ABSTRACT
The assassination of Dutch fi lm maker Theo van Gogh in 2004, riots of French adolescents of Maghrebinian background in 2005, an honor killing in Sweden in 2002 which led to changes in law, violent protests against caricatures of Mohammad published by a Danish newspaper, terrorist attacks in London by “normal” British adolescent Muslims. The chain of events that has confronted Europe in recent years has raised questions of religious fanaticism, migration, and failed integration-and kept the media busy with a new issue: Islam and Muslims. Also in Germany, a country with around three million Muslims (most of them migrants with Turkish nationality or descent) there is an ongoing and very vivid public discourse about integration and the impact of Muslim faith on it. Although Muslims have been living in Germany since the late 1960s, the integration of the so called “guest workers” into German society was not a major topic in public and media debate until the pivotal point of 9/11 and the subsequent global reframing of Islam.
