Odd Couple
In Muslim Ghetto,
A Turk and German
Strive for Change

MARXLOH, Germany -- When Medet Sevimli moved into his new home six years ago, friends thought he was crazy.

Anyone with any money got out of Marxloh, a struggling steel community known as Germany's quintessential Muslim ghetto. Mr. Sevimli's life in town was dictated by the narrow, orthodox world of its dominant Muslim group. His new property was strewn with garbage and sat next to a row of derelict houses. The son of Turkish immigrants, Mr. Sevimli watched Turkish and German friends leave for better places. "No one could understand why I didn't leave too," says Mr. Sevimli.

But soon after moving in, Mr. Sevimli and his family got new neighbors, the Brennemanns. Like Mr. Sevimli, Sylvia and Andreas Brennemann decided to take a gamble on Marxloh. Despite their obvious differences -- the Brennemanns are atheists and the Sevimlis are orthodox Muslims -- the families became fast friends. Over time they became something more: a potent force for change that has started a mini Marxloh revival.

The duo formed a citizens group that kicked off a major urban-renewal project, including building a rose garden. They sued a national television station for a slanted report on Marxloh and played an important role in building the pride of the Muslim community, a new mosque that will be Germany's biggest. Mr. Sevimli started offering classes for kids that compete with those previously offered only by a controversial religious group.

For Mr. Sevimli, the experience has been liberating. The 36-year-old steelworker could have taken a path, common to many Muslims in Europe, of alienation and extremism. Instead, he's one of Marxloh's best-known residents. "I want to be active everywhere, with everyone," says Mr. Sevimli. "I want to be a Marxloher."

Mr. Sevimli's new horizons are part of a tentative change among Muslims living in Europe's ethnically divided communities. The region is still dotted with dozens of Muslim ghettos where integration is minimal and unemployment rates are high. Already isolated from their host country by geography and racism, these areas are fertile ground for violent ideas. In October, riots broke out in France's Muslim-dominated suburbs.

But even though these parallel societies are still entrenched, there are signs that some people are breaking out of them. The process, while haphazard and piecemeal, points toward the kinds of forces that could eventually foster change across the continent. In Germany, government policies have helped, including official criticism of extremist groups and the encouragement of grass-roots civic-improvement projects. Often the difference comes down to individual efforts, such as those of the Sevimlis and the Brennemanns.

Marxloh is an unlikely setting for such a story. A suburb of the Ruhr industrial city of Duisburg, the community is dominated by Europe's biggest steel mill, part of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG. In the 1960s and '70s, steel and coal attracted tens of thousands of mostly low-skilled migrant laborers, primarily Turks like Mr. Sevimli's father.

Neither the Germans nor the Turkish migrants reckoned that the Turks would stay, marry and have children, or that by the late 1970s the coal and steel industries would be shedding jobs. Few migrants had the skills to find or create new jobs. The result was predictable: unemployment, crime and other social ills. Within a couple of decades, those with money -- German and Turkish -- had fled, leaving Marxloh to the socially weakest.

Partly as a result of this crumbling social structure, radical Islam found a foothold among the predominantly Muslim immigrants left behind. Islamic boarding schools sprung up offering troubled children much-needed structure but also a thorough indoctrination in the sometimes intolerant teachings of fundamentalist Islam.

Marxloh gained national attention nine years ago when a mosque's plan to broadcast the muezzin's call to prayer once a week evoked a near-hysterical outburst of opposition among Germans. Since then, Marxloh has become synonymous with social disintegration, with little contact between native Germans and their new neighbors. But early signs of integration are emerging led by citizens such as the Sevimlis and the Brennemanns.

'Big Mouth'

A short man with a Mephistophelean moustache, Mr. Sevimli says he was prepared for his civic activism by something in short supply in a town with 18% unemployment: a steady job. He joined ThyssenKrupp a dozen years ago, filing defects from steel rails. Then the union came calling. "They say, 'Hey, you have a big mouth, we need someone like you,' " says Mr. Sevimli, who has become a union activist.

After a few years, Mr. Sevimli married and had two children. Like his father before him, who always expected to return to Turkey, Mr. Sevimli lived in a rented apartment. His father ended up staying and died in Germany two years ago.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Sevimli's brother suggested the family buy a house in Marxloh and put down roots. Mr. Sevimli hesitated. Built in the 19th century for mill workers and managers, Marxloh used to be a prosperous community, with broad boulevards and side streets lined with dark-brick row houses. But its reputation was now in disrepute.

Mr. Sevimli talked it over with his wife. Other districts were more expensive and Mr. Sevimli's wife wanted a garden for their sons. He agreed and bought a three-story apartment building, renting out four of the apartments and installing his family in the remaining two.

The Brennemanns were thinking along similar lines. When Ms. Brennemann's husband took a job at a nearby university, they decided to be urban pioneers and buy one of the bungalows for sale across the street from Mr. Sevimli. They paid about $140,000 compared with $200,000 for an equivalent property in a more traditional middle-class neighborhood.

"When we let our friends and family know, we came under fire," said Ms. Brennemann, 35, a short blonde with piercing blue eyes. "They said we were being irresponsible to our children, that they'd go to bad schools where German was hardly spoken."

She and her husband, also 35, stuck to their guns and moved in. A few days later the couple saw Mr. Sevimli laying paving stones for his driveway in the pouring rain. Impressed by his industry, the couple walked over and introduced themselves. "He said, 'my name is too complicated for you. You can call me Ali or just the Turk next door,' " Ms. Brennemann recalls. "I thought to myself, 'hey, who is this wise guy?' And then I said to him, 'no, we want to know your real name.' And then we became friends."

Energetic and talkative, Mr. Sevimli and Ms. Brennemann had both grown up in Marxloh and shared a soft spot for their beleaguered community. They quickly became allies against local authorities, who they blamed for not better policing the neighborhood.

The residents' anger increased when a movie set in postwar Germany used the broken-down buildings as a backdrop. "They thought our neighborhood looked bombed out," Ms. Brennemann says.

Together with a dozen other families, Mr. Sevimli and Ms. Brennemann set up a "citizens' initiative," a common form of local organization in Germany, to get the houses torn down. The buildings blighted the street and attracted rats, prostitutes and drug users. The idea was Ms. Brennemann's, who, like many of Mr. Sevimli's German neighbors, was more familiar with how to get things done. Mr. Sevimli was born in Germany but had an immigrant's aversion to politics. His Turkish friends also warned him off the venture, saying he shouldn't get mixed up in such matters. Mr. Sevimli, however, concluded it was the only way to get things done.

"My friends all said, 'Oh, be careful, why not start a club instead,' " Mr. Sevimli said. "I said, no, a club isn't political and this is political. They were scared of politics."

Their first big test came when local authorities balked at razing the derelict houses. They said the buildings were under historical preservation and couldn't be torn down unless the residents had a better plan for the property.

The residents hit on the idea of a rose garden, inspired by the Gülhane Park, the rose garden in Istanbul's Topkapi palace. They drew up detailed plans and the authorities agreed. Last year, the buildings were torn down and this year the plan won first prize in a regional urban-renewal competition.

The families were aided by some subtle government help. To help encourage locals to be more active in the community, Duisburg in 1993 set up its first "Development Society," a quasi-private company that raises money and channels it into the community. When the Sevimlis and Brennemanns ran into difficulty with their project, they turned to the development society and its local representative, Leila Ozmal. "They just needed a few nudges here and there," Ms. Ozmal said.

The Sevimlis and Brennemanns returned the favor when Duisburg faced a potential crisis: building in Marxloh what would be Germany's biggest mosque, designed to accommodate 2,000 worshipers. A mainstream Muslim group wanted to build an authentic-looking place of worship -- with a dome and minarets -- rather than using a converted warehouse or empty factory. The backlash began immediately. The local press carried articles about the likely traffic jams. A petition was started. Marxlohers remembered the dispute over the muezzin's call and braced themselves.

Ms. Ozmal, who was an adviser to the mosque project, defused the tension by proposing that a cultural center be built next door using a variety of public funds, thus implicitly blessing the project. Ms. Ozmal then set up an advisory council including representatives from churches, political parties, schools and the neighborhood -- including the Sevimli and Brennemann homeowners group.

The broad community involvement helped quell opposition. Ms. Brennemann gave interviews saying she looked forward to having a national landmark near her home. She and Mr. Sevimli often appeared together, Turk and German, man and woman, united for Marxloh's new mosque. "It was a nice image," said Ms. Brennemann. "And it was true too."

Muslim Skepticism

Some of the biggest skeptics actually came from Mr. Sevimli's own orthodox religious group, Milli Gorus. His father had been a pillar in the local chapter. Milli Gorus officials say they're happy about the new mosque but they bristle at the involvement of non-Muslims. "None of the other Muslim groups are involved. But the churches are involved," said Ucler Koksal, the 52-year-old head of Milli Gorus's Duisburg chapter. "And the politicians are involved. What is that all about? Churches involved in a mosque project?"

Milli Gorus was founded by immigrants eager to practice the sort of Islam largely banned by Turkey's rigorously secular state. Supporters say it is simply a conservative form of the religion. It preaches that women should wear headscarves, for example. Critics, however, say its form of Islam breeds radicalism. Since its founding in the 1990s, the group has been under official observation by German domestic intelligence.

Mr. Sevimli shares some of Mr. Koksal's concerns. He worries that politicians are making use of the new mosque and his neighborhood group to score points. But he also believes times are changing and that groups like Milli Gorus might not be the best way for Muslims to be organized. He is part of a new generation of Milli Gorus members who are uncomfortable with the group's reputation.

"If I'm just active in Milli Gorus then I'm one-sided," says Mr. Sevimli. "But I don't want to be pigeonholed."

'The Mosque is Complicated'

He still goes to the Milli Gorus cultural center but no longer avails himself of all its services. In fact, he has organized groups that are challenging it. He set up a nonprofit to offer kids professional after-school tutoring. In the past, Mr. Sevimli's father took local children to the mosque where they received help from volunteers. Mr. Sevimli figures that professional teachers wouldn't want to teach in an organization as controversial as Milli Gorus, which is offering few such services these days.

Mr. Sevimli's wife liked the non-religious feeling of his after-school classes so much that she set up a women's group to meet in the same place instead of at the Milli Gorus mosque. "You know, the mosque is complicated sometimes," Mr. Sevimli says. "Women can't always mix there so freely and so on. They just like it better outside."

The influence of the German government isn't the result of a coordinated strategy and has developed haphazardly over time. But the unique mix seems to work, at least here in Marxloh. For 15 years, the state has been openly critical of Milli Gorus, which regularly features in annual state and federal government reports on radicalism in Germany. Other European countries and the U.S. monitor extremism but rarely publicize it. This stick is complemented by a carrot -- Germany's tight network of grass-roots organizations, such as that of Mr. Sevimli and Ms. Brennemann -- which tries to draw people into the mainstream.

The strength of Marxloh's new civic groups has been put to the test over the past year. In July, neo-Nazis tried to march past the construction site of the new mosque. Ms. Brennemann led the opposition and got the protest moved. "These people were trying to destroy our community and actually hurt people like Medet," said Ms. Brennemann. "I couldn't allow them into our neighborhood."

Then in August, the national German television station ZDF aired a program implying that Germans had to learn Turkish in order to function in Marxloh, so isolated was the town from mainstream society -- a nonsensical claim to anyone who has spent time there.

Always the activist, Mr. Sevimli suggested travel to the station's headquarters to protest. Then he learned another trick from Ms. Brennemann. In October, she found a local lawyer who took on the case pro bono and filed suit against the station. In November, the station promised to run a new report on Marxloh. "I forgot that Germans are so litigious," Mr. Sevimli said. "But I like it."