(Daily Sabah) The German government wants to make German language skills a requirement for foreign clerics seeking to enter the country, an Interior Ministry spokesman told dpa on Sunday.
Clerics looking after the large number of Muslim migrants who have entered Germany since 2015 “have a role model and adviser function that is crucial in terms of promoting the peaceful co-existence of different cultures and religions,” the spokesman said.
Clerics “who speak the German language and are familiar with German culture” will do a better job of promoting integration, he added.
Conservative members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government — notably Christian Democratic Union (CDU) lawmaker Carsten Linnemann — have repeatedly called for such an entry requirement, which has been vetoed by the government’s junior partners, the center-left Social Democrats.
