Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya as Changing Salafi Icons 465
1. Salafis in Germany and the Remoteness
of Ibn Taymiyya
The majority of Muslims has moved to Germany since 1961 through
work force migration from Turkey.^10 As a result, about 2.5 to 2.7 mil-
lion of a total of approximately 3.8 to 4.3 million Muslims in Germa-
ny are from Turkey.^11 About 2.64 million are Sunnis mostly from the
Ḥanafī school of law (madhhab) and about 300,000 are Sunni Shāfiʿīs,
mostly of Kurdish origin.^12 Many of the Sunni Muslims originally
came from Anatolia and are predominantly oriented toward Sufism.^13
It is impossible to pinpoint the percentage in exact figures, but the
biggest organizations of Muslims in Germany are Sufi-inspired if
not dominated by Sufism, such as Milli Görüş (Avrupa Milli Görüş
Teşkilatları e. V.),^14 the Suleiman community (Verein Islamischer Kul-
turzentren, VIKZ),^15 and the Nūr community. Their institutional
form of organization avoids showing structural features of a classic
Sufi order, because they have had to adapt to the political and legal
demands of secular Turkey.^16 Still, these organizations are deeply
10 Smaller numbers of Muslims came as labourers from Morocco, Tunisia, and
former Yugoslavia. See Heimbach, Marfa: Die Entwicklung der islamischen
Gemeinschaft in Deutschland seit 1961, Berlin 2001, p. 61.
11 Federal Office for Migration and Refugees: Muslim Life in Germany, Nürnberg
2009, p. 11.
12 Religionswissenschaftlicher Medien- und Informationsdienst e. V.; online:
http://www.remid.de/remid_info_zahlen.htm, accessed Dec. 2, 2010.
13 Böttcher, Annabelle: Vielfältige islamische Traditionen in Deutschland, in: Neue
Züricher Zeitung 298 (Dec. 21, 2004), p. 5.
14 Jonker, Gerdien: The Evolution of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi. Sulaymançis in
Germany, in: Jamal Malik and John Hinnells (eds.): Sufism in the West, London
2006, pp. 71–85, here p. 73.
15 See Jonker, Gerdien: Eine Wellenlänge zu Gott. Der Verband der Islamischen
Kulturzentren in Europa, Berlin 2002; Gökalp, Altan: Les fruits de l’arbre plutôt
que ses racines. Le Suleymanisme, in: Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic and
Thierry Zarcone (eds.): Naqshbandis. Cheminements et situation actuelle d’un
ordre mystique musulman, Istanbul and Paris 1990, pp. 421–435; Lemmen,
Thomas: Islamische Organisationen in Deutschland, ed. by Friedrich-Ebert-
Stiftung (Abt. Arbeit und Sozialpolitik), Bonn 2000, pp. 48–52, online: http://
http://www.fes.de/fulltext/asfo/00803toc.htm, accessed Dec. 03, 2010.
16 Jonker, Gerdien: Die Verortung der islamischen Gemeinden im deutschen
Umfeld, in: idem (ed.): Kern und Rand. Religiöse Minderheiten aus der Türkei
in Deutschland, Berlin 1999, pp. 131–146, here pp. 134–135.
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