Entries Tagged 'Research in Germany' ↓

My trip to Cologne last week went well.  Even though many DITIB workers were away on holiday I managed to interview DITIB’s general secretary, Mehmet Yildirim, and DITIB’s director of interfaith dialogue, Bekir Alboga.  I also met again briefly with Ridvan Cakir, DITIB’s outgoing president.  Although everyone was super busy and only had 3-days notice […]

Today’s meeting with Ridvan Cakir went quite well.  He didn’t have a lot of time to spare, but we still spent a solid 45 minutes discussing DITIB, integration, and Islamic sermons.  Mr. Cakir definitely helped answer my key questions, but I also came away puzzled about some things.
When I showed up at the mosque and […]

Today I had my first meeting with a German politician.  Ekin Deligöz has been a member of parliament for the Green Party since 1998 and has focused on child and family policies.  On top of that, she is originally from Turkey, so this interview was especially insightful because she knows immigration issues inside and out.
One […]

I had a good hour-long interview today with Harun Bulut, imam of Sehitlik Mosque, the mosque I wrote about earlier.  We met in his office next to the mosque, and the first thing I noticed was a huge coffee table book on his desk called America 24/7.  He explained that it was a gift of […]

My name sounds a lot like the Turkish name Cem, pronounced “Gem” as in stone or “Jem” as in truly outrageous.  Several times in the US and Turkey people have mistaken me for a Turk because of my name and my ability to speak Turkish (certainly not because of my freckles and pasty white skin).  […]

Last night I hit the jackpot.  I met up with a young Turkish man (I’ll call him Fatih) born and raised in Berlin, who not only worked for DITIB for 2.5 years, but actually wrote some sermons and delivered them at DITIB mosques (back when he was only 18 years old).  He knows DITIB from […]

This morning I stopped by the DITIB-run mosque that’s just down the street from my apartment and found the solution to two of my problems.  The first is that I wasn’t sure if I should visit DITIB’s director in Cologne before trying to contact staff at this mosque; I suspected I might need a formal […]