Nina Mühe

Nina Mühe

Young, of German background, a cultural anthropologist and an enthusiastic convert to Islam. Currently working within an EU-project on Tolerance called “ACCEPT Pluralism” for the university Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) near to Berlin. She is currently busy preparing for her PHD in the field of Muslims in Germany. Over the last years she has been working as a freelance researcher for the Open Society Foundations in London within the project called “At Home in Europe – Muslims in EU Cities”. She has previously contributed a study on Muslims in Berlin, which you can find here: BERLIN MUSLIMS.

She is also a trainer for religious diversity, a homeopath and a free time hobby photographer.

As a child she had chosen and grown with Christianity as a religion, because her parents had left it open for her to chose. Since then she has always been searching to get closer to God and to find her own own spiritual path. In the end of her studies as cultural anthropologist she went to Guinea for about a year, where she lived with a Muslim family. Both the family’s hospitality and spirituality, (which was lived in everyday life by each member of the family in a different way), made a good impression with her. She decided to start trying some of Islamic practices with them, praying now and then and fasting some days in Ramadan.

“It just felt natural to me…” she recalls, as she found harmony with her own religious feelings and concepts.

When she started to read more about Islam, its beliefs and concepts she realised, that it actually was very close to beliefs at the time.

She found that Muslims honour Jesus [Issa] (peace be upon him) very much, and that it was not such an alien religion afterall but rather an extension to what she already believed to be true.

After her heart was drawn close to Islam with the Guinean family she began reading books on Islam and speaking to many people too. Consequentially she realised that Mohammad (peace be upon him) is a messenger too, sent by God (SWT), and that she felt that Jesus would have wanted her to follow the prophet Mohammad’s (peace be upon him) teachings and examples too.

Thats was the moment she realised, that there was no other way for her other than to be Muslim.

Please meet Anthropologist, photographer and convert to Islam – Nina Mühe.

1- What were your thoughts about Muslims in Germany before you came to Islam and during your childhood etc?
To be honest, I never thought about Muslims very much. The public debate about Islam was not at all comparable with what we have today, and so I just did not have a real opinion about Islam or Muslims. I just had some general ideas about Islam allowing polygamy and being ‘spread with the sword’ and some kind of male domination. All these points seemed to me incompatible with my image of God as loving and just and so I never thought of Islam as a religion coming from the same God, that I prayed to. But the bad image was also not as profound as what we have today after massive waves of negative media coverage of Islam and Muslims. I remember, that there were some children from Turkey in my school – in Bavaria – , but they were completely separated from us, all taught in one class, marked by a T (for Turkish) speaking only Turkish to a Turkish teacher. They grew up beside us, their parents working in the porcelain factories in our town, and we hardly had any contact at all…incredible to imagine this today, but this was the way, how labour migration to Germany was intentionally organised as a parallel society in the beginning.

Pigeon in the ancient Masjid Al-Qara’un in Cairo, Egypt

2- Can you tell us about why you chose Guinea for your studies?
I was studying cultural anthropology at a Berlin university and when I had to take a course in field research, the trip to Guinea, was the only one offered. This trip however gave me the opportunity to visit Africa for the first time and to gain some insight into the life of an African capital. It all impressed me very much as I realised, that we don’t have any idea in Germany, how people live there, that we are full of stereotypes, and I wanted to do something with this impression. So back home I applied for a scholarship and came back for one year in order to make a documentary, learn a Guinean language and do research. The field that had struck me was the music tourism around drums playing and dancing, which seemed to give great opportunities to Guinean youth, who otherwise had very limited to no future perspectives. So this issue became the focus of both my thesis and a documentary. The thesis is published, but the documentary was unfortunately never finished.

Minaret of ancient desert mosque in Oasis Bahariya, Egypt

3- Have you visited any other places and did they leave an impression with you too?
After finishing school I travelled around New Zealand with a friend where I was impressed by the wideness of the landscape, the impressive nature, that still impacted very directly on people’s lives. But I was also struck by European culture of this far away country and by the Maori people, who had been there before, being quite oppressed and pushed into an inferior position.

Watching the tumultuous street life of Cairo

4- What happened when you first started wearing Hijab? (How did your family react and how did your friends react?)
It was not easy at all. I was prepared, that many people would find it weird, but I was not prepared for the hostility, that certain people would show me, let alone the German state passing laws against women with hijab in certain professions! This all showed me a very ugly side of our country, which I had not perceived in the same way before. The hijab was also the most difficult part of my religion for some friends and family members. While they could somehow live with me being a Muslim, the hijab caused some severe conflict with some of my dearest friends. My family always somehow accepted me as I was, even if they would have liked me to not change my looks so drastically I guess, but they got used to it and always try their best to fulfil all my dietary and other religious needs and wishes, when I visit them.

Prayer in the White Desert of Egypt

5- Have you found a difference within yourself from then (before Islam) to now in the way you approach things and deal with society in general? Can you compare and contrast the two periods of time?
I have always tried to struggle in one way or the other for a better and more just society, but was very often confronted with the ‘reality’, that many things seem to become rather worse than better in terms of social justice, the environment or other issues, which sometimes let me doubt in the sense of these struggles. When I became Muslim, I understood, that these struggles make sense, whether we can change anything or not. Even if we do not seem to win anything in this world sometimes, we will be rewarded for any good deed and even any good intention by God in this world or the next. This gave me a lot of strength to carry on with trying to improve things in this society – and in myself.

Muslim woman taking a rest in an Egyptian mosque

6- Do you try to apply your scholastic background to Islam? If so in what way, and what would you like to achieve from this?
As anthropologist I always wanted to work as a kind of mediator between different cultures and societies and to bridge between different understandings and ways to perceive life. As a Muslim in Germany, being born as a non-Muslim I am now using the opportunity to try and bridge between Muslims and non-Muslims and to improve the understanding of Muslims by researching into their needs and concerns and making them known to the majority. But this does not work as black and white as it sounds. There are also many sub-groups among Muslims and ‘non-Muslims’, who need to understand each other better, and I myself need to understand many more things about others. So somehow I combined my general interest in different people and societies with my works as an anthropologist and with my role as a Muslim in Germany.

Painter beside a church in Florence

7- How does photography play a part in your everyday life?
I simply love to capture images, that pass through my life – be it beautiful moments with dear friends and family, be it something that catches my eye in my town, in nature or anywhere around me. Most of the time we ignore the special moments and the small impressive details, because we don’t have an eye for them. Going around with the camera makes me see things differently and pay more attention to these details and sometimes gives me a different view on things. The photography I love the most, is the one that manages to capture the atmosphere, the energy or the hidden meaning of something or someone, more than the outer beauty.

Night at the bosporus

8- Do you think photography can bring about a better cultural understanding of so called “western” Muslims to our “eastern” brothers and sisters and to non-Muslims alike?
Why not? Photography can be a good means to show not only reality but also emotions. And emotions are much more important for us and are much more guiding us, than we often think, or want to think as we perceive ourselves as mainly rational beings. You can see this in the revolution of the Arab countries. Some pictures of veiled Muslim women in Egypt laughing and fighting alongside the men changed more in the perception of many Europeans about Muslim women, than many articles and speeches could have done. It surely can also work the other way round and in many other directions.

Minaret of Masjid al Qara’un, Egypt

9- Studying anthropology, being a photographer and a participating sister in Islam: shouldn’t there be books coming from you?
Well, I try my best… I wrote a book, an analyses of my research for the Open Society Institute about Muslims in Berlin, which was published last year, and I am actually working on another project, which will inshAllah result in my PhD thesis. I am however not convinced yet, that writing scientific books is the best way to reach people, so I try to do other things as well, like for example diversity trainings about religions and world views, where people with different views and backgrounds meet each other and work together for some days and often change their preconceived ideas about each other just by real human contact.

Dawn in the desert

10- What do you see for yourself in regards to combining your skills for future projects?
I would love to do an exhibition once about Hajj or another Muslim event or issue, where people do not only see pictures and read texts, but interactively participate by different means and are enabled to somehow dive into the experience. I have seen this in big anthropological museums in the Netherlands, where the exhibition really manages somehow to change your perception of the place or culture it is portraying. But for the moment I am quite busy with my research about tolerance and pluralism, which I do for an EU-project with 14 other countries and with the diversity trainings I am doing now and then.

Al Azhar mosque

Thank you Sister Nina for taking time with us.
May Allah SWT forgive your sins, answer your prayers and grant you Janna (heaven).
Sister Nina has been a busy and active individual with many publications and contributions to various papers and issues. Below is the list of all things Nina Mühe.

• Nina Mühe and Andreas Hieronymus (2011) Has Multiculturalism completely failed in Germany?, in: Michael Emerson, Tufyal Choudhury (ed.) Interculturalism, Emerging Societal Models for Europe and its Muslims, Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels
• Nina Mühe (2010) Muslims in Berlin, Open Society Foundation (ed.) At Home in Europe Project, New York-London-Budapest; online: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/home/articles_publications/publications/berlin-muslims-report-20100427
• Liz Fekete (ed.) with Naima Bouteldja and Nina Mühe (2010) Alternative Voices on Integration, in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, Institute of Race Relations, London; online: http://www.irr.org.uk/alternative_voices/
• Nina Mühe (2008) Musiktourismus in Guinea, Ökonomische Strategien von Jugendlichen und Möglichkeiten zur Arbeitsmigration (Music Tourism in Guinea, Economical Strategies of Young People and Possibilities for Labour Migration), VDM, Saarbrücken
• Nina Mühe (2007) Muslims in EU-Cities Background Report – Germany, Open Society Institute, online-publication: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/home/articles_publications/publications/museucities_20080101/museucitiesger_20080101.pdf

and last but least Nina on Flikr

Interview by Abu Bassam Perry.

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