Discovering a Different Belief

The Jewish Museum in Berlin offers guided tours that highlight the parallels between Judaism and Islam. The guides are all Turkish Muslims and the tours are aimed primarily at Muslims. Panagiotis Kouparanis reports

A group of 15 young people from a technical vocational school in Berlin sit in a circle. In front of them stands Ufuk Topkara, a 27-year-old man with evenly combed-back hair, dark-rimmed glasses, and designer stubble. He could easily be mistaken for a trendy web-designer.

He tells the teenagers that he is a German-Turk, or a Turkish-German, "whatever way you want to look at it," he says. Topkara goes on to say that he was born and raised in Berlin, studied history and philosophy at the Humboldt University, and likes to box in his spare time.

For three years now, Ufuk Topkara and three other Turkish Muslims have been running guided tours of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The young historian studied the era of National-Socialism and the history of Jews and Germany during his degree.

Not a matter of course

He jumped at the chance to work in the Jewish Museum, which he considered an opportunity. Many of the groups he guides around the museum are school classes. On occasions, Muslim members of these classes don't want to visit the Jewish Museum.

"The teachers often tell us that the children say to them: 'why should I go to the Jewish Museum? I have nothing to do with the Holocaust!'" says Topkara. He recounts the story of three particular pupils from a secondary school in Munich: at the very last minute, they told their teacher that they would rather stay in the hotel than take part in a Muslim-Jewish tour.

Common ground and differences

This is ironic considering that the idea behind the tour is to allow people to discover the common ground shared by Judaism and Islam and to highlight the parallels between the religions. During the tour, a number of aspects of both religions are compared: traditions, customs, and the influence of religion on everyday life.

The fact that the museum only houses exhibits relating to the Jewish faith and not to Islam is not a major problem. The tour guides carry items around with them and show them to the members of the tour at the relevant points.

For example, when the group arrives at the Tora display, the Turkish museum guide Canan Kurucu-Rigir takes out a copy of the Koran once she has finished speaking about the Tora. "If you want to read from the Koran," she says, "you should ritually wash yourself first."

She explains that there are two kinds of ritual washing in Islam. One form is known as the large ritual wash, which is similar to the Jewish ritual wash. In both cases, the entire body should be washed with flowing water, explains Kurucu-Rigir. Unlike Judaism, which requires the body to be completely submerged in a ritual bath, in order words in a place specially reserved for this ritual, Muslims can perform the ritual in the privacy of their own homes, e.g. in the shower.

Kurucu-Rigir is of Turkish origin and studied educations science. She then explains to a group of eleventh-graders from Bavaria what meat Jews and Muslims are permitted to eat and how it should be prepared, when and how people of both religions cover their heads, and when Jewish and Muslim children are circumcised.

Uncertain success

At the end of the tour, Sora, a 17-year-old Muslim whose parents come from Afghanistan, is visibly surprised. "I was quite impressed because this was the first time I really saw how much these two world religions have in common and that we aren't as different from each other as one might think."

Like Sora, most of the young Muslims who take the tour are surprised at how much the two religions have in common and by the fact that Muslims are working as guides in the Jewish Museum.

But how much of what they learn stays with them once they leave the museum? Ufuk Topkara is sceptical about the project's prospects for success: "Once the kids go back to where they came from," he says, "they settle back into the structures they find there."

Panagiotis Kouparanis

© Deutsche Welle / Qantara.de 2008

Translated from the German by Aingeal Flanagan

Qantara.de

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