Who determines what a university teacher has to think and write? Normally it is his free decision – if it is still true that there is something called scientific independence. For the Islamic scholar Muhammad Sven Kalisch, however, this fundamental freedom, should be curtailed, according to the Sharia associations which have joined together into the Coordinating Council of Muslims (KRM). Kalisch directs the Center for Religious Studies at the University of Munster, where – inter alia – teachers for Islamic religion are supposed to be educated in the near future. These Islamic religion teachers would be the first who have a recognized academic qualification for their task. This professorship, the first German Institute of Islamic Theology, was set up for Muhammad Sven Kalisch in 2004. Kalisch, who became Doctor of Laws with his work on “common sense and flexibility in the Islamic law methodology”, got his state doctorate as an Islamic scholar in 2002. Moreover he received an official Islamic teaching permit, the so called Idschasa, from Mehdi Razvi.
Not with this teacher, the KRM has now announced. The KRM is like an umbrella organization, a self-appointed religious political alliance with unknown credentials. It announced its withdrawal from any participation in the advisory board of the Center for Religious Studies. Only Mohammad-Djavad Mohagheghi, an Islamic scholar from Hamburg, remained. Hundreds of thousands of secular Muslims – in the sense that they stand for a separation of state and religion – are not represented in this board. And besides that there is nothing to report on intellectually interesting contributions of the KRM on the advisory board. Only Kalisch’s conviction is now on every-one’s lips: According to the KRM there is, concerning the (scientific) work of the Munster professor, a “considerable discrepancy between the principles of Islamic teachings” and his “published positions.”
Kalisch doubts, in the view of the KRM leader Kisilkaya, almost everything what a Muslim believes. The Islamic scholar has in some of his works argued that there is no scientifically valid evidence for the historical existence of the Prophet Mohammed. Kalisch is not the first nor the only skeptic in Orient science, but above all, he has not forced his students to follow his opinion or adjust their faith after his theories. But Kalisch expects his students to reflect on his thesis, because they are not at the University for blind obedience, but to learn thinking, critical reflection and the defense of their position with arguments, and not to repeat what they hear from the KRM.
This is too much for the Orthodox Sharia associations. And although they would otherwise emphasize utmost the importance of the differences between the religions, such as that Islam has no clergy, they claim such a role now. The KRM requires now to take influence on the teaching as well as on the appointment of professors. And apparently, they have only one idea for the future of Islamic religious education: Kalisch should not deny what they consider is unquestionable; they expect the de facto transformation of the orthodox Quranic schools in the state school system.
For more than a year, there are indications that the KRM functionaries agitate in mosques communities against Kalisch and the state teacher education. The high-circulation Turkish newspaper “Zaman”, mouthpiece of the controversial “Gülen Movement”, continues for weeks now in its Europe-edition (”Eurozaman”) a witch hunt against Kalisch and demands for the Sharia Associations in Germany that they have to follow in. The KRM obeyed with the withdrawal and the boycott call. A dangerous development, especially since the science minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Andreas Pinkwart, announced in several newspapers, that before he is going to establish a second professorship in Munster, he will seek the vote of the Islamic associations – namely the KRM – for the candidates nomination.
This is an impressive example for anticipatory obedience. This behavior does not only make the autonomy of the university look ridiculous, but creates a precedent: It raises a political alliance, the KRM, to the rank of a recognized religious community, without even having examined it. Ali Kisilkaya was very happy about the minister’s announcement. In the magazine “Spiegel” he said, “the Muslims have now de facto the same rights as the established churches.” A heated confrontation about this matter was taking place in the Noth Rhine Westphalia Parliament last week. Minister Pinkwart rowed back somewhat, remained nevertheless contradictory in his statements, especially to Muhammad Sven Kalisch, who may do research, but should keep away from students.
No one knows exactly who the KRM represents. Members are, in addition to the DITIB, a organization controlled by the Turkish Ministry of religion, the Islamic Association with its strong arm “Milli Görüs”, a anti-integration and anti-secular group, as well as the Islamic cultural centers, whose constitutional loyalty was bitter doubted recently, and the Central Council of Muslims, who has written in his Charter that the human rights have to be considered under Sharia reservation. The KRM presents itself as a nebulous representative of “the Muslims” and has not yet come up with numbers of how many Muslims are organized within it. “Muslims do not register”, the officials of the KRM stressed. According to estimates of the Islamic Conference the KRM represents at maximum fifteen percent of the Muslims in Germany. Why then is given so much political influence on religious matters precisely to this association?
The KRM has called for a boycott of the teacher education. What’s about the University of Munster? The University fears for the future employments of its students, says a spokesman. Who should hire them, should they continue to be taught by professor Kalisch? Easy answer: the school authorities. They should have no problems with the teaching of Kalisch, but they do have problems with the clandestine ideology of the KRM already.
The famous Orientalist Tilman Nagel, who has currently submitted a critical biography of Muhammad, does not agree with Kalisch’s theories. Nevertheless he is defending Kalisch. Future teachers of Islam in German schools should know the scientific debate. Nagel draws comparisons to the education of Protestant and Catholic religion teachers: They are obviously familiar with the whole range of religious thinking, critical issues included. Those who refuse these fundamentals to future Islam teachers want to provoke a second class education. Nagel is convinced that the Sharia associations’ withdrawal from the Advisory Board of the University of Munster was a fatal sign of intellectual inertia and harms the reputation of Islam.
With other scientists, he has signed the call for solidarity with Kalisch initiated by the Marburger Islamic scholar Ursula Spuler-Stegemann. The solidarity call also signed renowned Islamic scholars such as Nasr Abu Zayd of Humanities University of Utrecht, Lloyd Rigeon (Glasgow University) and Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Saarbruecken), the religion historian Rainer Flasche (Marburg), the sociologist Brigitte Hasenjuergen (Catholic University NRW) and Authors and representatives of secular Muslims like Ezhar Cezairli and Kalisch’s teacher, Imam Mehdi Razvi. In addition, students, dissidents, lawyers, priests, politicians, teachers, entrepreneurs have signed. The signatories want to express the importance of freedom of science for the creation of a factual self-critical reflection, which is the basis of our European culture. And they want to defend “the educational and methodological conditions for a future education of Islamic religion” which Kalisch has created.
Kalisch polarizes, and that could encourage secular Muslims to stand against the vociferous, conservative representatives of the Islamic Sharia who are lacking arguments. If this comes true there would be more gained than lost.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
