Surveying an urban 'umma islamiyya' in Germany: numbers and issues relating to the religious self-identification

Abstract

This article looks at self-identified Muslims in Germany, taking the city of Frankfurt am Main as an example. The article makes extensive use of recent qualitative and quantitative research data on Islam in Germany. It aims to help those religious studies scholars who do not have command of the German language or lack access to the referred research to get a quick introduction into the topic. A closer look at the existing data suggests that the imagined 'umma islamiyya', posited both through the scholarly research and internal Islamic view as 'the Muslim community' is a fictitious entity. It is composed of heterogeneous individuals who are viewed as members of abstract sets according to their origins, ethnicity, mother language, denomination, religiosity, migrant history, gender, age, education, social openness and other criteria. Slightly more than a half of the estimated 80,000 Muslims in Frankfurt have a migrant background with origins in Turkey. Significant numbers of Muslims come from Morocco, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Three out of four Muslims in Frankfurt are Sunnis. Other big denominations are Shiites, Alevis and Ahmadis. Research shows that the majority of individuals who self-identify as Muslims are not involved in the existing Muslim associations and do not feel represented by them. Brief observations are made on the growing Salafi identity among younger Muslims. The number of individuals belonging mostly to the second and third generations of Muslim migrants, whose imagined Salafi Muslim identity dominates over their cultural, ethnic and class divisions, while still small, is growing.