Muslim Life in Germany - Deutsche Islam Konferenz

26 Introduction
telsmann foundation (Bertelsmann 2008b) as part of Religionsmonitor
2008.
In a multi-topic survey entitled “Muslime in Deutschland”
commissioned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior Katrin
Brettfeld and Peter Wetzels (2007) looked at this group of the
population. The aim of the study was to investigate aspects relevant
to integration including barriers to integration and also
political attitudes, religion and religiousness, experience of discrimination
and religiously motivated violence perpetrated by
Muslims living in Germany.
Four studies with members of various sub-groups have
been carried out. In the first study on the Muslim population
resident in Germany 970 Muslim migrants in the cities of
Augsburg, Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne were interviewed by
telephone. A random sample of persons with Muslim names
aged 18 to 80 was taken from the register of residents and from
the telephone directory and those persons were interviewed
who described themselves as Muslims. The attitudes of those
interviewees from predominantly Islamic countries who did
not regard themselves as Muslims were not recorded. Making
up almost 80 per cent of interviewees, persons of Turkish origin
living in Germany in the first and second generation form the
largest group of immigrants. The second survey was aimed at
school children. A total of 2,700 school children were asked to
complete a written survey, 500 of them of the Muslim faith. The
third study concentrated on foreign students. Approximately
1,000 foreign students, 192 of whom belonged to the Muslim
faith, took part in a postal survey. Fourthly, qualitative interviews
have been held with 60 young Muslim men in the context
of Islamic associations and organisations.