Reformer Khorchide front runner for key German Islam post
Muenster, Germany (dpa) - A reform-minded academic, Mouhanad Khorchide, has topped a shortlist to take on Germany′s sole Islamic theology professorship, at the University of Muenster, a state education official said Monday.
Khorchide, 38, born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents, is currently a lecturer on education in the Viennese capital, Austria. He triggered controversy among Muslims in 2007 with his doctoral thesis.
The University of Muenster trains schoolteachers to give Islam classes. It is Germany′s sole university to currently have a professorship that is reserved to a Muslim.
The state of North Rhine Westphalia is currently speaking with mosque associations in the state to see if Khorchide, who is also a part-time imam, would be acceptable to the Muslim community, a spokesman in Dusseldorf said. They have a right to be consulted.
The new appointee is to effectively replace the university′s first Islamic professor, Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a German-born convert.
Muslim associations said they had no confidence in Kalisch after he wrote that there is no independent evidence that the Prophet Mohammed existed in the historical past as a single person. The university was obliged to move him to other work.
Kalisch is keeping the title professor of Islam, but many of its functions will be transferred to the new professor of Islamic religious education. Muslim children in the state are able to opt for Muslim studies at public schools to learn about their faith.
A week ago, academic authorities recommended that two to three universities in Germany should go beyond Islamic teacher training and set up full-scale Islamic theology departments.
Newspapers say Khorchide, who studied Islamic theology in Lebanon, has lived in Austria since 1989. His other field is sociology.
He criticized schoolteachers of Islam in Austria in his 2007 thesis, saying too many of them were ill-educated and not committed to democracy, and pressed for better training. dpa jbp ds