February 10, 2016
In an interview with Qantara.de, Ahmad Milad Karimi, professor for kalam in the Faculty for Islamic Studies at Münster University, offered a survey of the state of Islamic thought and theology in Germany. Karimi, who published a German translation of the Quran in 2009 that sought to capture the book’s poetic spirit and make it accessible to a German-speaking public, identified the need to “break through the foreignness of the Koran and the Islamic tradition” as the most important objective facing Muslim intellectuals in Western Europe. According to him, “[t]he greatest challenge is that Islam is not currently communicated well enough.” In this respect, the task of Muslim scholars must not primarily be to distance themselves and their religion from atrocities committed in its name; what is needed instead is a bold vision of the religion and the richness of its tradition: “We gain nothing by continuing to distance ourselves. We can only gain if we succeed in formulating debates ourselves, launching discourse and practising responsibility.”
