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Muslim Integration

Germany's Lost Daughters

Thousands of Turkish women live like slaves in Germany. They are locked into apartments, beaten and kept deliberately ignorant. Their men don’t want them integrated and –- until now –- neither did Germany. That, say women’s rights workers, politicians and social workers, has to change.

Fatwa, a raven-haired Turkish beauty, ran away from her German-Turkish family at 17, terrified of an arranged marriage with a groom she had never met. One year later, she saved her 12-year-old sister Esma from a similar fate, smuggling her away from Turkish relatives determined to see the teen wed. The girls -- disowned by their parents -- now live together, supported only by women's groups and their own determination.

The girls don't think of their stories as extraordinary. Indeed, within their circle of friends they are not. Germany, it turns out, is home to thousands of young German-Turkish women who harbor harrowing tales of courage and grief. Tales that pit the girls' dreams for themselves with the traditions of their families. The girls' goal is simple: they want the same rights as their peers in German schools. They'd like to go to the movies. They'd like to wear jeans and eat ice cream in public. They'd like to talk to boys. Just talk. And, of course, they would like to choose the men they make their lives with and eventually father their children.

But the culture and circle from which they come -- insular Turkish Muslim families -- says no. It says that men are in charge and determine women's fates. To get what they want, the girls have to run, changing their names, falsifying their passports and breaking with the families they love but simply can't obey.

Their stories are not talked about in mainstream German circles. Indeed, most Germans never hear about them or get a look inside the life of their friendly Turkish baker, butcher or green grocer, who are often touted as the faces of multiculturalism in Germany. At least they haven't until now.

An epochal event for European Muslims?

The murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and ensuing violence in Holland is causing Germany to take a closer look at itself and its integration policies. Over the weekend, German conservatives called for immigrants to better integrate into German society by learning German and becoming familiar with mainstream culture. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder also called on immigrants to become familiar with German laws and democratic principles. And, for the first time, he took sides in a debate about whether Muslim teachers should be allowed to wear headscarves in public schools. His answer was "no," mirroring the recent opinion of the five of Germany's 16 federal states which recently ruled headscarves inappropriate for teachers and other public officials. In Cologne on Sunday, close to 25,000 Muslims took to the streets in the bitter cold to protest violence in the name of Islam and to support better integration with Germans.

For the first time, lawmakers and the public are beginning to openly admit that living side by side with 3.2 million Muslims -- 2.5 million of whom are Turks -- does not mean integrating with them, or even knowing them. Van Gogh's film -- in which he criticized the treatment of Muslim women -- cost him his life. It also cost Holland its innocence. Germany, say some, may be on the same road.

For Germany -- a country still uncomfortable thinking of itself as an immigration state -- this is very new. "Integration was never the goal," said Rita Suessmuth, the former head of the federal committee on immigration, talking about German immigration policy over the past three decades. "The idea was that the immigrants would return home. For years we allowed and even supported this sort of side-by-side living."