Growing number of Germans embracing Islam
25-Oct-2003
Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
BERLIN, Oct 25 (AFP) - To all appearances Herr Herzog is an average German, but on Sunday Mohammed will be one of a growing number of his compatriots to begin the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, one of the five pillars of their faith.
A former Protestant who worked in a social welfare centre for Turkish immigrants for many years, Herzog converted to Islam in 1979 when he realised that "the Koran gathered together everything I had ever believed in."
Today he is the director of a Muslim cultural centre in the capital Berlin and he says that the number of Germans who convert to Islam "is rising each year" and that they "are getting younger and younger."
"Many are looking for new lifestyles and some sense of direction," he says.
The central institute on Islam archives estimates that about 12,400 people born in Germany to German parents are Muslims, with the total Muslim population set at around 3.5 million people, most of them of Turkish origin.
Each year, the institute issues between 350 and 400 documents in German and Arabic, complete with identity photograph, as proof people have converted.
"It would be an exaggeration to talk of a rash of conversions," says its director Salim Abdullah...
Norbert Mueller grew up with almost no exposure to religious instruction, but he says he has found warmth and "the feeling that he belongs to a community" with his Turkish and Arab friends in the northern city of Hamburg.
A 41-year-old practicing lawyer, Mueller converted in 1991 and has married a woman from Iran...
"The majority are people whose spouses are Muslims. Nothing obliges though to convert," Wohlrab-Sahr says. "Many of them have difficult pasts that pose them problems, they are looking for discipline in their lives."...
Ramadan-Germany
That´s what I want to ask Opal the question in my first post.
Look (face, body, etc) is a outside.