Turkish Mosque Organization In Germany Wants Students To Work For Them

Turk­ish media is report­ing that the pres­i­dent of a Ger­man mosque orga­ni­za­tion gave a speech to stu­dent dorm coor­di­na­tors in Ger­many ask­ing them to encour­age their stu­dents to go on to work for the orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to the report:

Octo­ber 12, 2020 Kazım Türk­men, Pres­i­dent of the Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union of Reli­gious Affairs (DİTİB), said, “Invest­ment in edu­ca­tion and peo­ple is the best invest­ment in the future.”

…

Draw­ing atten­tion to the impor­tance of stu­dent dor­mi­to­ries in Ger­many, “Our stu­dent dor­mi­to­ries con­tin­ue to serve with an increas­ing num­ber day by day. Although though the con­cept of stu­dent hous­es is late, thank God, we are doing good work. Invest­ment in edu­ca­tion and peo­ple is the best invest­ment in the future” Türk­men said. Chair­man Türk­men con­tin­ued say­ing: “Let our chil­dren who stay in our dor­mi­to­ries work in these insti­tu­tions in the future. If he becomes a lawyer let him yearn to prac­tice law, if he becomes an archi­tect let him draw plans for a mosque for us, and if he becomes a teacher let him come to our mosques and give lessons to our chil­dren. If any­one has dif­fer­ent ideas, let’s take these ideas and eval­u­ate them. As the coor­di­na­tors of dor­mi­to­ries, you are in the nec­es­sary place to touch their lives and hearts. Let us con­vey our sin­cer­i­ty to our stu­dents. Let’s estab­lish a warm dia­log with the stu­dents, con­sid­er this as a mod­el of the Ashab al-Suf­fa. The Prophet would gath­er his stu­dents around him, take care of their food and drink, and if they were hun­gry, he would not go to sleep full. Every­thing is learned by see­ing.  We have to show how self-sac­ri­fice is done. I con­grat­u­late each of you indi­vid­u­al­ly for giv­ing your heart and effort to this work.”

(Google Trans­lat­ed with edits)

Read the rest here.

Turkey has a his­to­ry of using edu­ca­tion as a method for influ­ence and ‘soft pow­er’, most notably in the pre­vi­ous pro­mo­tion and now attempt­ed takeover of Gülen schools. Turkey  addi­tion­al­ly attempts to use its dias­po­ra in order to accom­plish its polit­i­cal objec­tives in Europe and elsewhere.

The Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs (Turk­ish: Diyanet İşl­eri Türk-İsl­am Bir­liği; DITIB) is a mosque umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion that oper­ates in Ger­many. Its char­ter states that it is linked to the Diyanet, a Turk­ish gov­ern­ment agency respon­si­ble for reli­gious affairs. The Diyanet sends imams to its mosques and their salaries are paid by the local Turk­ish con­sulate. After a Sep­tem­ber 2016 Diyanet order request­ed that imams pass on infor­ma­tion about sup­port­ers of Fethul­lah Gülen, Ger­man author­i­ties inves­ti­gat­ed 19 imams under accu­sa­tions of spy­ing, ulti­mate­ly drop­ping the case. DITIB a role in edu­ca­tion about Islam in Ger­many, as evi­denced by the coop­er­a­tion between DITIB and state schools, and DITIB rep­re­sen­ta­tives hold seats on the advi­so­ry boards of Islam­ic the­ol­o­gy pro­grams at Ger­man uni­ver­si­ties. Ger­many has cut fund­ing to DITIB and sought to have imams edu­cat­ed in Ger­many as a way to reduce the amount of for­eign imams and curb the Diyanet’s influence.