(Deutsche Welle) Nariman Reinke, a naval petty officer, is one of about 1,500 Muslim soldiers who serve in the Bundeswehr.
Born to [Moroccan] parents in 1979, Reinke has been in the military since 2005 and has twice deployed to Afghanistan. But being a Muslim woman in the German military is not always easy, she told DW.
Reinke is deputy chair of Deutscher.Soldat (German.Soldier), which works to integrate people of color and members of recent immigrant groups or religious minorities into the military.
The Bundeswehr provides priests for Catholic and Protestant soldiers, but no spiritual counsel for Muslims. Reinke said she had attempted to bring this disparity up more than once, even taking the matter up with Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, but there has been no progress over several years. It is frustrating for her and her Muslim colleagues that, so far, nobody has responded to her demands, she said.
