Muslim Women in an Alien Society: A Case
Study of Germany
Munir D. Ahmed
Introduction
Living in an alien society has never been easy, neither for Christians or
Jews in Muslim lands, nor for Muslims in Europe and North America. There
are indeed similarities in the three religions with the common Semetic origin,
but dissimilarities in practical life of the three communities are greater
and matter at times more and also their consequences for inter-communal discord
could be graver. Things are even more complicated for a Muslim, who lives
in a central European country which professes the Christian faith, but has
for all practical purposes since long adopted a secularist way of life. One
finds one's self in a fast changing society which is in the process of shedding
some of its remaining moral values. The Muslim is confronted with customs,
beliefs and notions of honour and shame which are absolutely contrary to
his traditional value system and at variance with his personal attitude towards
life. The phenomenon itself is not novel, but what interests us in the context
of our study, is the response of the Muslims to such challenges, in particular
of the Muslim women. It is in fact they who are the most hard-pressed.
Muslim Women in Germany
Muslim women in Germany can be divided into three or four groups depending
on whether or not we count the children of the converts as a separate entity.
To the first group belong immigrant women of the first generation,
who came to Europe in pursuit of work and better living conditions. Their
daughters or grand-daughters, who were brought to Europe at a rather young
age or were born in the alien society, constitute the second group. The third
group consists of the native European women who have converted to Islam as
a result of self-study or due to the fact that they are married to a Muslim.
Their children could be counted either as the fourth group, as I intend to
do in this paper, or be treated with the second group of the children of
the Muslim immigrants, with whom they have a lot in common.
Immigrant Women of the First Generation
The Muslim women of the first group came after the Second World War mainly
in the 60s and early 70s. In most cases they followed their husbands who
had preceded them in search of work and better living conditions. The men
were initially reluctant to bring over their spouses as they regarded their
stay in Europe to be of a brief nature, a belief in which they were led by
the temporary nature of their work and the limited period for which the stay
and work permits were issued to them. In West Germany a doctrine of the sort
was proclaimed prohibiting immigration to its territory. In other words,
foreigners were allowed in the country on temporary basis, hence the name
given to foreign workers was Gastarbeiter (guest workers). In fact
the word "Gast" was used to emphasize the temporary nature of their
stay rather than showing civility, respect and honour which is generally
accorded to the guests. However, in most cases the period of stay of the
foreign workers extended considerably longer than initially intended, necessitating
reunion of the families. In this way entry permits for family members were
issued by the authorities rather reluctantly. But still the myth of return
was kept alive both by the foreign workers as well as the authorities 1).
It was under these circumstances that hardly any attention was paid to the
well-being and education of the dependants of the foreign workers. Not even
language teaching, let alone any other sophisticated type of instruction
into the mechanics of life in industrialized world of the West, was initiated
by the authorities or for that reason by the industry which had in the first
instance caused them to come to the country 2). Somebody has very aptly said:
"We wanted workers, but lo there came human beings."
The plight of the Guest workers in German cities has been documented in numerous
studies which generally lament sheer neglect and unmindfulness on the part
of the authorities as well as the industry and a growing rejection, even
outright hostility towards foreigners in the general public. There are many
reasons for this state of affairs and one should not jump to easy conclusions,
such as inborn hostility in the Germans towards alien cultures, peoples,
religious beliefs etc. Every phenomenon of this kind has its causes, some
times historical but mostly stemming from specific socio-cultural developments
in the society concerned. We will refrain from discussing these causes as
well as ways and means of remedying them, as this lies somewhat beyond the
scope of this paper. However, the effects of the very widespread prejudices
against foreigners and not so much concealed hostility towards them fall
within the purview of this paper. Foreign workers, both men and women, have
been subjected to this kind of treatment, sometimes for identical reasons
and occasionally - and this has been the case of the foreign women - due
to their sex 3).
As mentioned elsewhere, in most cases the men were the earlier arrivals and
they had adjusted - or more often than not, ill-adjusted - themselves in
the alien society, before their families joined them. The contact of the
new arrivals, and this is particularly true of the women, with the German
society at large was invariably through their husbands, who mostly retained
their traditional patriarchical behaviour. Women were confined to their houses
with no or very little contact with the neighbours, particularly with the
German neighbours, thus minimising the chances of learning the German language
which could have potentially helped avoid the quite widespread claustrophobia.
Studies have shown that dependence of the Turkish women in Germany on their
menfolk is greater and they are under a tighter control of their husbands,
brothers and other male relations as against a relatively less vigorous control
to which they were subjected back home, where the extended family served
as a mediatory body and which also provided channels through which women
can in cases assert themselves 4).
Some women were hired earlier by their employers than their husbands, or
they were still unmarried at the time of their first arrival in West Germany.
These women had the same kind of advantage over their men folk, who joined
them later as stated in the earlier case with the changed roles of both sexes.
But their better knowledge of the German language or acquaintance with the
environment did not give them in all cases that kind of precedence over their
husbands which invariably had helped men assert their patriarchical hegemony.
Some women did take advantage of this singular Situation to gain some socio-economic
liberty as well as benefit from the atmosphere of a beginning emancipation
of women in German society. The cultural bondages of these women with their
traditional Muslim background remained intact with few exceptions. And this
despite the fact that they were not always steeped in the Islamic religious
teachings or well versed in devotional practices or for that matter, fully
conversant with Turko-Islamic heritage 5).
As a general rule the patriarchical structure of the Turkish-Muslim society
proved invariably stronger than all other considerations and circumstances
6). Even women who had lived an independent life for a considerable length
of time barring all kinds of male protection and had led a normal, respectable
life, were severely reprimanded and all their liberties taken away by their
spouses as soon as these gentlemen had a chance to do so. Conflicts arising
out of this and other such related circumstances brought great distress and
misery to the families concerned, at times even ending up in rape and murder.
I remember vividly the case of a Turkish woman, who was beaten to death by
her husband because she insisted on wearing fashionable clothes and had the
daring to let her hair cut in the manner which was en vogue at that
time in Germany. In fact such occurrences were not very rare in the 60s and
70s, and even today one comes across cases of the kind.
Daughters and Grand-Daughters of the First Generation
The second group of Muslim women in Germany consist of the daughters and
grand daughters of the first generation women. They were either brought to
the country at a relatively young age or they were born in West Germany.
They had a markedly different and somewhat better start than the older generation.
Nonetheless they had to face challenges which sometimes resembled those of
their mothers, but more often than not the challenges presented themselves
in sharper perspective and in an accentuated manner. They learned German
better than the older generation, albeit at the expense of their mother tongue
7). Their parents were mostly illiterate, not knowing the art of reading
and writing, neither in their mother tongue nor in German. This was expressed
in the aphorism: "illiteracy in two languages or scripts". The children of
the Guest workers had now the possibility of attending schools. But it soon
transpired that the foreign children had greater difficulty in keeping pace
with German pupils 8). The reason being the inability of the Guest workers
to converse in German. The number of dropouts among the children of the Guest
workers is three or four times higher as against the ratio of the locals.
In the initial years almost all, but now to a lesser degree, children of
the Guest workers end up in special schools, where retarded and handicapped
children are taught. This minimizes their chances of access to better paid
jobs later in life and stamps them as outcasts.
Then again, another pattern is discernable as regards differentiation between
sexes prevalent among Muslim immigrants. Most parents are very much negligent
of the need to educate their daughters. Even parents who otherwise deem it
necessary for their sons to acquire knowledge and are quite particular about
their sons' attending schools, are less enthusiastic even outright against
the idea of sending their daughters to schools. This is not a new development
as far as the contemporary Muslim culture is concerned, where the same kind
of inhibitions among common folk are unfortunately quite widespread 9). But
its occurrence among Muslim immigrants in Europe is definitely strange rather
obnoxious. We will not go into the details of the situation of education
of the children of the Guest workers as a whole, which is rather deplorable
with little chances of improvement in the near future.
The Situation of the Muslim women of the second and the third generation
in German is to a very high degree characterized by stark conflicts between
their parents having traditional value Systems and the young girls, who have
grown up in the German environment with totally different norms of orientation
10). This also applies to the young Muslim boys of the immigrants, but by
and large their case is different from that of their sisters, who are kept
under a stricter surveillance by the parents. Boys are allowed greater liberties
and are subjected to a less rigorous routine as far as their day to day life
is concerned. The same kind of paradox can be observed in the lifestyle of
their parents. Their mothers are obliged to live a life full of restrictions
and it is demanded of them to observe all kinds of traditional norms and
rules of decency 11). But their fathers almost absolve themselves of most,
if not all, essentials of their Islamic upbringing. They invariably choose
what is most convenient to them discarding the rest.
Restrictions on young girls often drive them into a ghetto kind of situation
with no friends outside of their Turkish colony. Even normal camaraderie
between class mates is not allowed by the parents as soon as German pupils
come into the scene. Muslim girls mostly detach themselves from all kinds
of extramural activities. In fact most of them even do not participate in
sports, gymnastics, swimming and many more collective sporting items available
at schools. The result is isolation from their natural environment and a
drift into the world of consumption through dependence on television, magazines
and video films. Sexual taboos of the Muslim parents stand in total contrasts
to the world in which these young girls are brought up. The two diametrically
opposite worlds of the parents and of the host country act like two grinding
stones with the potential of crushing the personality of the young girls
into pieces. The only remedy most parents know and can think of is either
to despatch the girls to their villages where relatives are entrusted with
the task of overseeing or to marry them off as soon as possible. Both of
these solutions are not without their pitfalls. Sending a young girl, who
was brought up in the liberal atmosphere of West German society to more rigorous
lifestyle of a Muslim countryside can be catastrophic as has happened in
numerous cases 12).
To marry such a girl, often against her will, to somebody whom the parents
have chosen possibly from their relations, with no experience of life in
Germany, could have the same kind of devastating effects. The number of cases
among Muslim women with psychiatric disorders is on the increase on an alarming
scale. Even greater is the number of run-away girls, who take refuge with
friends or in the Houses of Battered Wives, where they are given legal and
physical protection from their male relatives. Tragedies occur throughout
the length and breadth of Germany in which female members of the Muslim families
are slaughtered mercilessly by their fathers or brothers to absolve the good
name of the family from the shame brought upon it by the daughters or sisters.
In one such singularly brutal case of murder in the locality where I live,
a father together with his son killed his pregnant daughter. She had left
home and developed illicit relations with a young German, who had expressed
his wish to marry her. But the marriage to a non-Muslim was totally unacceptable
to the family of the girl, because the Imam had declared it as unlawful in
Islam.
Native European Converts to Islam
The third group of Muslim women in Germany is that of the converts.The smaller
proportion of them comes to the Islamic faith through self-study. Their number
is growing lately and one can very clearly discern that due to certain changes
in the German society as a whole women are becoming more and more receptive
to spiritual matters. This can be seen in the growing popularity of the Sufi
Tariqas (mystic Orders) among the Muslim converts, particularly among women.
Their case is a Singular one and their needs fall in the spiritual rather
than the material sphere. Although they are quite active and self-assertive,
they also need help which is unfortunately not forthcoming.
Conversion Through Matrimony
The larger proportion of the German females convert to Islam in order to
marry a Muslim. Very few among them try to understand the Islamic teachings.
In most cases their Muslim spouses themselves are not well versed to teach
them. The result is that a very superficial type of conversion takes place,
at times it is not more than getting an Islamic name, and the marriage is
solemnized by some Imam of the local mosque. These marriages are the least
stable, as almost seventy percent of them end up in divorce. But the agony
does not end there, since children out of these marriages pose the greatest
hurdle. In most cases the German courts entrust the custody of the children
to the German wives, which invariably is rejected by the Muslim husbands,
who think that in the Muslim Law they are solely entitled to the custody
of the children. When all judicial channels are exhausted, brutal force,
intimidation and even abduction are resorted to. The number of such cases
is increasing at an alarming rate. I know of an instance where the Muslim
husband took away the children with him to his native land. His estranged
wife tried everything she could think of to get her children back. At the
end she went herself along with her brother and another accomplice to abduct
her children form the country of her husband. As nothing worked out, she
decided to remain in the country of her husband in order to be with her children.
This is one of those cases, where a solution was found, although I doubt
very much that the Swiss wife of the Muslim Pakistani is leading a very happy
life there.
Daughters of Mixed Marriages
The case of the daughters of mixed parentage resembles to some extent that
of the daughters of the Muslim immigrants of the first and second generations.
But the fact that at least one of the parents is native, the chances of such
girls to be treated differently and more liberally by their Muslim fathers
or mothers are brighter. However, this does not mean that everything works
out smoothly. Mostly Muslim fathers try to impose restrictions on their daughters,
sometimes with success but mostly in vain. The reason being the fact first
of all the Islamic upbringing is neglected and secondly, such children are
prone to imitating other German youth. They exercise their right of choosing
a way of life according to their own free will as guaranteed to every adult
in Germany. Muslim fathers, especially those hailing from the countries of
the Orient, have great difficulties in adjusting themselves to this Situation.
Sometimes such families come under severe psychological pressure causing
great distress to both parents and children. I have seen fathers
getting berserk and families breaking apart under most unfortunate circumstances.
Muslim Women and the West German Society
We have mentioned some of the problems Muslim women face in West Germany
of which mostly are of an internal nature, problems inside the family, between
the spouses and/or with the children, or problems of the female members of
the families with their kith and kin. There is another dimension to this
subject. Foreign women in general, and Muslim women in particular, are confronted
with a rather hostile society in West Germany. It is a society which is brutal
and exploitative to the verge of being inhumane. Living conditions of the
foreign workers, to whom most Muslim Immigrant women belong, are seldom satisfactory
for which very high rentals are demanded. Families live in crammed small
rooms with bad sanitary conditions. The result is added strain on human endurance
which invariably leads to the sickness of the soul and body. Constant tension
in the families affects the performance of the children at school. As a very
large number of the women take up paid jobs in order to add to the family
income, small children are either sent to the village in the country of origin,
or they have to be entrusted to the pre-school nursery, which, in fact, is
not very popular among Muslim immigrants. Many women develop a feeling of
guilt and end up with serious psychosomatic ailments 13).
Muslim women are not popular with the general public in Germany. They are
in fact despised if they wear their traditional clothes and distance themselves
from the society 14). Muslim men comply with the norms and customs and are
very quick in accommodating themselves in the society. They mostly do not
seem to feel any qualms of conscience at throwing away the good old Islamic
modes of life. But when it comes to the Muslim women, the same men act in
the most chauvinistic manner. The criticism of the Germans focuses on the
lack of any visible signs of emancipation among Muslim women. They ask how
on earth a woman is kept in the state of virtual slavery and why Muslim women
do not rebel against it? The strange thing is that the plight of the Muslim
women does not evoke sympathy with them. Women's rights activists lash out
on Muslim women for enduring the kind of behaviour being meted out to them
by Muslim men in the name of Islamic traditions 15). There are signs that
things are changing also inside the Muslim families and this mainly thanks
to the younger generation. I recently had an encounter with Muslim university
students at the University of Bremen, where I delivered a public lecture
on Islam and the Women. A group of about twenty young Muslim girls fought
a battle of words with their equally enthusiastic fundamentalist Muslim fellow-students.
They very clearly made it known that they do not wish to renounce Islam,
but the Muslim society must change its attitude towards women. Among this
group was also an old lady from Morocco, whose testimony to the plight of
her country women moved everybody in the lecture room. But then there were
German Muslim women, who had converted to Islam. They prized all that was
being criticized in the Muslim tradition as a privilege for the women. Some
of them had found their way to Islam after they had had enough of the emancipation
of women in Western society.
The upsurge of fundamentalist movements in Muslim societies at large, which
is also quite visible in West Germany, has had a negative effect on the public
image of the Muslim women. The opening of many traditional courses to teach
the Qur'an and the strict rules for women to dress themselves in a specific
way have been taken as a sign that the Muslim society as a whole was looking
backward instead of preparing itself to enter the twenty-first Century.
Conclusion
The problem of the Muslims in Germany can be solved only in parts locally.
There are a number of matters which must be tackled within the Muslim society
at large. For example, the Muslim society cannot neglect any longer the question
of women's emancipation. Enough has been written and said on this issue to
emphasize that Islam was the liberator of the women at the time of its inception.
What is needed is a reinterpretation of the Islamic tradition with an open
mind and in keeping with the development of human society.
A new orientation concerning the relations between both sexes is the dire
need of the day. The time of patriarchical hegemony of men over women is
over at long last. Mutual respect, cooperation between the sexes generally
and especially between spouses must become the accepted norm, and above all,
enough liberty for women to fully play their role in the society must be
guaranteed. No progress in the Muslim society will be possible as long as
women do not develop confidence in themselves and have the feeling that their
contribution is important.
Disintegration of the family is a universal phenomenon. Muslims in Germany
are feeling its pangs as they see the tide of acculturation surging and sweeping
away whatever they had managed to save from their indigenous traditions 16).
The forces of social change are getting stronger and the conflicts between
generations are becoming harder to solve. Segregation of the sexes as preached
by the Fundamentalist cannot help in this matter. It intensifies the conflict
rather than solving it amicably. A new approach to this and other related
problems must be found soon.
Industrialization is spreading very rapidly also in the Muslim countries,
where the same kind of problems we are facing today in Germany and in other
industrialized countries of the West will one day be posed for the Ummah
to deal with. Ready solutions are not available and they - anyway - cannot
help in every case, nor can they be applied everywhere. Muslims in Germany,
and especially the Muslim women of that community, to take one example out
of many other such communities in the West, are living a distressed life
both at the hands of the German society as well as at the hands of its own
menfolk 17).
Notes
1 Wolfgang Slim Freund, ed., 1980. Gastarbeiter
Integration oder Ruckkehr? Grundfagen der Auslanderpolitik.
2 Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen: Frauen aus der
Türkei kommen in die Bundesrepublik. Zum Problem der Hausfrauisierung,
Bremen: 1987; K.J. Kluge: ".. sie kamen zu uns, und wir nahmem sie nicht
an". Gastarbeiterkinder im Schnittpunkt zweier Kulturen, Rheinstetten: 1976.
3 Sadi Ucuncu: "Die türkische Frau
in der deutschen Gesellschaft", in Gastarbeiter:
Integration oder Rückkehr? Grundfragen der Auslanderpolitik, Ed. Wolfgang
Slim Freund, 1980, pp. 143-149.
4 Beatrix Wiethold, Kadinlarimiz - Frauen in
der Türkei, Hamburg:1981.
5 Silvia Roding, Zur Lebenswelt
türkischer Frauen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,
Fallbeispiel Düsseldorf/Bilk. Giessen: 1988.;
6 H. Holtbrugge, Die türkische Familie
in der BRD. Duisburg: 1975; G. Mertins, U. Akpinar, Türkische Migrantenfamilien,
Bonn: 1977.
7 A Schrader; B. Nikles; H. Griese, Die
zweite Generation. Sozialisation und Akkulturation auslandischer Kinder in
der Bundesrepublik, Kronsberg: 1976; Die zweite Auslandergeneration. Vorchläge
und Modelle zur Eingliederung von Ausländerkinder, Ed Winfried Schaffke.
Köln: 1980.
8 Ausländerkinder in deutschen Schulen,
Ed. Hermann Müller, Stuttgart: 1974; E Renner, Erziehungs- und Sozialisationsbedingungen
türkischer Kinder, Rheinstetten: 1975; Herbert R. Koch, Gastarbeiterkinder
in deutschen Schulen, Konigswinter: 1970.
9 Mazhar ul Haq, Social Pathology of the Muslim
Society, Delhi: 1978; Munir D. Ahmed. "Frauenfrage und Islam" in Der Nahe
und Mittlere Osten, Ed., Steinbach and Robert. Opladen: 1988. pp. 521-531.
10 P.W. Alex, Sozial-Kulturelle Probleme junger Türkinnen
in der BRD, Köln: 1977; Meral Akkent, Gaby Fragner, Mädchen in
der Türkei und in Deutschland. Eine kulturvergleichende Situationsanalyse,
München: 1987.
11 Klaus Lequeur, "...ich habe mich selber gekauft".
Türkische Frauen in der Bundesrepublik, Frankfurt/M: 1981.
12 König, Straube, Taylan "Oya" Fremde Heimat Türkei,
München: 1989.
13 Gudrun Ebert-Behr: Ayse: Vom Leben einer Türkin
In Deutschland, Berlin: 1980.
14 Andrea Baumgartner-Karabak (et al), Die verkauften Bräute.
Türkische Frauen zwischen Kreuzberg und Anatolien, Rheinbek: 1978.
15 Frauen zwischen zwei Kulturen. Frauen aus der Türkei
in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland", Dokumentation einer Tagung der Evangelischen
Akademie Loccum, vom 19. bis 21. November 1982. Ed. Horst Müller. Loccum
1985.
16 A. Kudat, Statibilität und Veränderung
in der türkischen Familie: Vergleichende Perspektiven, Berlin: 1975.
17 Hanne Straube, Türkisches Leben in der Bundesrepublik,
Frankfurt/M: 1975.
Published in: Journal. Institute of Muslim Minority
Affairs. 13(1992)1. pp. 71-79.
