Fear and Fairness

Beginning in 2013, several German federal states, including North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, and Hesse, introduced publicly funded religious instruction for Muslim students. Inertia gave way to action for two reasons. First, German political elites feared that a hands-off approach would leave religious education to unregulated religious leaders, increasing the potential for youth radicalization and undermining integration. Second, some policymakers believed that it was unfair to continue to deny Muslim students classes that Christian and Jewish students received as matter of course. This combination of fear and fairness motivated policymakers to experiment with unorthodox measures to enhance the standing of Muslim faith communities, so that they could partner with state governments in designing and implementing Islamic religious instruction in public schools. Bavaria did not follow the path of other states, despite having a large Muslim community. Fairness concerns were not as strong in Bavaria, suggesting that fear alone did not motivate action in the other cases.