In the end, Abraham Lehrer is touched. The board of the Cologne synagogue community has to swallow before he speaks. And he whispers when he talks about “the surprise” he experienced that Monday afternoon.
The tour of the old Jewish church and the conversation with the four most important associations of Islamic religious communities in North Rhine-Westphalia lasted two hours. Outside the entrance on Roonstrasse, the wind blows over candles and buckets full of flowers, and above them hang pictures of many Israeli hostages that Hamas has been holding captive since October 7th. Teacher stands upstairs on the first floor in the Judaica, the synagogue’s religious teaching room; his Muslim guests have said goodbye. And Lehrer is amazed: “This is the first time that the associations have distanced themselves so clearly from Hamas,” he says. The 69-year-old, himself the son of those persecuted by the Nazis, takes a deep breath: “There’s not a shred of doubt left – that’s a quantum leap for us.”
The Muslims unanimously expressed their condolences. And condemned Hamas’ terror. “That doesn’t correspond to Muslims, it was a terrorist attack,” said Durmus Aksoy, the North Rhine-Westphalia head of Ditib, which organizes many Turkish Muslims. All associations assure that they will also spread this message within their own ranks – “downwards” to their mosque associations and upwards to their federal committees. NRW currently seems like a model for dialogue in times of war.
Tutoring in reasons of state
The idea for the symbolic act in Cologne came about exactly a week ago. The black-green NRW state government invited four Muslim religious associations to Düsseldorf for a discussion. One could also say: summoned to help with German reasons of state – the security of Israel and all Jews in Germany.
Until then, the North Rhine-Westphalia State Chancellery found that some of the statements made by the Muslim associations in the state since the beginning of the Hamas attack on Israel were “too ambiguous” and too lukewarm. So State Minister Nathanael Liminski (CDU) demanded a clearer stance against Hamas in a stern letter to the Muslim associations: “It is of great importance for cohesion in our country that you also distance yourself clearly and unambiguously from terrorist atrocities takes place,” Liminski wrote. In particular, the Ditib, the Turkish-Islamic religious community with close ties to Ankara’s religious authority Diyanet, initially objected to the impression that “the Islamic religious communities first need to be warned to position themselves correctly.” You are “part of the solution, not part of the problem”.
The next act will follow soon
At the end of a long conversation early last week, Liminski received what he had requested in his cover letter as “necessary conclusions.” The Muslim associations condemned the atrocities of Hamas in black and white and “unreservedly”; Together, the state government and organized Muslims demanded “that the hostages be released by Hamas immediately.” What was particularly valuable for the North Rhine-Westphalia government was the invited Muslims’ rejection of anti-Israel demonstrations and pro-Palestinian slogans: “We will not allow Hamas’s terrorist attacks on our streets to be cheered or even put into perspective.” All participants “strongly condemned Hamas’s call to attack Jewish institutions worldwide.” Any form of anti-Semitism has “no place” in North Rhine-Westphalia.
That was the new, clear basis for the dialogue this Monday in the Cologne synagogue. The next symbolic act will follow on Friday: Jewish representatives – above all Abraham Lehrer – will visit a mosque in Bochum. The church apparently escaped an arson attack days ago, and Stars of David were found on one door. And a swastika.