Geschichte der Muslime in Europa und Versöhnungsprozesse zwischen Christen und Muslimen
History of Muslims in Europe and reconciliation processes between Christians and Muslims

Summary/Abstract: Many people in Europe are only slightly aware that there is a period of Muslim ruling dynasties in Europe that began almost 1 ½ millennia ago, starting in southeastern Europe with the conquest of Armenia in 652 and in south-western Europe with the conquest of Gibraltar in 711. This was followed by Muslim conquests in Sardinia, Corsica, Calabria, Sicily, Crete, Malta etc. However, the most dramatic event was the conquest of Byzantium by the Ottomans in 1453, followed by centuries of occupation of large parts of south-eastern Europe, which only came to an end with the Peace of San Stefano in 1878. Large Muslim populations remain, especially in Albania (approx. 2.85 million), BosniaHerzegovina (approx. 2 million), Kosovo (approx. 1.8 million), Bulgaria (approx. 1 million) and Macedonia (approx. 600 thousand). On the one hand, Russia counts more than ten Russian-Ottoman wars among its past. On the other hand, Russia, with up to 20 million Muslims as Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, New Avars, Lezgins, Dargins, Ingushes, etc., it has a very different history with its own Islam. Germany, on the other hand, apart from its participation in the Turkish wars before Vienna, has only known Islam as a domestic challenge since the labour recruitment agreements with Turkey in the 1960s. Europe was confronted in a completely different way with the sudden increase in Muslim populations as a result of the so-called wave of refugees in the second millennium from countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Islamic states in Central Africa. The southern and western European countries mainly affected by this are only at the beginning of coping with the resulting social and cultural-religious challenges in relation to Christian and Islamic cultures. The following study concludes with approaches to an ecclesiastical ministry of reconciliation between Christians and Muslims, exemplified by some examples in Europe.

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