ABSTRACT
A comparison of the two largest Turkish Islamic organizations in Germany, Diyanet İşleri Türk İslam Birliği and Islamische Gemeinschaft Milli Görü ş, challenges the dichotomous categorization of Muslim organizations as “good” or “bad.” On the one hand, the Turkish state supports Diyanet İşleri Türk İslam Birliği, which promotes Islam in private life as a source of individual piety and loyalty to the Turkish state. On the other hand, Milli Görüş, which originally supported political Islam in Turkey, is now working to gain public recognition of Islam in Germany. Relying on extensive fieldwork data and interviews with the executive members of these two organizations, this essay concludes that a comparative approach to their views on immigrant integration in general and the headscarf debate in particular shows that they both have ambivalent approaches to Muslim incorporation in Europe.
