In an article for Qantara.de, Hilal Sezgin addresses the peculiar and questionable composition of the German Islam Conference. First, she criticizes the invention of “secular Muslim” that are so welcome at the Conference: either they are in favor of separating church and state, which applies to roughly all German Muslims, or they are not religious, which is fair enough, but then they do not need to be essentialized as Muslims and be invited to form part of the Islam Conference.
Second, Sezgin shrewdly remarks that no place in the Conference is designed for hosting a Muslim politician – half of the members are non-Muslim politicians, the other half are Muslim representatives, no overlap intended. “The German Germans please take a seat on the political side. The rest, the ones with the funny names, kindly be seated on the Muslim bench”, she writes.
In conclusion, Sezgin attests that the participation policy has “deeply paternalistic, even un-democratic” traits and that the Conference is unlikely to result in true dialogue.
