Sounds Like Time
…for a serious separation of church, ALL churches, and state.
…”We need poets, doctors and a middle class that German Muslims can aspire to,” said Bagrac, a 28-year-old university student with a wide face and sideburns. “Germans have come to see Islam as a religion of the working class. But Islam is a religion of all classes. That’s why it’s so important to get more Muslim teachers into schools.”
Bagrac is a missionary of sorts in this nation of 3 million Muslims — nearly 4% of the population. He and about a dozen other students at the University of Muenster are enrolled in the first course of its kind in Germany: a curriculum preparing Muslim instructors to teach Islam in public schools while being sensitive to Western culture.
Such ambitions have arisen against the backdrop of a troubling arc of violence, from the Sept. 11 attacks to last year’s train bombings in Madrid to this summer’s assaults on London’s transit system. The Islamic extremists’ war against Europe is widening, and conservative and liberal politicians across the continent are perplexed about how to better integrate a Muslim community that has doubled since the 1980s but remains in a largely parallel universe…
…Islam is now taught in schools but not comprehensively enough for many Muslim families. Zaher’s responsibility, she said, will be to take what she knows from the West and what she knows from the Koran and stitch them into school lessons. Can they blend seamlessly?