Germany welcomes Islam at state schools
Published by Avi Green on Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 11:37 PM.
Oh dear, it does look like they're caving in (Hat tip: Hot Air Headlines):
BERLIN - State-run schools in Germany should offer Islam as a required religion class in the future, the nation's interior minister said Thursday.Wow, how can they do two things at the same time? Sorry, but that's really not possible, and all they're doing really, is caving in to the very radicals they supposedly will try to stop. And peaceful coexistance? Do tell me about it.
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said it would be a while before Muslim community leaders work out a legally binding accord with the government, but that an agreement on the issue has been reached.
"It will take some time, but we are moving ahead," Schaeuble told reporters after a conference with representatives of Germany's estimated 3 million Muslims and government officials.
Both sides have wrangled for years over the issue of teaching Islam in state-run schools, where religion classes are required by law. Pupils currently only have the option of studying Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism. Many schools also offer ethics classes as an alternative.
Teaching Islam in schools will be "a very, very considerable contribution to integration and peaceful coexistence," said Bekir Alboga, a spokesman for the Muslim participants.
Participants in the conference, set up in 2006 in an attempt to improve often strained relations between Germans and the nation's Muslim community — dominated by roughly 2.2 million Turks — also agreed to support construction of more mosques and fight against Islamic radicalism.
