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Islamic Religious Education in Western Europe: Models of Integration and the German Approach1

European nations vary in their attitudes towards the integration of Muslims into their respective societies. Thus, on the level of nation states, there have appeared different approaches, or “models”, to deal with these communities. The relations of the states with the Muslim communities follow mainly the existing example of the state-church relations, which emerged over the centuries in the interplay with the Christian churches. Nevertheless, by sticking to their respective models of state-church relations, European states tend to ignore that Islam is organized quite differently from other religions that they dealt with in the past. This “national” approach is also applied to Islamic religious education and therefore many different forms of Islamic religious education have sprung up across Europe. This article will therefore outline the current practices of Islamic religious education in state schools across Western Europe and will describe the training of future teachers of Islamic religious education and of future imams at secular state institutions in Western European countries with large Muslim communities. A special section will be devoted to the situation in Germany because of its central position in the current discussion.