In the "European Year of Intercultural Dialogue" the results of the research project "Gesellschaft gemeinsam gestalten - Islamische Vereinigungen als Partner in Baden-Württemberg" (Shaping society together - Islamic organisations as partners in Baden-Württemberg), at the Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, are helping make intercultural dialogue more targeted and thus more sustainable, thanks to its evaluation and feedback for politics and society.

The European Union has declared 2008 the "European Year of Intercultural Dialogue". The EU's most important aim is to promote intercultural dialogue as an instrument to assist all those living in the EU in acquiring the knowledge and abilities "to deal with a more open and more complex cultural environment", as an official EU information sheet puts it.

As well as traditional educational work providing information and raising awareness, scientific research in particular can play a role in finding or developing pioneering measures aimed at giving intercultural dialogue in communities a clearer target, by means of evaluation, new findings and feedback on this for politics and society. As a current example, we present the research project "Shaping society together - Islamic organisations as partners in Baden-Württemberg". This was carried out from 2006 to 2008 by the Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, and was intended to provide a new basis for cooperation between local councils, churches and mosque associations. The evaluation review and results of the project are now out.

In the research project, dialogues between Islamic associations, local councils and churches were discovered and scientifically evaluated. It is the first time this has been done in Baden-Württemberg. The topic was experiences with dialogue and cooperation; the conditions for and obstacles to dialogue; public relations, Islamic religious education, target group work by Islamic associations and the role of the imams. In this way, a comprehensive picture was put together of Islamic associations´ structures, activities and positions, which as a rule are generally not well-known, as well as the way in which local council and church institutions carry out dialogues. The results on processes of opening up, and communication barriers, permit the conclusion that although Islam has largely been well received in Germany, the potential for the integration of Islamic associations has often remained untapped.

The main obstacle to dialogue was identified as problems with transparency on all sides, i.e. that unclear structures/contact persons and inaccessible contact details made it difficult for people to get in touch with one another. Furthermore, opportunities to integrate Islamic associations to develop connections and dialogues have so far only partially been taken advantage of in order to construct binding long-term communication structures. Standard activities organised by social services and educational establishments often hardly get through to Muslim target groups, meaning that parallel structures are often created which are not integrated into mosque associations. Regional interests in mosque-building are rarely used as an opportunity to develop long-term structures for dialogue. The practicality and politicisation of interreligious dialogue are seen as necessary, as is the wish for more intensive Muslim public relations work. In many places, Muslim women have been seen to emancipate themselves from predominating masculine structures, i.e. in many mosque associations women are not satisfied with their traditional role and demand the chance to participate. These few examples already point towards initial cases where individual conclusions and consequences could be applied elsewhere and be continued. What is more, the project would like to stimulate further empirical investigations into dialogue in other regions and countries, as this example evaluation means it has been possible to identify structures, as well as conditions which promote or prevent dialogue. The detailed final publication is available from the Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart.

The academy is a member of the AKSB, the Association of Catholic Social Educational Organisations in the Federal Republic of Germany. In June 2008, along with the assembly of leaders from Catholic academies and the KBE (the Catholic Federal Working Group for Adult Education), the association held a specialist conference on interreligious and intercultural education, aimed at sharing experiences in working approaches and developments with educational establishments from all over Germany, and looking for shared prospects in this current, important field of education.

(InfoNet - Stefan Baumeister)