This was a good development that we must congratulate, but the sad thing is that Muslims, who have been living in Europe for so many years, have had to wait for the year 2009 to see their religious festival officially recognized. What's more, there was uncertainty as to how many years the over 20 million Muslims living in other European countries as "citizens" with equal rights will have to wait in order to enjoy similar rights. Perhaps, there was another reason why this news story attracted my attention. I was in Indonesia about a week ago. I had learned about the statuses and religious festivals of religious communities in the country, which we can describe as located at the terminal point of Asia and the East. I learned that the Constitution of this Eastern, Asian, Muslim country officially recognizes six religions. More importantly, the religious festivals of these religions are marked as official holidays. Here are for you two pictures, one from the West and the other from the East, that will confuse your mind.
Of course, it must be admitted that powerful dictatorships and systematic human rights violations are common in the East. But, the image of the West as problem free in these areas is a myth that must be erased from minds.
The meeting we attended in Potsdam to discuss the problems that Muslims in Europe face was hosted at Sanssouci Palace, once used by Prussian monarchs. In French, Sanssouci means "without problem." Perhaps, this name reflects everyone's wish for a problem-free world. But, what the attendees at the meeting from the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France and other European countries showed was that Europe was not free from problems.
What was promising was that in this historic city, where the winners of World War II once met to shape the new Europe, people with different identities were today giving thought to how to make Europe a more livable place for everyone.
The members of the CEDAR Network, an organization that brings together European Muslim professionals from different areas, were voicing their problems with emphasis on their European identity: "European governments should stop viewing the issues of Muslims in Europe as if they were foreign policy issues. Because we are European citizens."
A survey titled "Muslims in the European ‘Mediascape'" sponsored by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue -- which hosted the meeting, gathering together the journalists from important European media organizations, such the BBC, The Independent, Deutsch Welle, Le Monde, and European politicians and Muslims journalists -- brought the problems in this area to light. According to this survey, 55 percent of Muslims and 39 percent of non-Muslims believed that Islam is portrayed negatively in the European media. Muslims are brought to the agenda mostly in connection with issues of terrorism, fundamentalism and the veil. Sixty percent of the respondents said that Muslim journalists should be employed in the mainstream media while 40 percent said that this is not easy because of biases.
What Birand Bingöl, one of the few journalists of Turkish descent who has been able to make a career in the German media, said indicates the magnitude of this problem: The rate of journalists with an immigrant background employed by the German media is less than 2 percent. Only one of 270 journalists working for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) is an immigrant. Despite positive developments in local media organizations, nationwide media organizations still have strong biases against Muslims.
Shada Islam, who studies these issues at the European Policy Centre, recalls that only 12 of more than 1,000 journalists in Brussels are from Asia or Africa. For German journalist Günter Kanube, the first step toward a solution is to admit that we have serious problems in this regard. The second step is to ensure that both parties are correctly informed about each other. Another step would be for new generations of European Muslims to start to focus on the media as their professions compared to the past's orientation toward engineering or medicine as a profession. Of course, who financially controls this sector is another topic for discussion.
