Meeting between OSCE representative and EMU in Berlin
BERLIN (EMU) – On Monday, 29 May 2017, Sulaiman Wilms (EMU media department) met with Prof Bülent Senay. The Turkish academician is currently a Personal Representative of the OSCE and Chairperson-in-Office of Combating Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims.
The professor for philosophy and religion at the University of Bursa is currently visiting Germany in his official function with state representatives as well as with academics and Muslim activists in Germany in order to gage the level of Islamophobia. Prof. Senays’ fact finding mission will result in a public report.
Topic of this in-depth-meeting was the present state of anti-Muslim resentment in Germany, possible countermeasures as well as recent developments inside the Muslim community in Germany. The EMU representative gave his Turkish interlocutor an overview of the inner-Islamic discourse on Islamophobia.
Both sides agreed that Germany’s Muslims have to sharpen their vocabulary in order to describe the phenomenon more precisely and correctly. Also, they should be active in setting-up entities for combatting Islamophobia instead of spending too much time on identity politics. One possible model, so the guest from the OSCE, could be the US-NGO CAIR. Both sides agreed that Germany’s Muslims – and Muslims in Europe in general – need also a positive, inviting reality which speaks for itself.
