Monheim's city council is currently debating the construction of a mosque. That deserves a few plain words about freedom of religion, about planning law — and, not least, about the distinction between "Monheimers" and "people from Monheim".
Freedom of religion is in Article 4 of the Basic Law. That is the shortest possible answer to most mosque debates. It means that religious communities can establish their places of worship, that they may practise their religion openly, that the state does not evaluate the content of a confession. It does not depend on the number of believers in the district. It does not depend on how old the religion is in Germany. It does not depend on how loud its critics are.
What planning law can regulate is the how, not the whether. Building height, land use, noise emissions (yes, including from the muezzin call), parking — all of this is a subject for a proper planning process. Those are the questions the council is actually there to handle. The question whether "we" want "such a building" is not a question the council may legally pose. It would be just as absurd if, in the 1990s, Monheim had debated whether it actually wanted a new Catholic church.
That brings me to the distinction I opened with. There is talk, in some parts of the debate, of what "the Monheimers" want. That phrase carries an implicit claim: that there are real Monheimers on one side and people-who-live-in-Monheim on the other. Everyone who has ever actually walked around this little, lovely, mixed, friendly city knows the distinction is fiction. The Turkish-German pensioner in the third generation is a Monheimer, just as the retired railway worker from East Prussia was a Monheimer in 1960. Monheim is what Monheim does, not what Monheim was.
Why am I writing this here rather than in a political column? Because the law is the only place in which all of this is already decided. Whoever wants to re-read the debate purely in terms of the constitution will find the result fairly uncontroversial. In that sense, the constitution does the political work for us — not always, but in this case. The city council's job is to apply the law, not to organise a plebiscite on religious preferences.
I am myself a curious participant in this little city. I have attended evening services in the old Lutheran church. I have, during Ramadan, sat down with a group of Turkish clients and their families. I have served as a lawyer for Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish and atheist clients in identical ways. That is not piety; it is my job. But the experience does teach you something about the sociology of Monheim: the diversity here is actually quite modest, and the local panic about it is quite disproportionate.
Which brings me back to the mosque. A building. With a roof. Walls. A car park. A regular planning application. The city's lawyers will draft an adequate notice. The construction will, in all likelihood, not be particularly visible from the town centre. Those who come out of it on Friday will be people from Monheim who pray on Friday, rather than people from Monheim who do not. Most of us will notice it less than the last supermarket that opened on the outskirts.
Freedom of religion is not a gift, it is a right. And rights do not become more convenient by being denied. They become more honest by being applied even when the application is uncomfortable. That, as a lawyer, is what I like most about the Basic Law.
It doesn't ask us whether we want to grant a right. It tells us we already have to.