The state is faced with a dilemma when it comes to obtaining permission to teach in Islamic classes and Islamic theology: unlike the Christian churches, it does not have a recognized religious community at its disposal that would grant this permission.
Therefore, various auxiliary constructs are launched, which mostly result in the fact that not religious and theological authorities, but association officials decide which teachers and textbooks are selected.
This raises the question of why the detour is taken via a foreign body, which state church law provides for precisely for theological and scientific reasons.
Thomas Thiel
Editor in the features section.
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The state of Baden-Württemberg created such a lopsided construct with the Sunni Council founded in 2020. This council immediately used its competence to refuse permission to teach to several Islamic theologians, who were considered to be moderate, on the grounds that they lacked theological or pedagogical competence. You have to know that Islamic theology and religious education have only existed at German universities for a few years. The lecturers were accused of not owning something that they could not have, and that by a body that had no theological and scientific competence of its own.
After the case had made waves nationwide, the state government reassured the numerous critics by pointing out that the disputed decisions would be passed on to external experts. If you look at this arbitration commission, however, it only gets more curious. Bülent Uçar, head of the first Islamic college in Germany to train religious teachers and imams, has a doctorate in Islamic studies, not in theology or religious education. Tarek Badawia has a doctoral thesis in education without a religious focus. Oman Isfen is a trained lawyer. According to the criteria that the Sunni Council applied in its decisions, Badawia and Uçar, who are now teaching theology, would have to be withdrawn from teaching themselves.
It looks little better in North Rhine-Westphalia, where Turkish President Erdogan has been allowed to rule in German classrooms again since May via the Ditib mosque association - with the blessing of the black and yellow government under Prime Minister Laschet. Erdogan's Islamist sympathies, for example for the anti-Semitic Muslim Brotherhood, are likely to be known to him. In Hamburg, the local Islamic Center participates in Islamic classes, the head of which, according to the Protection of the Constitution, is the direct representative of the Iranian revolutionary leader Chamenei in Germany, the religiously based regime that has thousands of critics executed, whipped or stoned women for minor reasons and officially homosexuals at construction cranes can hang up.In view of these circumstances, there is no reasonable reason why the teaching permit is not placed directly in the hands of the universities.