Making Room for Islam in Germany¹s Public Schools: The Role of the Länder

Immigration has altered Germany¹s religious landscape. Islam has emerged as the Federal Republic¹s third largest religion with some four million believers.  The German state has belatedly responded to this state of affairs by seeking to 'integrate' Islam into its elaborate system of church-state relations. This process has been hampered by the politicization of Islam in Germany and the difficulties in crafting a peak association for Muslims in line with those that represent Catholics, Protestants and Jews. This paper examines the efforts of Germany's federal states in dealing with this challenge, specifically, with respect to extending publically funded religious instruction to Muslim faith groups. We demonstrate that within a general trend towards equal treatment, specific institutional responses have varied across Germany's Länder.  Indeed, in the sphere of religious education, common trends can be shown but there is no single 'German model'; rather, there is a wide variety of approaches that reflect German federal states' autonomy, distinctive histories, and experiences with immigration.  While the expansion of publicly funded religious education to Muslims has tended to follow a path dependent trajectory, whereby existing institutions have been extended to incorporate Islam, some Länder have been leaders in realigning their systems of religious education while others have dragged their feet.  We argue that this is due to both the particular positions of political parties on the issue of religious education for Muslims and the specific political contexts shaping policymaking in particular Länder.