BERLIN – Ten years after it first kicked off in Berlin, Germany’s conference on Islam opens on Tuesday, September 27, amid hopes of building a platform for better understanding between Muslims and representatives of the Federal Republic.

“We’ve achieved a lot,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, the current host of the Conference, told Deutsch Welle, pointing out that the Conference on Islam has always been an “initiator” and a “guarantee of tangible results.”

The German Conference on Islam (DIK) was first initiated in 2006 by Wolfgang Schäuble, then Germany’s interior minister.

It was intended to be an open, unbiased, goal-oriented dialog to encourage better understanding between Muslims and representatives of the Federal Republic, the states and the local authorities.

“Islam is part of Germany, and it is part of Europe; it is part of our present, and it is part of our future,” said Schäuble, at the opening of the Conference.

Plagued by disputes on German Muslim representation, the conference breathed a new life in 2014 when de Maiziere avoided questions of extremism and security partnership which his predecessor Hans-Peter Friedrich focused on.

Instead, he turned to practical questions relating to everyday life, setting up a Muslim social welfare organization as well as Islamic pastoral care in the military, in hospitals and in prisons.

However, the federal chairman of the Kurdish community in Germany, Ali Ertan Toprak, believes that the Conference has failed.

Instead of rapprochement, Toprak says, what we see is that “despite the Conference on Islam, estrangement is significantly greater, particularly over the questions of a common value system and loyalty to the German state.”

Aiman Mazyek, the secretary-general of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, said that, for him, the most important issue is for Islam to be given “institutional equality in Germany with other religions.”

Gökay Sofuoglu, the federal chairman of the Turkish Community in Germany, considers it a success that, although it has faced some difficult tests over the past 10 years, the dialog has never collapsed.

He told DW that “it’s more helpful to keep on talking to each other than to conduct this whole exchange via the media.”

Sofuoglu added that the government could really profit from the Conference to solve refugees problems.

“This would be a great opportunity to involve migrant organizations more in shaping the response to the refugee issue,” he said.