Matthias Kortmann

Technische Universität Dortmund | TUD · Department of Philosophy and Political Science

Der soziale Zusammenhalt in Europa wird immer wieder herausgefordert. Im Mittelpunkt dieses Policy Papers steht das im Rahmen der BMBF-Förderlinie „Zusammenhalt in Europa“ geförderte interdisziplinäre Forschungsprojekt „Zusammenhalt in Europa durch Religion?“ (ZER) (2020–2024). In diesem haben wir die Bedeutung von Religionen, und zwar christlichen...

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly influenced all areas of life and day-to-day operations. This paper studies the impact of the pandemic on Muslim and Christian organizations in Germany. The focus is activity implementation, time investment, staff changes, and working processes of full-time staff and volunteers. On the basis of a quantitative survey...

This article follows up on assumptions of Rogers Brubaker and Benjamin Moffitt, according to whom, some Western and Northern European right-wing populist parties use ‘civilisationist’ and liberal-illiberal narratives that are, for instance, characterised by a ‘philo-Semitic stance’. The paper analyses to what extent the German right-wing populist p...

Applying a qualitative framing analysis, this paper examines narratives of the right-wing populist parties Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands on religion. The paper argues that references of these populist parties to religion can be interpreted against the background of specific national context factors...

This paper asks whether Germany’s main right-wing Populist Party, the AfD, filled a representation gap on the issue of Muslim immigration and integration and the role of Islam. We shed light on this question by analysing more than 575 manifestos from all 116 elections on the state and federal level between 1990 and 2017. A quantitative text analysi...

What influences parties’ issue attention towards immigration and integration? This study provides answers to this question by focusing on the party competition at the regional level in Germany, a country that has been strongly affected by the refugee crisis. Building on a novel data set which covers altogether 510 electoral manifestos during 108 fe...

This paper deals in a qualitative discourse analysis with the role of Islamic organizations in welfare delivery in Germany and the Netherlands. Referring to Jonathan Fox's “secular–religious competition perspective”, the paper argues that similar trends of exclusion of Islamic organizations from public social service delivery can be explained with...

Abstract This paper examines what influences the views of governmental and Islamic actors in consultations on the integration of Islam in Germany and the Netherlands. Disentangling institutionalist and constructivist assumptions within the concept of political opportunity structures and employing a content analysis of primary documents and intervie...

Triggered by the Employment Equality Directive 2000/78/EC, member states have reformed their equal treatment laws, including exemptions for religious organisations which allow them to lay off employees who allegedly act contrary the organisations’ ‘ethos’. However, whereas in some countries, churches have managed to defend these exemptions; elsewhe...

Anfang November 2011 wurde bekannt, dass eine rechtsextreme terroristische Vereinigung namens „Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund“ (NSU) in Deutschland für eine Mordserie mit mindestens elf Opfern verantwortlich ist. Neun Opfer dieser rechtsextremistischen Anschläge waren Gewerbetreibende mit türkischem bzw. in einem Fall mit griechischem Migration...

This article utilizes an analytical framework that examines the differences in the organizational forms and strategies of Islamic organizations with reference to both internal and external factors affecting the organization, such as internal organizational characteristics and national and transnational political opportunity structures. This perspec...

This article focuses on the perceptions of Muslim immigrants regarding what might constitute ‘successful integration’ into two Western European countries: Germany and the Netherlands. I conducted qualitative interviews with representatives from Muslim umbrella organisations and reviewed their publications to analyse their definitions of ‘integratio...

The political discourse on Islam in Germany has intensified in the twenty-first century, with the result that Islamic umbrella organizations have increasingly been involved in political processes. This paper describes how these organizations have responded to this change in the discourse and to their new role as points of contact for political acto...

This volume explores the variety of forms, strategies and practices of Islamic organizations in Europe and the United States. It focuses on the reactions of organized Muslims at local, national, and transnational levels to the on-going debates on their integration into society and the structures of state-church relations.

This volume has given some insight into the extraordinary variety of forms, strategies, and practices of organization Muslims use to participate in the political arena and to exercise their faith in non-Muslim contexts. Islamic organizations have been shown to face the challenge of having to operate in heterogeneous local, national, and even transn...

As of 2010, there were 43.49 million Muslims living in the 50 nationstates associated with the European continent, and 2.77 million in the USA (PEW, 2012). Since the beginning of the century, questions surrounding the integration of Muslims into society and the inclusion of their organizations in the structures of state-church relations in non-Musl...

In this article Leo and Jan Lucassen's analysis in Wmnaars en verliezers [Winners and losers] of 500 years of immigration to the Netherlands is reviewed with regard to possible conclusions for the neighbouring country, Germany. Particularly since the recent migration history in both countries has been very similar, the authors' disentanglement of c...

Muslim organizations in Germany are not yet officially recognized as religious corporations according to public law despite various attempts to obtain this status which would grant them both legal rights and public legitimacy. Since the 1980s, this collective struggle for public recognition has been spearheaded by the main Muslim umbrella organiz...

This article focuses on the question of how national integration policies and regimes of religious governance in Germany and the Netherlands shape political opportunity structures for organized Muslim migrants. The impact of these opportunity structures is analyzed by looking at the self-portrayal of (primarily Turkish) Muslim organizations in the...

Wie bereits in der Einleitung dieses Bandes ausgeführt stellte der Wandel des politischen Integrationsdiskurses in Deutschland im Verlaufe des ersten Jahrzehnts des 21. Jahrhundert eine besondere Herausforderung für die Migrantenverbände dar. Während die Frage der Integration von Migranten sich immer stärker auf die Frage der Integration der Muslim...