DITIB is being used by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to exert control over 900 mosques in Germany — and to prevent Turkish immigrants from integrating into German society. Erdogan believes that the assimilation of Muslims into a non-Muslim society “is a crime against humanity.”
During a meeting with German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich in February 2013, Erdogan said that Berlin’s insistence that Turkish immigrants who want to live in Germany must integrate and learn the German language is “a violation of human rights.”
Education Minister Schavan says she is “placing a lot of trust” in the new Islamic centers, which she hopes will “contribute to the further development of Islamic theology.”
Schavan’s assistant at the Ministry of Education, Thomas Rachel, says the rise of taxpayer-funded Islamic centers in Germany is a “historic development, comparable to the rise of protestant Christian theology after the Reformation 500 years ago.” According to Rachel, “Muslim theology will be firmly established in German universities, and thus also in German society.”