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This article looks at the emergence of Muslims as a category of knowledge in surveys and opinion polls that have been conducted as a reaction to the rising demand for data about Muslim populations in Western Europe within the last ten years. The most prevalent feature of the conceptualization of Muslims is that they are inherently immigrants, or of immigrant descent, who are living within a certain nation state. This creates a continuous statistical invisibility of certain Muslims, for instance those without immigration backgrounds, as well as Muslims with national backgrounds other than Muslim majority countries. Further, this identification of the Muslim as immigrant, even if unintended, contributes to upholding a subtle exclusion of Muslims from the national community as always foreign and always potentially in need of integration.

This article focuses on the ways in which Muslims actively participate in media debates about Islam and Muslims in Germany, and how they challenge or reinforce representations of themselves. It questions the narrative of powerlessness versus dominant actors in media and politics. Even though they were already perceived as part of a Muslim community, several prominent individuals in the German cultural and political sphere took an explicit position as Muslims-some insisting on their distance to religion. This paper aims at describing the various reasons and reflections accompanying this decision and argues that media images of Muslims steered individuals, who are not members of Islamic organizations let alone representatives of them, to become active or change their self-representation and act as Muslims. By demanding recognition as active members of German society, prominent Muslim individuals are creating new images of Muslims beyond an imaginary that is reducing them to their (alleged) religiosity and positioning them outside German national identity. IntroductionI'm Islamic, don't panic.With this slogan on her t-shirt, the Berlin-based DJ İpek İpekçioğlu was photographed for a music magazine in the aftermath of 9/11. A number of highly acknowledged 'assimilated' intellectuals, who had never previously presented

While in current debates on Islam in Germany recognition is often reduced to incorporation of Islamic organisations under public law, this article demonstrates that German law provides a variety of legal instruments that allow for public involvement of religious communities incorporated under private law. Despite the formal separation of state institutions and religious communities, German law encourages collaboration and visibility of religion in public space. This corresponds with the German constitutional framework that locates religion not (only) in the private, but also in the public sphere. Presenting insights from legal and Islamic studies, this article portrays recent legal measures such as new legislation and treaties concluded by German federal states (Bundesländer) and Islamic organisations that enable Muslim religious practice in public space, like prison chaplaincy and burial according to Islamic rites.

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