The Relationality of Religious Diaspora Activism in Germany during the Gaza War

The ongoing Gaza War and the Israeli invasion in Lebanon, on the one hand, and the immovable German support for the Israeli conduct of war since 7 October 2023, on the other hand, reconfigure the place and political potential of Middle Eastern diaspora communities in Germany. The irresponsiveness of German politics to the substantive contestation expressed by Arab-Muslim communities seriously undermines the democratic credentials of the German state with regard to the political inclusion of German-Arab Muslims. Their protests face increasing police surveillance and their articulations of religious identity and convictions with regard to Palestine are aggressively downplayed in public discourse, where pro-Israeli interests predominate.

However, the position German political elites and bureaucratic agencies have with regard to Israel-Palestine is also an outcome of struggles between the diverse Middle Eastern diaspora communities in past decades. In this paper, we analyze inter-diasporic relations in the German public sphere and critically examine the German state’s diverse positions vis-à-vis Middle Eastern diaspora communities and their religious interests. The diaspora communities included in this analysis are Sunni Arabs and Turks, Alevi and Yezidi Kurds, Jewish Israelis and Shia Iranians, as well as non- or post-religious groups and organizations among all of these communities. We claim that the political aspirations of these communities are not just shaped by the German foreign policy interests, but also by the interactions of the German state with each of these communities.

Drawing on a relational sociological, field theoretical framework of religious interests within German state-society relations, we find that the constellation of interests disfavoring Palestinian-Arab Muslim voices since the outbreak of the Gaza War is so powerful, because German elites had just aligned with non-Muslim and critical-Muslim voices of the Kurdish and Iranian diaspora and thereby narrowed the space of legitimate Muslim pro-Palestinian voices.