call for religion lessons. Perhaps she was trying to make amends with members of her predominantly Catholic Christian Democrats (CDU) who were angry with her for criticising the Pope in the row over a Holocaust-denying bishop.

Even the pope has weighed in.

The argument in Berlin, which is home to Germany’s biggest Muslim community, centred on whether children who have a deep knowledge of their own faith are more tolerant of people who have a different religion than those who receive a broader education in ethics which touches on several religions. Does an in-depth grounding in one religion equip children with a stronger moral compass?

For more detail on the arguments, you can see last week’s post and story.

However, the campaign has had another, perhaps unexpected, result. Despite suggestions by the Pro Ethik camp that faith-based religion lessons would promote Christianity, the Pro Reli campaign ended up uniting Berlin’s main faiths — several Muslim and Jewish groups backed the Pro Reli cause.

Perhaps in the end, that is its biggest achievement.

Berlin’s referendum on religion lessons in schools poses fundamental questions about how to foster inter-faith tolerance and the relationship between church and state in Germany, as Reuters reported.

The Pro Reli campaign wants to change the capital’s law to allow pupils to choose between faith-based religion lessons and an ethics course. Berlin, with its long secular tradition, is one of the only German states not to have compulsory religion lessons but a wider ethics course instead.

The main argument is whether children who spend hours at school learning about their own faith have a stronger moral foundation and end up being more tolerant of other religions than children who have a broader education in ethics.

The Pro Ethik campaign says it is wrong to split people up according to their faith at school as it can breed divisions. They say ethics classes should instil children with a strong set of values and a good understanding of other religions. Some people also warn that religion lessons in Berlin’s schools would result in a predominantly Christian agenda.

However, one professor of religion, Harmut Zinser, argues that by learning about several beliefs, pupils can get confused as they are not presented with a single, coherent set of norms.

“It puts ethics on the market and in that respect it achieves the opposite of what it sets out to achieve,” he said.

Then there is the cultural argument. Christianity is part of German history, literature and culture. Students who have no knowledge of the bible will find it hard to understand their heritage — take Goethe’s Faust, for one.

In addition, some Muslim groups in Berlin who have long called for Islam lessons, back the Pro Reli campaign. They say mainstream lessons for Muslims at school could help fight radicalisation which can result from unregulated Koran lessons in mosques.

In western Germany, the relationship between church and state was consolidated after World War Two to try to strengthen values in a people shaken by the horrors of war and Holocaust. It was then that most states introduced compulsory faith-based religion lessons. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, most former communist eastern German states also have religion courses.

Is that model, more than 60 years old, still suitable? Which model do you think works best to boost tolerance?

The Atheist Bus Campaign, launched in London by the best-selling biologist Richard Dawkins, has been copied in 10 countries, mostly but not always with success. It seems to have stalled in Germany. The campaign there, which has its own website called www.buskampagne.de, reports that the transit authorities in Berlin, Cologne and Munich have turned down their requests to run the ads. The campaign will continue trying to run the ads in other German cities.

The campaign asked contributors to choose among different suggested ad formats and the one below won. All three say in the first line “There is (almost certainly) no God.” It’s interesting that they add that qualifier,  which literally translates as “with a probability bordering on certainty.” Could it be they’re not that convinced after all?

The second lines vary and they translate as (1) “A fulfilled life doesn’t need faith.” (2) “Values are human — it’s up to us” and (3) “Enlightenment means taking responsibility.”

(The spoof bus ad above was generated with a photo by Jon Worth/atheistbus.org.uk)

Those of us who thought the pope had said the final word on the Williamson saga will have to think again. It seems to be never-ending.

On Thursday the Vatican officially releases a letter to the world’s bishops in which the pope essentially acknowledges that the Vatican handled the lifting of the excommunications of four ultra-traditionalist bishops very badly and that it hurt him personally that things went awry.

(Photo: Pope Benedict at his weekly audience, 11 March 2009/Alessia Pierdomenico)

The story started leaking out on Tuesday night in the blog of Andrea Tornielli of Il Giornale and a story with partial excerpts was published in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Wednesday.  The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung printed what it said was the full text in German of the pope’s letter. Our story is based on a face-to-face conversation I had with an Italian archbishop who received the letter. We discussed it over a light meal near St Peter’s Square.

If the leaks and the archbishop’s comment are any indication, the letter may be a sort of first — a pope explaining to his bishops why he did something that some of them contested, at times openly. He talks about his pain and also speaks of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), how he felt that he had to bring them back into the fold because there are good people among them. But the pope also acknowledges how some of them are arrogant and think they know better than everyone else.  He says some speak in ways that are discordant with the Church and its teachings. Why do you think the pope felt he had to do this? Was it necessary to write the letter? Will it be interpreted as a sign of weakness or strength?  The entire letter will be  be on the Vatican’s website tomorrow after 1100 gmt.

(Photo: Bishop Richard Williamson, 28 Feb 2007/Jens Falk)

For those of you who read Italian, here is a link to Andrea Tornielli’s blog. For German speakers, here’s today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung text. Following are some excerpts from the German text translated by Reuters:

“The lifting of the excommunications of the four bishops ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 without a mandate from the Holy See has led, for several reasons, to a dispute inside and outside the Catholic Church more vehement than we have seen in a long time. Many bishops felt helpless in the face of an event that came unempectedly and hardly corresponded to the questions and tasks of today’s Church . While many bishops and believers were ready to view the pope’s will to reconciliation positively, there was on the other hand the question of the appropriateness of such a gesture in view of the really urgent issues for believers in our time. Some groups openly accused the pope of wanting to go back to before the Second Vatican Council. An avalanche of protests began whose bitterness showed hurt that went beyond the present moment. So I felt obliged to write to you, my brothers, to clear some things up and help understand the intentions that I and the responsible organs of the Holy See had in making this step. I hope in this way to contribute to bringing peace into the Church…

“A mishap that was unforseeable for me occured because the Williamson case overshadowed the lifting of the excommunications. The calm gesture of mercy towards four validly but illicitly ordained bishops suddenly seemed to be something completely different: a rejection of Christian-Jewish reconciliation, a withdrawal of what the Council had declared in this matter as the path of the Church. In this way, an invitation to reconciliation with a breakaway Church group turned into its opposite: an apparent retreat behind all steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council. From the start, taking these steps and developing them has been a goal of my theological work. I can only deeply regret that this overlapping of two contrary events has occurred and upset the peace between Christians and Jews and the peace in the Church…

“I hear that attentive tracking of the news available on the Internet could have made it possible to learn about this problem in time. I learn from this that we at the Holy See must pay more attention to this source of news in the future. I was also saddened to see that also Catholics, who actually could have known better, thought they had to lash out at me with ready-to-pounce hostility. I’m all the more thankful to the Jewish friends who helped clear up the misunderstanding quickly and restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust that — as during the time of Pope John Paul — has reigned during the whole time of my pontificate and, thank God, still exists…

“Another mishap that I honestly regret is that the limits and extend of the measure of 21 January 2009 were not clearly presented when the act was announced. Excommunication applies to people, not institutions. Ordaining a bishop without a papal mandate means the danger of a schism, because it challenges the unity of the college of bishops with the pope. The Church must therefore react with the harshest punishment, excommunication, in order to bring the punished ones to regret their act and return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has still not yet been reached … The lifting of the excommunications was a measure in the area of Church discipline: the people involved were freed of the burden on their conscience of having the harshest Church punishment. One must differentiate the doctrinal area from this disciplinary area. That the Society of Saint Pius X has no canonical standing in the Church is actually not based on disciplinary reasons, but on doctrinal reasons … As long as the doctrinal questions have not been cleared up, the Society has no canonical statue in the Church and its leaders, while free of the Church punishment, do not exercise any office legally in the Church…

“Can we be indvifferent to a community that has 491 priests, 215 seminarists, six seminaries, 88 schools, two university institutes, 117 brothers and 164 nuns? Should we simply let them drift away from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know the web of their motivations. But I think they would not have decided to become priests if, along with some lopsided or sick (aspects), there had not been a love for Christ and the will to preach about him and with him the living God.  Should we simply shut them out of the search for reconciliation and unity as representatives of a radical fringe group? What would happen then?

“Of course, for a long time, we have heard occasional dissonant tones from representatives of this community — arrogance and a know-it-all attitude, a fixation on one-sidedness, etc. To be honest, I have to add that I have also received several moving testimonies of thankfulness that showed an opening of the hearts. But shouldn’t the great Church also be able to be magnanimous, knowing the long-term perspective it has and the promise given it?   Shouldn’t we, like good teachers, be able to ignore some bad things and try to move out of this squeeze? And shouldn’t we admit that dissonent tones have also come from Church circles? One sometimes has the impression that our society needs at least one group that it need not show any tolerance to and can lash out at with hatred? And whoever dares touch it — in this case, the pope — loses the right to tolerance and can also be met with hatred without anyone being shy or reserved about it?”

Pope Benedict met the Devil in Düsseldorf on Monday. To be more precise, a large papier-mâché figure of the German-born pontiff shook hands with another figure depicting the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson. The mock encounter was part of the annual carnival parade on Monday, known as Rose Monday in Germany, where the parade floats traditionally poke fun at public figures.

Benedict’s decision to readmit four excommunicated bishops of the ultra-traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) last month sparked off loud protests among Catholics and Jews, especially in the German-speaking countries because Williamson appeared in a Swedish television interview only days before and denied the Nazis used gas chambers or killed six million Jews. The wing on the Williamson figure says “Anti-Semitism” and the brush at the end of his tail says Piusbrüder (Pius Brothers, the German term for the SSPX priests).

Just so there’s no confusion, the Williamson figure sports an armband clearly identifying who Benedict is shaking hands with. Thanks to Ina Fassbender for these shots.

UPDATE: Cardinal Joachim Meisner in nearby Cologne has criticised this float as “not only wrong but hurtful … When mirth becomes malice, a joke becomes a jab and a fantasy becomes a fraud, then the carival suffers.” By contrast, most readers commenting on the website of the local daily Rheinische Post liked it.

Whether such a handshake will ever happen in real life is highly doubtful. Although their 1988 excommunications have been lifted and they have been readmitted into the Roman fold, the four SSPX bishops still have to negotiate their future roles in the Catholic Church.  SSPX leader Bishop Bernard Fellay will probably lead the talks and there is no need for Williamson — who has been ordered to leave Argentina — to be present. After the public relations disaster over the interview, the last thing Benedict will want to do is receive the man at the Vatican.

At 68, Williamson’s most likely posting seems to be retirement, possibly with a virtual diocese out somewhere in cyberspace. He’s kept posting on his blog Dinoscopus. In his review of the film Doubt, he says approvingly that it shows “a Church collapsing for lack of God” but faults its lead actress because “nothing in Meryl Streep’s performance suggests that it is anchored in God.” He also promotes four volumes of his collected sermons and writings. It will be no surprise if we hear still more from him.

(Photo: Carnival revelers parade in Düsseldorf, 4 Feb 2008/Ina Fassbender)

Germany’s pre-Lenten carnival festivities got underway on Thursday with an official Turkish carnival association is joining in the fun this year for the first time.

Long sidelined from the usually raucous celebrations, an annual highpoint in Catholic areas such as the Rhineland, Bavaria and Black Forest, residents of Turkish origin in the city of Dortmund have created their own “Guild of Fools”. That means they can have their own float in Monday’s big procession, a troupe of dancers and a symbolic “prince and princess couple”.

“We set up our own association because many Turks in Germany have enjoyed carnival over the years. As an official guild, we want to enable Turks living in Germany to join in,” says the 1st Turkish Guild of Fools Dortmund 09 on their website.

(Photo: Carnival parade in Cologne, 19 Feb 2007/Alex Grimm)

These days, carnival is mainly an excuse for many Germans to parade through the streets dressed up as clowns and go on a six-day beer binge — an aspect that may be problematic for Muslims. But carnival has ancient roots. The partying grew out of the Roman tradition of celebrating the onset of spring which was later adopted by Christians to usher in Lent, the forty days preceding Easter that are a season of reflection and fasting.

In the Muslim calendar, there is no equivalent to carnival before Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting and prayer, and the Turkish Guild is giving out mixed signals on exactly where the limits are for its members.

A spokesman has told German media the guild may look to its roots by having belly dancers but stressed that members can have just as much fun as other revellers. “Religion is important for many people at carnival and we accept that. We are not pursuing any political or Muslim goals,” he is quoted as saying, adding that alcohol and kissing are part of the fun.

However, the guild’s website says its members should celebrate carnival according to Muslim rules and do without the “sexual liberation,” alcohol or kissing.

Perhaps these contradictions highlight the difficulties faced by Germany’s more than 2 million-strong Turkish community, many of whom lead parallel lives and complain about Islamophobia among Germans.

(Photo: Düsseldorf carnival float caricatures Osama bin Laden, 4 Feb 2008/Ina Fassbender)

In Cologne, a carnival stronghold, there is strong resistance to plans to build a big mosque.

How important is it for Germany’s Turkish community to take a fuller part in German traditions like carnival that have their roots in Christian festivals? Is this taking integration too far?

(Logo from 1st Turkish Guild of Fools Dortmund 09 website)