Muslims in Germany - A status report..

An unsettling look at Germany's muslim population.

A teacher at Richard Elementary in the same district gave disturbing evidence last year to the school committee: German children "weren't really being tolerated," and "Christian" was often used as a term of contempt. The teachers were doing their best to set things straight during class "but, sadly, with very little success," she said.

School is one of the few places where young Muslims come into contact with the non-Islamic environment. As a result, the teachers often see what is happening most clearly. Dietmar Pagel, principal of the Hector-Peterson High School in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, actively seeks dialog with his students. But with increasing frequency, he and his colleagues feel they are banging their heads against a brick wall. "Lots of our adolescents have a fundamentalist outlook on life," he says. Many more girls are wearing headscarves, and almost all the Muslim students fasted during the major Islamic holidays, with catastrophic consequences for their performance at school. "The further we get into Ramadan, the more distracted the pupils become."

He often feels let down by the politicians who discuss the problems of integration more passionately than ever, yet won't appoint the additional social workers and teachers he needs. But Pagel refuses to give up. After the caricatures of Mohammed were published, he attempted to debate the controversy with his pupils. But the discussion was hopelessly lopsided. The children contributed a few bits of factual information, the principal relates, but then "the room fell silent when it came to the moral dimension, so the teachers simply held forth on their own ideas."

He cannot get through to his pupils any more, Pagel complains. "If I say that headscarves are worn less in Turkey than here, they simply counter: 'That's why we came to Germany, so that we can openly practice our religion.'" And sometimes they simply remind him that - as a non-Muslim - he would be better off keeping such views to himself.