German chancellor Friedrich Merz has used a visit at a university in Hannover (Lower Saxony) to remind Muslim students to respect the Liberal constitutional order in Germany.
“Those who come to us from the Muslim world and are warmly welcomed at our universities should please remember that we are a laicist state,” Merz said in a speech at the Hannover Medical University on July 22.
Laicism is a political system characterised by the exclusion of ecclesiastical control and influence.
He stressed that at German universities, State and religion should be strictly separated in keeping with the spirit “which defines our society, namely openness, liberality, and tolerance – including religious tolerance”.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) MP told the audience that his government was ready to tighten the reins if need be. “I would expect this [tolerance] especially from those who study here at our universities and come from other cultural backgrounds, perhaps even from other religious affiliations. We expect this, and we will enforce it if necessary.”
The Chancellor did not further comment on how he intended to go about this enforcement.
Merz comments followed two controversial incidents at German universities in which students were required to sit separately by sex in following with Muslim customs.
In May, the Islamic University Group at the university of Kiel in northern Germany held an Islamic Week during which the student group invited a noted radical Islamist preacher as the keynote speaker and handed out Salafist literature.
Salafism is a fundamentalist movement within Sunni Islam that advocates a return to the practices of the first three generations of Muslims, believed to be the purest form of Islam.
Men and women were required to sit separately at the student group meeting. On July 16, Kiel university reacted to the allegations by revoking the Islamic University Group’s official status and rights.
In a similar incident at the Berlin Charité university hospital in June, a Muslim student group also held an event – which included a Koran reading – with separate sitting areas for male and female attendants in a university auditorium.
