German Justice Failures

Paving the Way for a Muslim Parallel Society

Part 2: Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?

Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islam expert from the central German university town of Marburg, has a similar take on the matter. "Do we already have Sharia here?" she asks, adding that the Frankfurt case shows that "things are getting out of hand here."

Does the unspeakable decision by a single Frankfurt family court judge truly mark a new stage in the German judiciary's unspoken policy of appeasement toward aggressive Muslims? Or is the collective outcry so loud and nonpartisan this time because the case is so clear? Is it because everyone believed that the debate, raging for years and still unresolved, over the issue of how much immigration the Germans should tolerate and how much assimilation they can expect was finally coming to an end? And because this particular case was about violence, the lowest common denominator on which everyone from left-leaning feminists to neoconservatives could agree?

And now that the danger has been recognized, is it being addressed quickly? Not exactly.

An abuse of the liberal state

Frankfurt family court judge Datz-Winter was removed from the case and the courts proved themselves capable of acting responsibly. In many other cases in Germany, however, the liberal nature of the constitutional state has been misused -- and a misguided approach to tolerance has been turned into self-sacrifice. But isn't it the court's job to protect the liberalism that has taken Germans so long and so much effort to achieve -- and with zero tolerance for intolerance, if need be?

The questions this raises in the context of social reality are agonizingly difficult, even insulting to many, and they lead us into a web of taboos that has developed over time. Those who move within this web often cannot help but rub someone the wrong way.

The debate that Judge Christa Datz-Winter has now revived once again seems to afflict Germans like bouts of fever. It revolves around the question of how much assimilation the constitutional state can or must demand from immigrants. Will the Germans accept the sometimes outmoded customs of other cultural groups? In other words, will they permit groups to not just live in a society that parallels German society, but to also live their lives in an entirely different age and at a completely different pace? Is Germany not obligated to integrate those who are foreign to its society and bring them into the present?

Just as battles are often waged around flags, social conflicts tend to erupt around symbols -- the headscarves worn by female teachers, the minarets that are changing the appearance of some towns, the severed head of the Prophet Mohammed in the Berlin production of the opera "Idomeneo," and the harmless Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed, triggering an outcry that led to the torching of Western flags and embassies worldwide in 2005. But social conflicts also arise over seemingly minor issues. For example, if churches can ring their bells, why shouldn't the muezzin be allowed to call the Muslim faithful to prayer -- at 5:45 in the morning?

Because Germany became a country open to immigration some time ago, it now urgently needs guidelines on how rigidly it should enforce its standards and how it should treat its new arrivals -- as well as how the country expects them to behave.

As this debate becomes more and more urgent, Germans ought to be thankful to the Frankfurt judge for naively stepping into the web of taboos. The problem Germany faces with its deeply religious Muslim immigrants is not unlike the challenge modern Israeli society faces in dealing with orthodox Jews. Fundamentalists -- including Muslims in Germany --- tend to produce large families, so that the men and women of the past could very well lay claim to a substantial share of the future. According to a study by the University of Tübingen, the number of fundamentalist Muslims in the country will have more than doubled by 2030.