Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany, described yesterday’s signing of agreements between the Hanseatic City of Hamburg and Islamic and Alevi religious communities in Berlin as an “act of great symbolic value not only for the religious communities involved and a clear signal for non-denominational people”.
The treaty confirms the constitutionally and legally guaranteed rights and obligations of the associations, gives several religious holidays the status of church holidays, ensures participation in religious education and promises to support a training center for Islamic theology and religious education. There are also agreements on access to and participation in pastoral care, public broadcasting and the funeral service.
“It will certainly still be right in the future to ask to what extent it should be a task of the state to conclude contracts with individual denominational communities,” Frieder Otto Wolf continued.
He emphasized his hope that the integrative effects envisaged by the treaties will actually materialize. “I would certainly welcome it if, in the future, former ideological privileges were to be replaced in a sustainable way by a modern plurality that corresponds to a culturally open society.”
On the occasion of the signing of the treaty, non-denominational people must once again see themselves called upon to seek their own appropriate ways of participating and securing their common interests in ideological or political terms as an increasingly important component of public culture in Germany.
“As an organization that advocates practical and secular humanism on a daily basis, we act on the basis of our insight that good ideas in modern societies always require some form of organization. The signing of the agreement with the Islamic and Alevi communities in Hamburg makes it clear that there is also a public interest in the existence of such civil society organizations with ideological content.”
Non-denominational, non-religious and humanistically minded people should continue to realize that what they have in common, at least in the constitutionally regulated logic of the social public sphere, is an ideological concern. They must therefore also consistently demand that a comparable basis be created for their participation and inclusion in the subject areas addressed by these treaties.
“These people’s own interests and needs can only be adequately taken into account if we move away from the state-church regulations that were once developed under the influence of strongly dominant Christian churches and in the wake of a ‘throne and altar’ alliance,” said Wolf.
Humanists in particular should see themselves increasingly challenged by ideological openings to stand up for their own positions in a convincing manner. The aim should be to seek real equality as a worldview community without dogma and at the same time as a committed part of modern civil society.
“Which consistently stands for humanist and enlightenment principles in social practice and, to this end, repeatedly articulates and advocates elementary common demands across party-political, socio-cultural and socio-structural differences. Organized humanists in Germany and Europe have an increasingly large task ahead of them.”
