With Germany lacking schools of Islamic theology, Muslim congregations have long imported religious leaders. As Germany considers steps to create more homegrown imams, countries like Turkey -- which sends state-employed imams to Europe to serve large segments of the Turkish diaspora -- are filling the gap.

It was impossible to tell that the men who gathered in a German language class one frigid winter morning in Ankara, Turkey were Islamic religious leaders. They wore suits, or plaid button-up shirts, and could have easily passed for office workers or graduate students as they worked over phrases of German in their course book.

"Birgit Deichmann still searches," one man in a grey suit read aloud. He stroked his black mustache with a look of befuddlement. "What is a Deichmann?" he asked the instructor. Deichmann, she explained, was just a German last name, the name of the person still searching.

His question indicated the degree of culture shock that lay ahead. These men, who hail mostly from the villages and cities of Anatolia, would in the next several months depart for Germany to serve four years as imams, leaders of Muslim congregations in mosques throughout the country. From their classroom at the Goethe Institute in Ankara, where through the windows the students could behold the white and grey minarets of Ankara's Kocatepe Mosque soaring to such heights that the towers seemed to hang from the clear blue heavens, German society seemed like a distant notion. Most of the imams, in fact, had never visited Germany, much less held a conversation with anyone with a last name like Deichmann.