Promoting Dialogue
July 22, 2007
Günter Wallraff said he didn't understand the commotion he caused when, in the spur of the moment during a radio discussion, he asked the Turkish-Islamic Union (DITIB) for permission to hold a reading of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" in a Cologne mosque's community center.
He said he hoped such a reading would provoke a discussion on intolerance with German Muslims in Cologne and set an example for other Muslim communities around Germany.
"You can think what you want of the book," said Wallraff, who added he had discussed the book with Muslim acquaintances on numerous occasions. "You can have serious confrontations about it and even fight over it."
As part of the dialog he wants to open, Wallraff said he wished German Muslims would distance themselves from the 1989 fatwa to kill Rushdie issued by Iran's late Ayatollah Khomeini. Wallraff said he believed he had already achieved an initial success when DITIB recently condemned the fatwa.
Turkish group faces dilemma
But Wallraff's proposal puts the DITIB in a difficult position. If it refuses the reading, it will show a lack of liberality; if, on the other hand, it allows the reading, it will upset a large number of its members. The group has said it will not issue its decision until after its advisory board returns from summer vacations.
The timing of the proposal is also difficult for DITIB as the mosque's construction continues to divide Cologne.
"A makeshift mosque has been there for 20 years and the people have the right to build a respectable and presentably modern mosque," Wallraff said.
"Here in Cologne, where I live, it's taken on a hysterical form of confrontation. Far-right extremists tried to mobilize people against the mosque and pushed the discussion in the completely wrong direction," he said.
German Muslims are different
German Muslims should also not be lumped together with radical Islamists that exist in some other parts of the world, Wallraff said.
"The Muslims I know living in Germany are -- to a very large extent -- peace-loving people. Not fanatics," he said.
"There are some in the second and third generation who can really compare and see the positive sides of both cultures. For me, these are the people of the future, and they are the people with whom I want to discuss this kind of book."
Wallraff said he was confident the reading would take place. He is viewed positively among Germany's Turkish population for his book "Lowest of the Low," in which he described the discrimination he experienced while posing as a Turkish worker in Germany.
"My entire work stands for integration," he said. "I'm someone who gets along with his neighbors, especially Turkish neighbors, as friends. No one can accuse me of getting involved in something I don't understand or something that doesn't concern me."