Necla Kelek
Encyclopedia
Necla Kelek is a German
feminist
and social scientist, holding a doctorate in this field, originally from Turkey. She gave lectures on migration sociology at the Evangelische Fachhochschule für Sozialpädagogik (Protestant Institute for Social Education) in Hamburg
from 1999 until 2004.
In 2006, the scientific community
distanced itself from Kelek's position and pointed out that after her doctorate, she left the empirical research
method of social science and her new publications could no longer be considered scientifically sound. In the ensuing debate, only scientific fringe groups (like a group of marxist scientists) and publicist
s took her side, while scientists shared the criticism in her conclusions.
Kelek's family belonged to the Circassian
minority in Turkey. Necla Kelek came with her parents from Turkey to Germany at the age of 11 in 1968. After her parents had maintained a western, secular lifestyle in Istanbul, they turned toward religion in Germany. Once, when Kelek dared to contradict her father, he threathened to kill her with an axe. Her father forbade her to participate in school sports, in order to protect her virginity and to preserve the honor of the family.
Her two older siblings still obeyed the conservative views of their parents. As a youth, she, herself, fled into depression ("Hüzün") and then tried open refusal by her efforts in secondary school and university. She alienated herself more and more from her father and her family, and finally left them entirely.
Necla Kelek was first trained as an engineering draftsman. Later, she studied economy and sociology in Hamburg. She worked in a Turkish travel bureau in Hamburg and in an engineering office in Wiesbaden
. She was disowned by her family, since they did not want to allow her the right to be independent. She got her doctoral degree in 2001 with an investigation into the coming of age of women in Islam.
Kelek's research subject is the parallel society characterized by Islam in Germany. In 2011, she said, "Being a Muslim is becoming a self-sufficient identity. And this identity consists only of being different — different from the Europeans, different from the Africans, different from the Indians. And this frightens me. [Others] do not state their difference in terms of an utter rejection of the society that hosts them, preparing to take over one day. I often hear those Muslim youngsters bragging that one day this country will be theirs." She also criticizes those who see themselves as victims, saying "Today, the Turks, or Muslims, are given full access to civil rights, to democracy and liberty — and they reject all that. They have access to good education, healthcare, social welfare, but they voluntarily choose to keep out, to stagnate in parallel worlds. [...] How can they still consider themselves as victims, as the Jews once were in reality?"
She rejects toleration of the repression of both girls and boys in orthodox Islamic families as a misunderstood tolerance. She lives today with her partner.
, Dutch politician of Somali
origin, or the Egyptian feminist, Sérénade Chafik, Kelek opposes the repression of women in Islam
. She is strongly criticized by Islamic organizations for this, especially since she is convinced that there is very little compatibility between Western and Islamic ideals.
The Turkish press, especially, attacks Kelek again and again: feminists like Kelek, Seyran Ateş
, Sonja Fatma Bläser and Serap Çileli are accused of "exaggeration". Most women are supposedly not exposed to male control and live in freedom. Until the middle of 2005, this was also the editorial guideline of the liberal-conservative daily paper, Hürriyet
, which is very influential among the Turkish people living in Germany: according to a study of the Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (Society for Consumer Research, GfK) from 2002, forty percent of them had read this paper in the past two weeks. On May 22, 2005, "Hürriyet" started a Germany-wide campaign "against domestic violence". The discussion events in the large German cities got a large response, although the feminists who had previously been attacked refused to participate.
Kelek was a member of the scientific advisory council of the Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung, a "foundation for the support of evolutionary humanism", until May 16, 2007.
Three years later, Kelek came to quite a different conclusions. In her 2005 book, Die fremde Braut, she mixed autobiography, life stories of Turkish women and literary forms with results of scientific investigations. Now her summary was that Turkish tradition and Islamic religiousness could very well be a hindrance for integration. According to her book, many of the young people born in Germany in the separation phase of their lives were married by their parents to a bride or a groom in their place of origin in Turkey and then brought back to Germany. Thus, integration in Germany was intentionally made more difficult. Kelek showed this with the example of "Gelin", who was brought as a bride from Turkey for an arranged marriage
and had no chance or prerequisites at all for integration into German society. To describe this phenomenon, Kelek used conversations with Turkish women she became acquainted with in mosques or privately in Germany.
Die fremde Braut became a bestseller
and was praised in general, even by the critics. The emotionality of the book was felt by the reviewers to be a strength, but there was also clear criticism of sweeping negative statements about the entire segment of the population consisting of Turkish Muslims. A typical example of a reviewer who mixed praise and criticism in this way is Alexandra Senfft in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(FAZ) on May 31, 2005. Kelek received the famed Geschwister-Scholl-Preis
for Die fremde Braut, a prize which is awarded to a current book that shows intellectual independence and supports civil freedom, moral, intellectual and aesthetic courage and that gives an important impulse to the present awareness of responsibility. The lauditory speech was given by Heribert Prantl
, head of the domestic policy department of the Süddeutschen Zeitung and former state prosecutor.
Necla Kelek commonly gives interview and makes political statements in very emphatic and often polemic form. For instance, she pled in the Die Tageszeitung
(taz) of January 16, 2006, for the controversial citizenship test of the state government of Baden-Württemberg, which she described as a "Pasha Test". This test caused quite a stir at the beginning of 2006, as it would require Muslims who wanted to be naturalized in the state of Baden-Württemberg to answer questions to check their loyalty to the constitution and their fundamental attitudes. Kelek also made evaluations like these: According to investigations of the Federal Family Ministry, at least every second Turkish woman is married in the way described. There should therefore be several thousand cases each year. These investigations allegedly referred to the study presented by Family Minister Renate Schmidt in 2004 concerning violence against women in Germany. But it did not cover Kelek's numerical evaluations.
Today, Kelek is in demand as an expert on the subject of Islamic culture in the Western world. In her publication, Die verlorenen Söhne (The Lost Sons, 2006), her central theme is the influence of Islam on the small family. The book is based on Kelek's research project on the subject of "parallel society" at the Evangelischen Fachhochschule für Sozialpädagogik in Hamburg. Here also, Kelek merges autobiographical details, observations, conversations with Turkish retirees and the results of interviews with Turkish prison convicts. She counsels the Hamburg justice authorities on questions about the treatment of Turkish Muslim prisoners. In preparation for the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag 2005 in Hannover, she was invited to participate in the project group. In addition, she counsels the Baden-Württemberg state government regarding their legislative initiative to make forced marriage a punishable offense. She is a permanent member in the Islamic Conference appointed by the German federal government and a free-lance author for the women's magazine, "Emma", and many daily newspapers, among others.
published on February 2, 2006 an open letter, described as a petition and signed by 60 scientists from the social sciences field in general and migration research in particular, on the integration policy of Germany. The authors were the Bremen professor for intercultural education, Yasemin Karakaşoğlu, and the Cologne psychologist and journalist, Mark Terkessidis. It is directed against the prominent position of Kelek in the official political discourse,and points out deviations from the scientific method
in her popular publications. While the conclusions she drew in her dissertation from the data she gathered are scientifically sound, Kelek used that same data set
and generalized individual cases into examples of generic features of Muslim migrants with her book and her newspaper articles.
There is no dispute at all that forced marriages and honor killing
s exist, but arranged marriages (in contrast to forced marriages) can also be traced back to the emergence of marriage markets between the country of origin and the target of migration, which are in turn "the consequence of Europe's policy of separation". It is thus often motivated by the desire for legal migration. This would not be seen, if one (as for instance, Kelek) put an interpretation model of the sweeping confrontation of "Islam" and "Western civilization" on the phenomena in general.
on February 3.
She refrained from going further into the accusations directed against her or defending her new opinion in light of the Empirical research
method, but generally accused those who signed the petition of arguing "unscientifically". She accused them of representing the illusion of successful integration of Muslim migrants despite the "acutal state of affairs". Despite daily events which contradicted this view, the representatives of the academic majority opinion allegedly would rather criticize the bearer of bad news than their own views or their "ideological concept of multiculturalism" She intensified her reply, by accusing the "critics from the well-equipped world of the publicly financed migration research" of being "responsible for the failure of the integration policy for 30 years." The true purpose of their objection is "anxiety about their research funds."
and Die Welt
, articles appeared which clearly took sides for Kelek's positions. The daily, left-wing newspaper Die Tageszeitung
gave adjacent space to a sharp critic of Kelek and to Kelek herself. After that, only negative articles appeared in the taz. Various statements also appeared in the liberal Frankfurter Rundschau
, including a guest article by Rahel Volz of Terre des Femmes, which supported Kelek in many respects, as well as an article by Mark Terkessidis, who defended the "petition", as one of its authors. The NZZ of February 11, 2006 was rather critical of both sides. The FAZ of February 9, 2006, faulted the "petition of 60 migration researchers" for the fact that only one fifth of the social scientists worked in the field of migration research about the Turks.
Necla Kelek and Seyran Ates received support from Hartmut Krauss, Osnabruck editor and initator of the Study Group of Critical Marxists, whose "opposing call", with the title, "Gerechtigkeit für demokratische Islamkritikerinnen" (Justice for democratic Islam critics) was signed by 53 people (among which were journalists, scientists, engineers, authors and human rights activists, the latter chiefly from Iraq and Iran). In that, it says that honor killings, forced marriage and a basic patriarchal orientation, just as anti-Jewish conspiracy ideologies and lack of respect for a secular democratic societal order, are "to be taken seriously and are not marginal phenomena within the Islamic cultural community". For that reason, an "undifferentiated general amnesty for all Muslims" cannot be allowed. The position of the "migration scientists" is above all criticized because the negative manifestations with migrants are always sweepingly derived from the "racism of the receiving society", however that the anti-emancipation potential of Islam is disregarded. As long as this is tabooed, it is "rather difficult to develop an appropriate integration discourse".
Alice Schwarzer
defended Necla Kelek against the criticism in an article in the FAZ of February 11, 2006, which was reprinted in the feminist monthly Emma; she had bravely broken the silence about a societal taboo. Schwarzer associated this statement with strong personal criticism of the authors of the open letter: Yasemin Karakasoglu is "very, very closely allied with the Islamic scene in Germany"; Mark Terkessidis is merely a self-promoter and "has little to do with understanding of the world".
The well-known migration researcher, Werner Schiffauer, shared the opinions contained in the open letter, but had not signed it because the criticism should have been addressed to the German public, instead of Kelek, in his opinion: "Necla Kelek should not be attacked, rather the German public, who had only waited for someone like Kelek to confirm everything they had always thought about Muslims." He reckoned in Kelek's favor that she had brought up the subject of family relations in migrant families, which had been neglected until then.
about building a mosque in Cologne
-Ehrenfeld. She argued, among other things, that an Islam is practiced in Germany which has proven to be a hindrance for integration. These mosques are nucleii of a counter-society. They teach the philosophy of another society and practice a life in the spirit of the sharia
. Already, the children would learn the separation from the German society.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
and social scientist, holding a doctorate in this field, originally from Turkey. She gave lectures on migration sociology at the Evangelische Fachhochschule für Sozialpädagogik (Protestant Institute for Social Education) in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
from 1999 until 2004.
In 2006, the scientific community
Scientific community
The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method...
distanced itself from Kelek's position and pointed out that after her doctorate, she left the empirical research
Empirical research
Empirical research is a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Empirical evidence can be analyzed quantitatively or qualitatively...
method of social science and her new publications could no longer be considered scientifically sound. In the ensuing debate, only scientific fringe groups (like a group of marxist scientists) and publicist
Publicist
A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a public figure, especially a celebrity, a business, or for a work such as a book, film or album...
s took her side, while scientists shared the criticism in her conclusions.
Life
The following section regards Kelek's autobiography, which is part of her book, Die fremde Braut (The Foreign Bride).Kelek's family belonged to the Circassian
Adyghe people
The Adyghe or Adygs , also often known as Circassians or Cherkess, are in origin a North Caucasian ethnic groupwho were displaced in the course of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 19th century, especially after the Russian–Circassian War of 1862.Adyghe people mostly speak Adyghe and most...
minority in Turkey. Necla Kelek came with her parents from Turkey to Germany at the age of 11 in 1968. After her parents had maintained a western, secular lifestyle in Istanbul, they turned toward religion in Germany. Once, when Kelek dared to contradict her father, he threathened to kill her with an axe. Her father forbade her to participate in school sports, in order to protect her virginity and to preserve the honor of the family.
Her two older siblings still obeyed the conservative views of their parents. As a youth, she, herself, fled into depression ("Hüzün") and then tried open refusal by her efforts in secondary school and university. She alienated herself more and more from her father and her family, and finally left them entirely.
Necla Kelek was first trained as an engineering draftsman. Later, she studied economy and sociology in Hamburg. She worked in a Turkish travel bureau in Hamburg and in an engineering office in Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
. She was disowned by her family, since they did not want to allow her the right to be independent. She got her doctoral degree in 2001 with an investigation into the coming of age of women in Islam.
Kelek's research subject is the parallel society characterized by Islam in Germany. In 2011, she said, "Being a Muslim is becoming a self-sufficient identity. And this identity consists only of being different — different from the Europeans, different from the Africans, different from the Indians. And this frightens me. [Others] do not state their difference in terms of an utter rejection of the society that hosts them, preparing to take over one day. I often hear those Muslim youngsters bragging that one day this country will be theirs." She also criticizes those who see themselves as victims, saying "Today, the Turks, or Muslims, are given full access to civil rights, to democracy and liberty — and they reject all that. They have access to good education, healthcare, social welfare, but they voluntarily choose to keep out, to stagnate in parallel worlds. [...] How can they still consider themselves as victims, as the Jews once were in reality?"
She rejects toleration of the repression of both girls and boys in orthodox Islamic families as a misunderstood tolerance. She lives today with her partner.
Involvement in human rights
Similar to Ayaan Hirsi AliAyaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Magan Ali is a Somali-Dutch feminist and atheist activist, writer, politician who strongly opposes circumcision and female genital cutting. She is the daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse and is a founder of the women's rights organisation the AHA...
, Dutch politician of Somali
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
origin, or the Egyptian feminist, Sérénade Chafik, Kelek opposes the repression of women in Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. She is strongly criticized by Islamic organizations for this, especially since she is convinced that there is very little compatibility between Western and Islamic ideals.
The Turkish press, especially, attacks Kelek again and again: feminists like Kelek, Seyran Ateş
Seyran Ates
Seyran Ateş is a German lawyer and Muslim feminist born in Istanbul, Turkey of Kurdish descent. Her family moved to Germany when she was six years old. She studied law at the Free University of Berlin and has practiced law since 1997, specializing in criminal law and family law...
, Sonja Fatma Bläser and Serap Çileli are accused of "exaggeration". Most women are supposedly not exposed to male control and live in freedom. Until the middle of 2005, this was also the editorial guideline of the liberal-conservative daily paper, Hürriyet
Hürriyet
-External links:* * ** * *...
, which is very influential among the Turkish people living in Germany: according to a study of the Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (Society for Consumer Research, GfK) from 2002, forty percent of them had read this paper in the past two weeks. On May 22, 2005, "Hürriyet" started a Germany-wide campaign "against domestic violence". The discussion events in the large German cities got a large response, although the feminists who had previously been attacked refused to participate.
Kelek was a member of the scientific advisory council of the Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung, a "foundation for the support of evolutionary humanism", until May 16, 2007.
Scientific and political advisory activities
Necla Kelek received her doctorate with an investigation of Islamische Religiosität und ihre Bedeutung in der Lebenswelt von Schülerinnen und Schülern türkischer Herkunft (Islamic religiosity and its importance in the lives of schoolchildren of Turkish background), which appeared as a book in 2002 under the title of Islam im Alltag (Islam in Everyday Life). At that time, she came to the conclusion that schoolchildren individually learn Islam, adapt it to their needs and use it to form their identity. Their Islamic religiousness is not a hindrance to integration, but rather an example of cultural change.Three years later, Kelek came to quite a different conclusions. In her 2005 book, Die fremde Braut, she mixed autobiography, life stories of Turkish women and literary forms with results of scientific investigations. Now her summary was that Turkish tradition and Islamic religiousness could very well be a hindrance for integration. According to her book, many of the young people born in Germany in the separation phase of their lives were married by their parents to a bride or a groom in their place of origin in Turkey and then brought back to Germany. Thus, integration in Germany was intentionally made more difficult. Kelek showed this with the example of "Gelin", who was brought as a bride from Turkey for an arranged marriage
Arranged marriage
An arranged marriage is a practice in which someone other than the couple getting married makes the selection of the persons to be wed, meanwhile curtailing or avoiding the process of courtship. Such marriages had deep roots in royal and aristocratic families around the world...
and had no chance or prerequisites at all for integration into German society. To describe this phenomenon, Kelek used conversations with Turkish women she became acquainted with in mosques or privately in Germany.
Die fremde Braut became a bestseller
Bestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
and was praised in general, even by the critics. The emotionality of the book was felt by the reviewers to be a strength, but there was also clear criticism of sweeping negative statements about the entire segment of the population consisting of Turkish Muslims. A typical example of a reviewer who mixed praise and criticism in this way is Alexandra Senfft in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...
(FAZ) on May 31, 2005. Kelek received the famed Geschwister-Scholl-Preis
Geschwister-Scholl-Preis
The Geschwister-Scholl-Preis is a literary prize which was initiated in 1980 by the State Association of Bavaria in the Stock Market Society of the German Book Trade and the city of Munich...
for Die fremde Braut, a prize which is awarded to a current book that shows intellectual independence and supports civil freedom, moral, intellectual and aesthetic courage and that gives an important impulse to the present awareness of responsibility. The lauditory speech was given by Heribert Prantl
Heribert Prantl
Heribert Prantl is a German journalist and jurist. He is currently the head of the domestic policy department of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.-Early life:...
, head of the domestic policy department of the Süddeutschen Zeitung and former state prosecutor.
Necla Kelek commonly gives interview and makes political statements in very emphatic and often polemic form. For instance, she pled in the Die Tageszeitung
Die tageszeitung
die tageszeitung , was founded in 1978 in Berlin. It is a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper which is administrated by a workers' self-management...
(taz) of January 16, 2006, for the controversial citizenship test of the state government of Baden-Württemberg, which she described as a "Pasha Test". This test caused quite a stir at the beginning of 2006, as it would require Muslims who wanted to be naturalized in the state of Baden-Württemberg to answer questions to check their loyalty to the constitution and their fundamental attitudes. Kelek also made evaluations like these: According to investigations of the Federal Family Ministry, at least every second Turkish woman is married in the way described. There should therefore be several thousand cases each year. These investigations allegedly referred to the study presented by Family Minister Renate Schmidt in 2004 concerning violence against women in Germany. But it did not cover Kelek's numerical evaluations.
Today, Kelek is in demand as an expert on the subject of Islamic culture in the Western world. In her publication, Die verlorenen Söhne (The Lost Sons, 2006), her central theme is the influence of Islam on the small family. The book is based on Kelek's research project on the subject of "parallel society" at the Evangelischen Fachhochschule für Sozialpädagogik in Hamburg. Here also, Kelek merges autobiographical details, observations, conversations with Turkish retirees and the results of interviews with Turkish prison convicts. She counsels the Hamburg justice authorities on questions about the treatment of Turkish Muslim prisoners. In preparation for the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag 2005 in Hannover, she was invited to participate in the project group. In addition, she counsels the Baden-Württemberg state government regarding their legislative initiative to make forced marriage a punishable offense. She is a permanent member in the Islamic Conference appointed by the German federal government and a free-lance author for the women's magazine, "Emma", and many daily newspapers, among others.
The Petition for "Justice for the Muslims!"
Shortly before the appearance of Kelek's family sociology study in mid-March 2006, the weekly paper Die ZeitDie Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
published on February 2, 2006 an open letter, described as a petition and signed by 60 scientists from the social sciences field in general and migration research in particular, on the integration policy of Germany. The authors were the Bremen professor for intercultural education, Yasemin Karakaşoğlu, and the Cologne psychologist and journalist, Mark Terkessidis. It is directed against the prominent position of Kelek in the official political discourse,and points out deviations from the scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
in her popular publications. While the conclusions she drew in her dissertation from the data she gathered are scientifically sound, Kelek used that same data set
Data set
A data set is a collection of data, usually presented in tabular form. Each column represents a particular variable. Each row corresponds to a given member of the data set in question. Its values for each of the variables, such as height and weight of an object or values of random numbers. Each...
and generalized individual cases into examples of generic features of Muslim migrants with her book and her newspaper articles.
There is no dispute at all that forced marriages and honor killing
Honor killing
An honor killing or honour killing is the homicide of a member of a family or social group by other members, due to the belief of the perpetrators that the victim has brought dishonor upon the family or community...
s exist, but arranged marriages (in contrast to forced marriages) can also be traced back to the emergence of marriage markets between the country of origin and the target of migration, which are in turn "the consequence of Europe's policy of separation". It is thus often motivated by the desire for legal migration. This would not be seen, if one (as for instance, Kelek) put an interpretation model of the sweeping confrontation of "Islam" and "Western civilization" on the phenomena in general.
Kelek's Answer
Kelek was given the opportunity to reply in the same edition of the newspaper, which was also reprinted by the daily paper tazDie tageszeitung
die tageszeitung , was founded in 1978 in Berlin. It is a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper which is administrated by a workers' self-management...
on February 3.
She refrained from going further into the accusations directed against her or defending her new opinion in light of the Empirical research
Empirical research
Empirical research is a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Empirical evidence can be analyzed quantitatively or qualitatively...
method, but generally accused those who signed the petition of arguing "unscientifically". She accused them of representing the illusion of successful integration of Muslim migrants despite the "acutal state of affairs". Despite daily events which contradicted this view, the representatives of the academic majority opinion allegedly would rather criticize the bearer of bad news than their own views or their "ideological concept of multiculturalism" She intensified her reply, by accusing the "critics from the well-equipped world of the publicly financed migration research" of being "responsible for the failure of the integration policy for 30 years." The true purpose of their objection is "anxiety about their research funds."
Media Reactions
The media echo was intense. In the daily, conservative newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...
and Die Welt
Die Welt
Die Welt is a German national daily newspaper published by the Axel Springer AG company.It was founded in Hamburg in 1946 by the British occupying forces, aiming to provide a "quality newspaper" modelled on The Times...
, articles appeared which clearly took sides for Kelek's positions. The daily, left-wing newspaper Die Tageszeitung
Die tageszeitung
die tageszeitung , was founded in 1978 in Berlin. It is a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper which is administrated by a workers' self-management...
gave adjacent space to a sharp critic of Kelek and to Kelek herself. After that, only negative articles appeared in the taz. Various statements also appeared in the liberal Frankfurter Rundschau
Frankfurter Rundschau
The Frankfurter Rundschau is a German daily newspaper, based in Frankfurt am Main. It is published every day but Sunday as a city, two regional and one nationwide issues and offers an online edition as well as an e-paper...
, including a guest article by Rahel Volz of Terre des Femmes, which supported Kelek in many respects, as well as an article by Mark Terkessidis, who defended the "petition", as one of its authors. The NZZ of February 11, 2006 was rather critical of both sides. The FAZ of February 9, 2006, faulted the "petition of 60 migration researchers" for the fact that only one fifth of the social scientists worked in the field of migration research about the Turks.
Necla Kelek and Seyran Ates received support from Hartmut Krauss, Osnabruck editor and initator of the Study Group of Critical Marxists, whose "opposing call", with the title, "Gerechtigkeit für demokratische Islamkritikerinnen" (Justice for democratic Islam critics) was signed by 53 people (among which were journalists, scientists, engineers, authors and human rights activists, the latter chiefly from Iraq and Iran). In that, it says that honor killings, forced marriage and a basic patriarchal orientation, just as anti-Jewish conspiracy ideologies and lack of respect for a secular democratic societal order, are "to be taken seriously and are not marginal phenomena within the Islamic cultural community". For that reason, an "undifferentiated general amnesty for all Muslims" cannot be allowed. The position of the "migration scientists" is above all criticized because the negative manifestations with migrants are always sweepingly derived from the "racism of the receiving society", however that the anti-emancipation potential of Islam is disregarded. As long as this is tabooed, it is "rather difficult to develop an appropriate integration discourse".
Alice Schwarzer
Alice Schwarzer
Alice Schwarzer is the most prominent contemporary German feminist. She is founder and publisher of the German feminist journal EMMA.-Biography and positions:...
defended Necla Kelek against the criticism in an article in the FAZ of February 11, 2006, which was reprinted in the feminist monthly Emma; she had bravely broken the silence about a societal taboo. Schwarzer associated this statement with strong personal criticism of the authors of the open letter: Yasemin Karakasoglu is "very, very closely allied with the Islamic scene in Germany"; Mark Terkessidis is merely a self-promoter and "has little to do with understanding of the world".
The well-known migration researcher, Werner Schiffauer, shared the opinions contained in the open letter, but had not signed it because the criticism should have been addressed to the German public, instead of Kelek, in his opinion: "Necla Kelek should not be attacked, rather the German public, who had only waited for someone like Kelek to confirm everything they had always thought about Muslims." He reckoned in Kelek's favor that she had brought up the subject of family relations in migrant families, which had been neglected until then.
Controversy about the mosque in Cologne-Ehrenfeld
Neckla Kelek backed the misgivings of Ralph GiordanoRalph Giordano (writer)
Ralph Giordano is a German writer and publicist.Giordano was born to a Sicilian father and a Jewish mother....
about building a mosque in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
-Ehrenfeld. She argued, among other things, that an Islam is practiced in Germany which has proven to be a hindrance for integration. These mosques are nucleii of a counter-society. They teach the philosophy of another society and practice a life in the spirit of the sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
. Already, the children would learn the separation from the German society.
Awards
- 2006: Mercator-Professur of the Universität Duisburg-Essen
- 2006: CorineCorine (Literaturpreis)Corine is a literary prize of Germany....
-Sachbuchpreis (non-fiction book prize) for Die verlorenen Söhne. Plädoyer für die Befreiung des türkisch-muslimischen Mannes (The lost sons, plea for the liberation of the Turkish Muslim man) - 2005: Geschwister-Scholl-PreisGeschwister-Scholl-PreisThe Geschwister-Scholl-Preis is a literary prize which was initiated in 1980 by the State Association of Bavaria in the Stock Market Society of the German Book Trade and the city of Munich...
Speech by Heribert PrantlHeribert PrantlHeribert Prantl is a German journalist and jurist. He is currently the head of the domestic policy department of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.-Early life:...
Publications
- 2007: Türkische Karriere. Allein unter Männern. In Anatolien. (Turkish career. Alone among men. In Anatolia.) In: Ulrike Ackermann (Publ.): Welche Freiheit. Plädoyers für eine offene Gesellschaft. (Which freedom. Plea for an open society.) Matthes & Seitz, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-88221-885-5,(also online)
- 2007: Erziehungsauftrag und Integration: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Integrationshemmnissen (Educational task and integration: a debate with integration impediments), in: Deutsche Jugend, Vol. 55, No. 2, 53 - 59.
- 2006: Die verlorenen Söhne. Plädoyer für die Befreiung des türkisch-muslimischen Mannes. (The lost sons. Plea for the liberation of the Turkish Muslim man) Kiepenheuer & WitschKiepenheuer & WitschKiepenheuer & Witsch is a German publishing house, established in 1951 by Joseph C. Witsch in Cologne. Among the authors it published are Joseph Roth, Heinrich Böll, Günter Wallraff, and Gabriel García Márquez....
, Cologne, ISBN 3-462-03686-6
- Excerpts from the concluding chapter - 2005: Die fremde Braut. Ein Bericht aus dem Inneren des türkischen Lebens in Deutschland. (The foreign bride. A report from the inside of Turkish life in Germany) Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, ISBN 3-462-03469-3
- Discussion by Rupert NeudeckRupert NeudeckRupert Neudeck is a German journalist and humanitarian.He lived in Danzig until 1945 when Germans either fled from the advancing Soviets, or were expelled in the Expulsion of Germans from Poland after World War II...
and by Otto SchilyOtto SchilyOtto Georg Schily was Federal Minister of the Interior of Germany from 1998 to 2005, in the cabinet of former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany .-Biography:...
in the Spiegel, Critical review by Ismail Küpeli in analyse & kritik - 2002: Islam im Alltag. Islamische Religiosität und ihre Bedeutung in der Lebenswelt von Schülerinnen und Schülern türkischer Herkunft. (Islam in everyday life. Islamic religiousness and its importance in the lives of schoolchildren of Turkish background) Waxmann, Münster, ISBN 3-8309-1169-6 (dissertation)
Filmography
- 2006: Islam - zwischen Fundamentalismus und Reform. (Islam - between fundamentalism and reform.) SWRSüdwestrundfunkThe Südwestrundfunk is a public broadcasting company for the southwest of Germany, specifically the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. The company has main offices in three cities: Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Mainz, with the director's office being in Stuttgart. It is an...
, "Literatur im Foyer" by Thea DornThea DornThea Dorn , is a German writer of crime fiction and TV host. She lives and works in Berlin....
, Television discussion with Neclá Kelek, Nahed Selim and Ralph Ghadban, 58 min., first broadcast: April 7, 2006 - 2005: Verschleierte Unterdrückung? Die Frauen und der Islam. (Veiled repression? Women and Islam.) SWRSüdwestrundfunkThe Südwestrundfunk is a public broadcasting company for the southwest of Germany, specifically the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. The company has main offices in three cities: Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Mainz, with the director's office being in Stuttgart. It is an...
, Television discussion with Necla Kelek and Seyran AteşSeyran AtesSeyran Ateş is a German lawyer and Muslim feminist born in Istanbul, Turkey of Kurdish descent. Her family moved to Germany when she was six years old. She studied law at the Free University of Berlin and has practiced law since 1997, specializing in criminal law and family law...
, 44 min., first broadcast: March 8, 2005
Other Activists with similar views
- Seyran AteşSeyran AtesSeyran Ateş is a German lawyer and Muslim feminist born in Istanbul, Turkey of Kurdish descent. Her family moved to Germany when she was six years old. She studied law at the Free University of Berlin and has practiced law since 1997, specializing in criminal law and family law...
- Ayaan Hirsi AliAyaan Hirsi AliAyaan Hirsi Magan Ali is a Somali-Dutch feminist and atheist activist, writer, politician who strongly opposes circumcision and female genital cutting. She is the daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse and is a founder of the women's rights organisation the AHA...
- Wafa SultanWafa SultanWafa Sultan is a medical doctor who trained as a psychiatrist in Syria, and an American author and critic of Muslim society and Islam.-Life and career:Sultan was born into a large traditional Alawite Muslim family in Baniyas, Syria....
- Irshad ManjiIrshad ManjiIrshad Manji is a Canadian author, journalist and an advocate of "reform and progressive" interpretation of Islam. Manji is director of the Moral Courage Project at the Robert F...
Integration debate
- "Debatte um Necla Kelek. Importbräute für verlorene Söhne" (Debate about Necla Kelek. Import brides for lost sons", Spiegel OnlineSpiegel OnlineSpiegel Online , the online version of German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, is one the most visited news websites written in the German language.- Company :...
, March 16, 2006 by Henryk BroderHenryk BroderHenryk Modest Broder is a Polish born German journalist and author.Broder is known for polemics, columns and comments in written and oral media. Broder wrote for the magazine Der Spiegel as well as its online version and the daily Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. Since 2010 he writes for Die Welt... - "Gerechtigkeit für die Muslime!" (Justice for Muslims!), Die ZeitDie ZeitDie Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
, February 2, 2006, No. 6, Petition of the 60 migration researchers - Falsche Freiheit - Eine Replik auf die "Petition" der 60 Migrationsforscher (False freedom - a reply to the "petition" of the 60 migration researchers), FAZFazFAZ may be an abbreviation for:*Football Association of Zambia*Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper*Financial Autonomous Zone, an economic proposal...
, February 3, 2006 - "Porträt Necla Kelek, Soziologin" (Portrait of Necla Kelek, sociologist), Tagesspiegel, September 17, 2005
- "Warum nur schauen so viele weg?" (Why ever do so many look away?), Süddeutsche ZeitungSüddeutsche ZeitungThe Süddeutsche Zeitung , published in Munich, is the largest German national subscription daily newspaper.-Profile:The title literally translates as "South German Newspaper". It is read throughout Germany by 1.1 million readers daily and boasts a relatively high circulation abroad...
, April 11, 2005 - Aus Muslimen müssen freie Bürger werden, Frankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungFrankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungThe Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...
Articles by Kelek
- "Freiheit, die ich meine" (Freedom that I mean), FAZFazFAZ may be an abbreviation for:*Football Association of Zambia*Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper*Financial Autonomous Zone, an economic proposal...
, December 15, 2007 - "Das Minarett ist ein Herschaftssymbol" (The minarette is a symbol of control), FAZFazFAZ may be an abbreviation for:*Football Association of Zambia*Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper*Financial Autonomous Zone, an economic proposal...
, June 5, 2007 - "Beitrag zum Integrationsstreit zwischen Ian Buruma und Pascal Bruckner" (Article on the integration dispute between Ian Buruma and Pascal Bruckner), PerlentaucherPerlentaucherPerlentaucher is a German online magazine. It was founded and is being published by Anja Seeliger and Thierry Chervel and has been available since March 15, 2000....
, February 5, 2007 - "Heimat, ja bitte!" (Home country, yes please!), ZeitDie ZeitDie Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
, March 9, 2006, No. 11 (Excerpt from the last chapter of "Die verlorenen Söhne") - "Sie haben das Leid anderer zugelassen!" (You have allowed the misfortune of others!), Die ZeitDie ZeitDie Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
, February 8, 2006, No. 7, "Eine Antwort auf den offenen Brief von 60 Migrationsforschern: Sie ignorieren Menschenrechtsverletzungen, weil sie nicht in ihr Konzept von Multikulturalismus passen." (An answer to the open letter of 60 migration researchers: You ignore human rights violations because they do not fit in your concept of multiculturalism.) - Speech of gratitude for the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis, tazDie tageszeitungdie tageszeitung , was founded in 1978 in Berlin. It is a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper which is administrated by a workers' self-management...
, November 15, 2005 (excerpt) - "Anwälte einer Inszenierung" (Advocates of a production), ZeitDie ZeitDie Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
, September 17, 2005, Report about the Hatun SürücüHatun SürücüHatun "Aynur" Sürücü was a Kurdish woman living in Germany whose family was originally from Erzurum, Turkey. She was murdered at the age of 23 in Berlin, by her own youngest brother, in an honor killing...
trial by N. Kelek. Sürücü, from a strongly religious Muslim family, was murdered by her family in February 2005 for leaving a forced marriage and leading a Western lifestyle.
Interviews
- "Will Germany be a Divided Nation Again?", Standpoint, January/February 2011
- "Frauen werden zu Unruhestifterinnen stigmatisiert" (Women are stigmatized as troublemakers), Spiegel OnlineSpiegel OnlineSpiegel Online , the online version of German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, is one the most visited news websites written in the German language.- Company :...
, July 5, 2006 - "Sie wissen nicht: Liebe ist erlaubt" (They don't know: love is permitted), Hamburger AbendblattHamburger AbendblattThe Hamburger Abendblatt is a daily newspaper in Hamburg, Germany, published by Axel Springer AG. The paper used to appear Monday through Saturday only, but since 29 October 2006 it has also published a Sunday edition to compete with the Hamburger Morgenpost's introduction of a Sunday edition...
, April 5, 2006 - "Glück gibt es nur ohne den Vater" (There is only happiness without father), Berliner ZeitungBerliner ZeitungThe Berliner Zeitung, founded in 1945, is a German center-left daily newspaper based in Berlin, published by Berliner Verlag. It is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since unification. In 2003, the Berliner was Berlin's largest subscription newspaper—the weekend...
, March 25, 2006, Feuilleton page 31 - "Integration. Eure Familien, unsere Familien" (Integration. Your families, our families), FAZFazFAZ may be an abbreviation for:*Football Association of Zambia*Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper*Financial Autonomous Zone, an economic proposal...
, February 24, 2006 - "Das ist eine Art Pascha-Test" (That is a kind of Pasha test), Tagesspiegel, January 19, 2006, on the "conversation themes"
- "Geschwister-Scholl-Preis an türkeikritische Schriftstellerin" (Geschwister-Scholl-Preis to Turkish-critical author), Münchner Merkur, September 29, 2005
- "Es sind verlorene Söhne" (They are lost sons), tazDie tageszeitungdie tageszeitung , was founded in 1978 in Berlin. It is a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper which is administrated by a workers' self-management...
, September 23, 2005 - "Zwangsehe & Ehrenmord in Deutschland – Muslimische Frauen fordern: Schluss mit Multikulti-Toleranz" (Forced marriages and honor killing in Germany - Muslim women demand: end the multicultural tolerance), Interview with Kelek, 3sat3sat3sat is the name of a public, advertising-free, television network in Central Europe. The programming is in German and is broadcast primarily within Germany, Austria and Switzerland .3sat was established for cultural...
, June 19, 2005, also as a video - "Gefängnis Familie. Eine Frau bricht das Tabu des Schweigens" (Prison family. A woman breaks the taboo of silence), Sicherheit heute, January 30, 2005
- Mr. Buruma's stereotypes, an international debate about multiculturalism at signandsight.com.
- Necla Kelek in DAI Heidelberg, an interview with Necla Kelek at DAI Heidelberg.
- "Frauen werden zu Unruhestifterinnen stigmatisiert" (Women are stigmatized as troublemakers), Spiegel OnlineSpiegel OnlineSpiegel Online , the online version of German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, is one the most visited news websites written in the German language.- Company :...
, July 5, 2006 - "Debate between Necla Kelek and Tariq Ramadan: Who's Afraid of Euro-Islam?"