Rarely has a conference of the University of Frankfurt been so much in the focus of an excited public as it is today. It was all day about the Islamic headscarf and the question of whether it should be seen as a symbol of the dignity of the woman or her oppression.
The starting point was an exhibition in the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Arts, in which fashion designs from the Islamic world, the so-called modest fashion, was presented. For this purpose, Susanne Schröter, who deals with global Islam at the Goethe University, wanted to contribute an intellectual and critical discussion of the fashionable statements.
Both the exhibition and the conference were accompanied by heavy protests, the noise and raging in the anti-social media was fierce. There was even a campaign to remove Susanne Schröter from the university. Because, according to the propaganda of an Islamist group, their research and also the conference amount to applied racism. At the same time, others were bothered by the presence of Khola Maryam Hübsch from the conservative Ahmadiyya club.
Some demonstrators had gathered in front of the conference building to silently express their displeasure and condemn racism - which they used to choose the wrong term, because Muslims are known to exist in all skin colors. Thus, the day began with a press conference in which the president of the Goethe University and a representative of the student body, the Asta, announced their solidarity with the inviting professor.
That was extraordinary, as were the police in front of the house, the television cameras and the crowds in general - 700 people had registered for this symposium. And then again everything was as usual, because the headscarf has been spinning for decades. It is a topic that can be used to reduce complicated questions, even if it is only to the sentence that you should beware of premature reductions.
Muslims have been living in Europe for centuries. But we still talk about it as if they had just fallen from the sky yesterday, as if this world religion and its followers were obscure topics about which only insiders can speak.
DPA
Conference organizer Susanne Schröter
The conference started with two overview lectures, once by Susanne Schröter herself, after which Alice Schwarzer spoke. Both had in common the historical-political perspective. If you look at pictures from Tehran and Baghdad from the seventies, you will learn that the girls and women wore urban fashion and their hair was open.
Using the example of the Islamization of the public in the Indonesian province of Aceh, Susanne Schröter was able to show that fashionable cover, misogynist repression and Islamization go hand in hand. She argues for a distinction between the subjective determination of a woman to cover hair and skin, which should be respected, and the systemic and historical development that represents the advance of political Islam and to which the prescribed veiling belongs - it must be enlightened.
Alice Schwarzer has long been a chronicler of this development. In her tour d'horizon she referred to a journey she made to Iran in 1979 to help committed women there. But it was in vain, the repression and repression in Iran were unstoppable. In this context, Susanne Schröter also warned against false hopes for a turnaround for a secular regime in Tehran: too many men lived in the service of the Islamist state apparatus and profited from the complete control of the economy of the rich country.
It's about money, geopolitics and military power
The history of the advance of political Islam is one of the most explosive issues of our time. The diverse political movements, supported by Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which use the means of religion, have become a serious challenge to the liberal society.
Alice Schwarzer was one of the first to correctly classify these currents as right-wing political movements. They, according to the plausible thesis of the Algerian author Kamel Daoud, cooperate well with the right-wing populist parties of classical provenance, which indeed began as movements against Islamization. Thus, both who can use the other as an effective subject of their propaganda, the open society in the pincers.
But this macro-historical contemplation of the headscarf problem only arose at the beginning. This is one of the most startling aspects: it's about a lot of money, geopolitics, strategic influences and military power. But the dispute ends up with the covering of female heads who have little to say in all these fields. We are easily and possibly coping with girls with headscarves, while the various cooperations with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey continue. Here the conference gave good, but too few impulses.
As part of such a day of open questions about the closed cloth, it was also possible to approach the Qur'anic sources and the design schools. The brilliant presentations by Dina El-Omari from the University of Münster and Abdel-Hakim Ourghi from Freiburg convinced us here. It would be desirable to differentiate them from any debate about "Islam" because they could make it clear that Muslims are also no clearer than in the Christian or Jewish tradition: schools, conflicts of interpretation, divergent interpretations and historical peculiarities characterize the respective image of Islam ,
The topic is just too huge
A preoccupation with the original text passages, which are to prove a headscarf command, gives a large interpretive frame. El-Omari argued that spaces should be created for this work of interpretation, for example in the classroom or in the communities where women can familiarize themselves with the various traditions. She suggested putting on a headscarf and seeing an individual spiritual act, a gesture of humility not directed towards any men or the church, but addressed directly to God.
Khola Maryam Hübsch emphatically tried to level the fight against the oppression of women in the Islamic world with her fight against a headscarf ban. Just as one should not force a woman to cover herself, so one should not be able to order her to fly and flutter her hair.
The value of individual freedom, the dignity of women and the goodness of the Basic Law were consensus during this conference. There were differences in the question of the headscarf ban on elementary schools, for which Necla Kelek spoke out and on the question of the more manifest threat - whether it comes from the Islamists or the Islam haters.
In fact, you do not need both, but you will not be able to push back one without the other. So one should not protect the Islamists from the right-wing populists and therefore preserve cultural relativism. And vice versa, for example, the Pegida movement will do little to promote coexistence in the republic.
It became restless after the lectures again and again, also very emotional, because the time for discussion was always too tight, the topic is just too huge. There were too many questions, too many stories left. In the hall were many interesting women with a changeful biography, whose statements and questions would have filled even more days.
After all, this day of the headscarf has made it clear what it's like when a university opens up, something to itself and the audience: The citizens come with questions and more questions. It was high time for such a conference.