Interreligious Encounter as a Self-Reflexive-Spiritual Experience: Open Mosque Day as Religious Education Practice

Compared to an exchange, a dispute or a discussion, the encounter has some important characteristics which make it a particularly suitable medium of understanding. Its important ethical prerequisite is the mutual dependence of the two partners on each other. From this dependence arises an attitude of equality. On this basis of mutual recognition and encounter at eye level, the Open Mosque Day (TOM) takes place regularly in many mosques in Germany. As a generation of diversity, the TOM now also enables students to meet in an extracurricular place where they can encounter the other, the previously foreign. The purpose of such an encounter cannot be mutual persuasion, but rather the reflection of one’s own ethical attitude in dealing with difference and the joint highlighting of commonalities.