EU-ISLAM: Leading German politician Volker Kauder suggests mosques should come under state control

Should Mosques in the EU come under state control?

Volker Kauder an influential politician from Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU party suggested all mosques in Germany should be subject to state supervision in light of what he sees as a threat from extreme Muslims.

Volker Kauder, who heads the conservative parliamentary grouping in Germany’s lower house, used his twitter account air his views on controlling mosques and radical imams.

Kauder says that Germany was constituted as a secular state and that sermons delivered in some mosques donot conform with that concept.

The Berliner Zeitung newspaper on Friday quoted him as saying religion does not stand above the state, but rather the state over religion.

Kauder’s remarks came just before a meeting of the right-wing Alternative for Germany(AfD) party, which has drafted an anti-Islamic manifesto.

Some analysts see his remarks as an attempt win back voters from the radical right-wing AfD party.

Germany is home to around four million Muslims.

The foreign-born Muslim population in Germany is primarily made up of Turkish immigrants, but also includes many born in Kosovo, Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Morocco and now also Syrians. The roughly 3 million foreign-born Muslims in France are largely from France’s former colonies of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

A Pew Research study done last year predicts that the  Muslim share of Europe’s total population (EU and non EU states)  has been increasing steadily. In recent decades, the Muslim share of the population throughout Europe grew about 1 percentage point a decade, from 4% in 1990 to 6% in 2010.

This pattern is expected to continue through 2030, when Muslims are projected to make up 8% of Europe’s population.

Research Center survey conducted this spring found that majorities in France, Britain and Germany had favorable views of Muslims. Opinion was on balance favorable in Spain while negative views prevailed in Italy and Poland. Views about Muslims are tied to ideology. While 36% of Germans on the political right give Muslims an unfavorable rating, just 15% on the left do so. The gap between left and right is also roughly 20 percentage points in France and Italy. And significant differences are found in the UK as well.

On January 2015, the total population of the EU was around 508.2 million people of which 14 million were Muslim immigrants.


EU-Digest