By IRNA
Berlin : Schools in Germany should offer Islam – along with Christianity and Judaism – as a required religion class in the future, the interior minister said.
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble said that it would take a while before Muslim community leaders worked out a legally binding agreement with the state, but that an agreement on the issue had been reached.
“It will take some time, but we are moving ahead,” Schauble said after a third conference with representatives of Germany’s estimated three million Muslims. Other participants said it would take several years before the classes became available.
Both sides have wrangled for years over the teaching Islam in state-run schools, where religion classes are required by law. Pupils now only have the choice of Roman Catholicism, Protestantism or Judaism.
Many schools also offer ethics classes as an alternative.
Offering Islam in schools will be “a very, very considerable contribution to integration and peaceful coexistence,” said Bekir Alboga, a spokesman for the Muslim participants.
The Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches in Germany, as well as the Jewish community, already have established legal partnerships with the state.
Participants in the conference, set up in 2006 in an attempt to improve often strained relations between Germans and the nation’s Muslim community – dominated by roughly 2.2 million Turks – also agreed to support construction of more mosques in Germany and fight against Islamic radicalism.