(Deutsche Welle) This year’s German Islam Conference (DIK) will be held on Wednesday and Thursday in Berlin. It has been over a year and a half since the last DIK. For this latest iteration, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU), has invited some new faces to discuss a host of what he considers pressing issues. The overriding mission of the DIK remains unchanged: the “integration” of Germany’s 4.5 million Muslims into society, both in a religious and broader political sense.
The two-day event will be inaugurated by Seehofer and then officially focus on efforts to promote integration and train imams in Germany. This latter issue will undoubtedly spark heated debates over the coming months and focus attention on what role Islamic theology should play in German universities, whether imams and mosques should receive funding from abroad, and what to make of Muslim congregations that make large financial contributions to certain causes.
