Sven Kalisch

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Sven Kalisch (born March 21, 1966 in Hamburg , formerly Muhammad Sven Kalisch ) is a German lawyer and former Islamic theologian who separated from Islam. He held the first chair for the training of Islamic religion teachers in the Federal Republic of Germany. He teaches and researches at the University of Münster .

Education and life

Kalisch was 15 years old when he Protestantism to Islam converted . He counted himself to the Zaiditen (five Shiites) faith and sees himself as a Neoplatonist . In 1997 he did his doctorate under Adalbert Podlech in the Faculty of Law and Economics at the Technical University of Darmstadt ; the title of his doctoral thesis was Reason and Flexibility in Islamic Legal Methodology . He then worked as a freelance lawyer in Hamburg until 2001. In 2002 he completed his habilitation in Islamic Studies at the University of Hamburg with the scripts Fiqh and Usul-al-fiqh in the Zaidiya. The historical development of the Zaidiya as a school of law . Subsequently, the University of Hamburg granted him the license to teach as a private lecturer in Islamic Studies.

Kalisch was a member of the board of trustees of the Muslim Academy in Germany and has also worked for the Islamic Center Hamburg .

From 2004 to 2010 Kalisch was a full professor for the religion of Islam at the Center for Religious Studies (CRS) of the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster. With his appointment, for the first time in the history of North Rhine-Westphalia, prospective teachers for Islamic religious instruction or its substitute subject Islamic Studies were trained at a university in North Rhine-Westphalia, after the Bavarian Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg received such training for the first time in 2003 initiated in Germany. The additional course qualifies student teachers for all types of schools. The teacher training course in Münster comprises the Koran , History of Islam , Mohammed , Fiqh and ʿIlm al-kalām . In 2008, the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Science released Kalisch from teacher training because of his controversial theses on the existence of the founder of religion, Mohammed.

Controversy over theological positions

The Coordination Council of Muslims in Germany (KRM) ended its participation in the advisory board of the Center for Religious Studies at the University of Münster in September 2008. The then spokesman for the KRM, Ali Kızılkaya , said that no one could be recommended to study with Kalish because he questions fundamental teachings of Islam, such as the existence of Muhammad and the foundations of the genesis of the Koran. In addition to the existence of Mohammed, Kalisch also doubts the historical existence of Jesus , Moses , Abraham and other prophets of the Islamic, Christian and Jewish traditions.

Regarding his theses, Kalisch announced the publication of a book in 2008 for 2009. Regarding the criticism of the Islamic associations, he stated that he did not consider their ideas of theology to be up-to-date and wanted the course set for Islamic theology in the direction of historical-critical research in Western tradition.

With his theological opinion, Kalisch is considered a representative of so-called radical criticism . He told Focus magazine : “I do not generally represent the theories of the Saarbrücken School of Islamic Science that the Koran is basically a Christian text. However, I welcome the methodical approaches to use archaeological evidence, coins and traditions outside of Islam for research. ”With the term“ Saarbrücken School ”, Kalisch refers to theories by, among others, Karl-Heinz Ohlig , Gerd R. Puin and Christoph Luxenberg be represented; all three taught or teach at Saarland University in Saarbrücken or are associated with the institution. The advocates of this direction consider the Koran to be an originally Christian text that was not preached in Arabic, but is an incorrect translation from Syrian. They also take the position that Mohammed was only invented afterwards in order to provide Islam with a prophetic founder, after an original Christian heresy had developed into a religion of its own. The “Saarbrücken School” is in turn part of the so-called Revisionist School of Islamic Studies .

The fact that Kalisch considered these radical opinions, which also represent a minority opinion within western Islamic studies, to be fundamentally worthy of discussion, caused outrage among conservative Muslims. In connection with the theological debate, his former colleague Lamya Kaddor , who had already resigned her position in March 2008 and left the institute, said: “I believe that Professor Kalisch was initially an appropriate person for this chair.” However, she was after extensive arguments came to the conviction "that he is no longer doing justice to the tasks of the chair". The Islam-critical author Seyran Ateş , the Turkologist Ursula Spuler-Stegemann , the Islamic scholars Tilman Nagel and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd , the General Secretary of the Alevi Congregation in Germany , Ali Ertan Toprak , and others declared their solidarity in a public appeal with potash.

In March 2009, 22 Kalisch students wrote to the rectorate of the University of Münster demanding that it be withdrawn from teacher training so that they would later have a chance to be hired as Islamic religion teachers and recognized by Muslim parents and communities. The students also complained that no alternative was offered to Kalisch's events and that he was the only one with the right to take exams. They announced that they would boycott all events for the training of Islamic teachers and, in a second step, deregister.

Kalisch says he feels threatened. The fact that some conservative Muslims are now leaving out his first name Muhammad and calling him only Sven Kalisch is a barely veiled threat, he told Spiegel . The message is clear. “Some no longer consider me a Muslim.” The apostasy from Islam is, however, a fundamentally death-worthy crime (see apostasy in Islam ). There were no specific threats against him, but because of the indirect allegation that he had fallen out of the faith and the fact that foreign newspapers referred to him as Sven Kalisch instead of Muhammad Kalisch, declaring that he was no longer a Muslim moved his office to a non-public place, he himself placed under police protection.

Legal proceedings and dismissal from the chair

According to a report in the Frankfurter Rundschau from November 30, 2009 and other media, Kalisch is at the center of a "donation scandal". According to the Center for Religious Studies under his direction, 20,000 euros from a donation in the course of the “ December fever” are said to have been illegally collected: “At the end of March last year, it was [the money] on the instructions of a department head of the university to a university account at the WestLB booked, official 'purpose: repayment from project funds' ”, says the Münsterschen Zeitung . However, a former employee, the Islamic religious educator and author Lamya Kaddor , with whom Kalisch had been in a legal dispute for some time, was accused . In 2008, a first trial before the Münster Regional Court ended with a settlement, according to which Kalisch had to undertake not to spread certain allegations. The reason was an email that he sent to numerous addressees around three months after Kaddor left the company. Kaddor has since filed a lawsuit against him under the anti-discrimination law . On October 28, 2011, the trial initiated by the Münster Public Prosecutor's Office against Kaddor was discontinued by the Münster District Court .

On July 20, 2010, Mouhanad Khorchide was appointed Kalisch's successor. At the end of 2013, however, Islamic associations also protested against Khorchide, who had interpreted Islam as the “religion of mercy”, which conservative Muslims understood as an impermissible rapprochement with Christianity, and who, like Kalisch, advocated following the Koran using the means of to approach the historical-critical method scientifically.

Since autumn 2008 a campaign directed against the CRS and its then director took place in Münster, in which a person acting under the name Hamza Ali İdenoğlu was significantly involved. This was the reason for a small request from Rüdiger Sagel, member of the state parliament on March 18, 2010 under number 14/10881, which asks, among other things, what measures the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia has taken to rule out threat scenarios at the state's universities. The answer is dated April 16, 2010 and is number 14/11030.

Turning away from Islam

As the Westfälische Nachrichten in Münster reported on their website on April 21, 2010, Kalisch is no longer a Muslim. He informed the university management that the State Ministry of Science had also been informed. Since the denomination is irrelevant for his professorship, his decision to leave Islam has no consequences from the university's point of view. He also dropped his first name "Muhammad".

In July 2010 the rectorate removed Kalisch from the "Center for Religious Studies". He remains professor in the philology department; his professorship was renamed "Intellectual history in the Middle East in post-antique times".

Publications and articles (selection)

  • Peace from the perspective of Islam. In: Islam im Dialog , Volume 1, No. 4, Winter 2002, pp. 13–28.
  • Islamic business ethics in an Islamic and a non-Islamic environment. In: Hans G. Nutzinger (Ed.): Christian, Jewish and Islamic Business Ethics - About the religious foundations of economic behavior in a secular society. Marburg 2003, pp. 105-129.
  • Usul az-Zaidiya wa-nascharāt al-firaq al-islāmiyya (in Arabic, "The Basics of Zaidiya and the Publications of the Islamic Schools"). In: Al-Masār , Vol. 5, Issue 2, 2004, pp. 27-70.
  • Faith and law from the perspective of the Islamic schools of law. In: Murest, Multireligious Study Group (Hrsg.): Handbook of interreligious dialogue. From a Catholic, Protestant, Sunni and Alevi perspective. Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-00-017959-3
  • Islam and Human Rights: Considerations on the Relationship between Religion and Law. In: Hatem Elliesie (Ed.): Islam und Menschenrechte (Islam and Human Rights /الإسلام وحقوق الإنسان). In: Leipzig Contributions to Orient Research , Volume 26, Contributions to Islamic Law VII, Frankfurt a. M. / New York a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-57848-3 , pp. 49-72.
  • Interview. In: Die Zeit , No. 41/2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "I am a heretic" . Rheinischer Merkur, October 16, 2008
  2. ↑ a b Interview: “A lot doesn't fit together”. By Hartmut Kistenfeger, Focus, September 22, 2008, pp. 70ff.
  3. ^ Muslims quit theology professor . Vatican Radio , September 6, 2008
  4. ↑ a b Mohammed denier fears for his life. Welt online, September 21, 2008
  5. ↑ see also Good Bye Mohammed : A summary of these Koran-critical theories of the "Saarbrücker Schule" is given by Norbert G. Pressburg in his book Good Bye Mohammed : Das neue Bild des Islam , Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 3rd, revised edition 2012., ISBN 978-3-8448-5372-8 . (First edition December 22, 2009, with the secondary title: How Islam really came into being )
  6. ↑ Central Council of Muslims in Germany : Muslims distance themselves from the “Islam” chair in Münster , September 5, 2008
  7. ↑ a b Andrea Brandt: Experts stand behind Islam professor. In: unispiegel , September 22, 2008, p. 38.
  8. ↑ Declaration of solidarity with the teaching and research assignment of Professor Dr. Muhammad Sven Kalisch ( Memento from June 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ Ralf Heimann: Münster: Dispute over Islam professor threatens to escalate. In: Münstersche Zeitung , March 5, 2009.
  10. ↑ Karin Völkner: Islam students want to go ( memento of March 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). In: Ibbenbürener Volkszeitung , March 6, 2009.
  11. ↑ Martin Spiewak , Arnfrid Schenk: Religions are like crutches. In: The time . October 1, 2008, accessed May 27, 2009 (interview).
  12. ↑ a b Hermann Horstkotte: Donation money and black coffers. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , November 30, 2009.
  13. ^ Münstersche Zeitung, December 1, 2009.
  14. ↑ Ralf Heimann: Scientist is said to have embezzled 100,000 euros. In: Münstersche Zeitung , July 31, 2008.
  15. ↑ Karin Völker: University money in the locker is not infidelity. In: Westfälische Nachrichten , October 29, 2011.
  16. ↑ Arnfrid Schenk: Delicate job for a professor In: Die Zeit , May 20, 2010.
  17. ↑ Khorchide will in future train religious teachers in Münster. In: Die Welt , July 20, 2010.
  18. ↑ Muslim associations attack theologians Khorchide . Spiegel Online , December 18, 2013
  19. ↑ Small question 3835. (PDF; 32 kB) In: landtag.nrw.de , March 18, 2010.
  20. ↑ Answer of the state government to minor inquiry 3835 of March 18, 2010
  21. ↑ Kalisch is no longer a Muslim . Westfälische Nachrichten, April 21, 2010
  22. ↑ Melanie Longerich: “Muhammad is no more” . Deutschlandfunk , May 6, 2010; Report.
  23. ^ Uni Münster press release July 13, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Kalisch, Sven
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kalisch, Muhammad Sven
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German scholar of Islam
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg