German citizenship test causes uproar

By David Sells BBC Newsnight

The state of Baden-Wuerttemberg has stolen a march on the rest of Germany by introducing a special test for foreigners seeking German citizenship.

Watch the report

There are 30 of them all told and they do make you blink.

"What do you say to the statement that a woman must obey her husband and, if she disobeys, he is allowed to beat her?"

Then there is "what is your view of a man in Germany who has two wives at the same time?"

Correct answers, please, and you can become a German.

No 'right' or 'wrong' answers

There's a question on so-called "honour killings" and (though the questionnaire doesn't identify it) a slightly reworked quote from Winston Churchill, asking what you make of the statement that "democracy is the worst form of government that we have, but it's the best there is".

Uproar over the test has caused the interview process to be modified

This test is the brainchild of the Baden-Wuerttemberg state's Minister of the Interior, Heribert Rech.

He told me that there are no "right" or "wrong" answers. The applicant doesn't have to sit in front of the questionnaire and answer all 30 questions. The questions are designed, he said, as a conversation guide for the German naturalisation official and they are not specifically designed for Muslims.

Vigilance

[It's] imperative for our naturalisation official to be particularly vigilant when dealing with Muslims who wish to become German citizens Heribert Rech Minister of the Interior

However, he also volunteered the point that more than half of those seeking naturalisation in his state every year are from Muslim lands, so it was possible Muslims could feel they were being targeted.

What's more, 21% of all Muslims living in Germany say that its Basic Law cannot be reconciled with the Koran, Mr Rech told me, so "this makes it imperative for our naturalisation official to be particularly vigilant when dealing with Muslims who wish to become German citizens".

Uproar

The test was introduced at the beginning of the year and there was such an uproar over the questions that Mr Rech modified the interview process.

This catalogue of questions is absolutely useless Professor Ernst Mahrenholz

A former judge of federal Germany's Constitutional Court, Professor Ernst Mahrenholz, was blunt:

"This catalogue of questions is absolutely useless. None of the German states, even though the Christian Democratic Union rules in most of them, will use this questionnaire.

"If I may speak honestly, I have the impression this has something to do with the electoral fight that takes place in Baden-Wuerrtemberg at the moment. This is an appeal to the German citizens to vote CDU because of their critical stance towards Muslims."

Clumsy

Playing the Muslim card in advance of next month's Baden-Wuerttemberg state election in other words.

Well, perhaps. No other German state has followed suit. A highly articulate MEP of the opposition Greens Party, Cem Oezdemir, of Turkish origin, was as blunt as the judge:

"Mr Rech, unfortunately, is making the fundamentalists strong," he told me, "and weakening the position of moderate Muslims."

However you interpret the average German's worries about Muslim migrants, the Badem-Wuerttemberg approach is clearly clumsy.

David Sells' report can be seen on Newsnight on Wednesday, 15 February, 2006