Joachim Wagner’s book, "Judges Without Law: Islamic Parallel Justice Endangers Our Constitutional State" fueled a public debate in Germany in 2011 regarding the so-called “parallel justice” run by “Sharia courts”. The debate has portrayed the issue as one in which Muslims are seeking to create, in contradiction to the German legal system, a parallel legal justice system based on Sharia which will undermine the rule of law and weaken the protection of the rights of vulnerable people, particularly women. While “Sharia courts” came up in the public debate and media coverage, there was an absence of concrete empirical data and case materials encompassing facts on the ground and what is actually happening inside the Muslim community. My fieldwork in Germany suggests that although some Imams may give informal religious advice which may not be in accordance with the default norms of German law, Imams and religious leaders comprise only one actor among a variety of other actors involved in a wide and very complex system of mediation and arbitration in which religion plays only a limited role. Based on my fieldwork, I will examine how local actors mediate and negotiate a settlement of civil (or criminal) litigation in very complex processes within a community that has a significant diversity in terms of actors, knowledge, opinion, power, status, and the relation with the local government. This will be based partially on more than one hundred interviews with local Imams, community leaders, clans’ leaders, civil society activists and “participants” as well as more than two thousands documents I have gathered during my fieldwork.