Liberal Theology Professor Faces Off
Against Germany’s Conservative Muslims
By PAUL HOCKENOS
BERLIN
WHILE MOUHANAD Khor- chide, a soft-spoken, 41- year-old theology professor, knew his liberal vision of Islam
might ruffle the feathers of the established Islamic community in
Germany, he didn’t think it would
happen so quickly—or with such
tumult. After just two years in his
post as director of the University of
Münster’s Center for Islamic Theology, he finds himself in the middle
of a media and religious firestorm.
Mr. Khorchide’s new book, Islam
Ist Barmherzigkeit (Islam Is Merciful), has provoked an emotional
discussion within Germany’s four-million-strong Muslim community. It raises provocative questions
about the nature of God, the inclusiveness of Islam itself, and the role
of an Islamic elite in Western countries. Almost overnight, the debate
has lifted Mr. Khorchide from anonymity to status as a familiar figure
in the news media.
A low-key intellectual with a
trim goatee, Mr. Khorchide has
taken a winding journey him from
his birthplace in a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, by way of Saudi
Arabia and Austria, to the theology department in the progressive
college town of Münster, in central Germany. His diverse life experiences between the West and
the Arab world made him a logical
candidate to lead the religion center, part of Germany’s $26-million
Islamic-education program, begun
in 2011 at five top universities.
The center he directs was designed, among other objectives, to
stoke debate about a modern, European Islam. This Mr. Khorchide’s
book has done in a hurry, even if the
discussion’s bellicose tenor isn’t exactly what the program’s architects
envisioned.
The self-appointed custodians
of Germany’s Islamic flock, groups
with strong ties to Turkey and the
Arab world—and well-known for
their staunch conservatism—have
blasted the book on the Internet
and in Turkish newspapers, calling
it unbefitting of a Muslim and questioning Mr. Khorchide’s credentials
as an instructor.
In the book, the theology professor sketches the contours of a compassionate, Enlightenment-based
Islam that stands in stark contrast
to the rigid theology of obedience
and angst that is current in much
of the Islamic world today.
Mr. Khorchide argues passionately that the Koran is a letter of
love from God to mankind. He posits the relationship of God to man
as one of friendship and love, like
that between mother and child, not
as between master and slave. “God
is not a dictator,” argues Mr. Khorchide. One particular notion in the
book that raises hackles: Potentially
everyone is a Muslim, he says, even
if that person doesn’t believe in God
but acts in a moral way.
Mr. Khorchide’s reading of the
Koran isn’t entirely maverick. It
riffs off the theses of reform-mind-
ed Islamic thinkers like Nasr Ha-
mid Abu Zaid, in Egypt, and the
Franco-Algerian Mohammed Ar-
koun. The tolerant Islam that Mr.
Khorchide describes is more like
that practiced in his birthplace,
Lebanon, he tells The Chronicle,
than the repressive, controlling Is-
lam of Saudi Arabia, where he grew
up. Observers note that Mr. Khor-
chide’s gracious deity has much in
common with the Christian god
of Protestantism, also a product of
centuries of debate and transfor-
mation.
chide’s idea about the possibility of
even nonbelievers’ being Muslims
especially piqued critics. In the lively Internet discussion that followed,
others called him a liar, a charlatan,
even an enemy of Islam.
While Mr. Khorchide criticized
the “inquisitionlike” tone of some
“For these people,
It’s not about
theology in
the first place
anyway, but
politics and power.”
WAYWARD INTERPRETATION?
In the Turkish press, Ramazan
Ucar, the alliance’s president, has
called Mr. Khorchide’s theses “not
befitting of a Muslim” and urged
him to express “remorse” for his
wayward interpretation of Islam.
Mr. Ucar reminded readers that
Mr. Khorchide is responsible for
the training of Islamic-religion
teachers, another key objective of
the state-financed effort. Mr. Khor-
of the broadsides, he responded
at length on the Center for Islam-
ic Theology’s Web page. In talk-
ing about potential Muslims, he
wrote, he meant people who had
not yet heard of God or have re-
jected God because of a distorted
understanding of God. “I’ve never
said that belief in God is obsolete,”
he wrote.
EPA/BERND THISSEN /LANDOv
“God is not a dictator,” says Mouhanad Khorchide, a theologian who directs the Center for Islamic Theology at the U. of Münster.
His recent book, Islam Is Merciful, has prompted a backlash among Germany’s Muslim establishment.
gian and not a political actor, so I’m
simply not playing this game.”
Like it or not, Mr. Khorchide is
indeed part of the game. The tiff
reveals what is at stake as the new
theology institutes in Germany
come into their own. His special-
ization is Islamic pedagogy, and
all of the institutes have courses on
how to teach religion in schools to
young Muslims. The mosques and
the Islamic associations dominate
religious instruction now. When the
first graduates emerge from the in-
stitutes, in two years’ time, that will
change, severely sapping the power
of the old-school establishment.
In that context, there are more
than a few moderate Muslims who
speculate that Mr. Khorchide’s provocative approach may backfire,
even harming the reputation and
clout of the institutes among ordinary Muslims in Germany.
“Our ideas will only have a
chance among Muslims here when
we first establish a certain degree of authority and acceptance
in these communities,” says Bül-ent Ucar, director of the Islamic-theology faculty at the University
of Osnabrück, which is near Münster and cooperates closely with the
theological institute there. He noted that Mr. Khorchide’s arguments
haven’t gone over well with many of
his students.
“At this early stage,” says Mr.
Ucar, “ideas like those of Dr. Khor-
chide’s won’t help us make inroads
into these traditionally-minded
communities, but rather will alien-
ate lay Muslims who are already
suspicious of the initiative as some-
thing designed to enable the state
to control Islam in Germany. We
have to proceed cautiously, step by
step, in order not to lose them.”
Mr. Khorchide responds that his
theses are not radical at all—it is
simply that Muslims in Germany
have been shielded from their likes
for decades, and so the ideas sound
foreign, even extreme. Getting ideas
like his into the public discourse, he
says, is a first step in introducing
Germany’s Muslims to the plural-
ity of thought in Islam.
Neither Mr. Khorchide nor Mr.
Ucar believes that the current debate is at the level envisioned by the
founders of the German program. It
is still too early, they say, to expect
an authentic theological discourse
among scholars, which is one of
their goals. The institutes are still
in their infancy, still looking for faculty and settling on a curriculum.
There are 400 students in the bachelor’s and master’s programs of the
five institutes.
But Cornelia Schu, of the Mercator Foundation, which backs the
project, is encouraged—not offended—by the public back-and-forth of
the Khorchide fracas. “The fact that
there’s a public debate at all between
an intellectual strata of Islam based
at German universities and the for-eign-funded associations is entirely
positive,” she says. “It’s something
that couldn’t have existed just a couple of years ago.”
