The Study of Religion and the Training of Muslim Clergy in Europe: Academic and Religious Freedom in the 21st Century »

Willem B. Drees is professor of philosophy of religion and ethics and also dean of the faculty of religious studies at Leiden University. Peter Sjoerd van Koningsveld is professor of the history of Islam in Western Europe at Leiden University.

Religious scholarship can be offensive to believers, as conflicts from the time of Galileo and Spinoza to the recent critique of Danish religious scholars in the wake of the infamous Muhammad cartoons have shown. Studies of this type of scholarship have been appropriated by believers as a means of reinventing their own identities—as the training of twentieth-century Muslim clergy demonstrates. This volume offers a unique collection of training materials from European Muslim clergy since the 1940s—including Third Reich debriefing reports on their imam training program, surveillance files on Muslim activists, and information on Bosnian clergy and their training centers—as well as an exploration of religion and academic freedom in general, accompanied by appendices in both Arabic and English.

Preface and acknowledgements

Willem B. Drees and Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld

Academic and Religious Freedom: An Introduction

Part One - Academic Freedom and the Study of Religion

1. Ernan McMullin

Academic Freedom and Competing Authorities: Historical Reflections

2. Reinier Munk

Freedom of Thought and the Authority of Tradition in Modern Jewish Philosophy: The Cases of Spinoza and Mendelssohn

3. Willem B. Drees

Academic Freedom and the Symbolic Significance of Evolution

4. Umar Ryad

The Dismissal of A.J. Wensinck from the Royal Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo

5. Henk Jan de Jonge

The Historical Method of Biblical Interpretation: Its Nature, Use, Origin and Limitations

6. Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd

Trial of Thought: Modern Inquisition in Egypt

Appendix: My Testimony on the Case of Abu Zayd, by Mona Zulficara

7. Muhammad Machasin

Academic Freedom in Islamic Studies and the Surveillance by Muslim Activists in Indonesia

8. Albert de Jong

Historians of Religion as Agents of Religious Change

9. Beshara Doumani

A Passing Storm or a Structural Shift? Challenges to Academic Freedom in the United States after September 11

10. Tim Jensen

In the Wake of the Cartoon Crisis: Freedom of Expression of Academics in Denmark

Part Two - The Academic Training of Muslim Clergy in Europe

11. Mustafa Ceric

History of theInstitutionalized Training of Imams in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Appendix 1: The waqfiyyah (constitution of the Ghazi Husrez-bey Madrasa (1753)

Appendix 2: A Draft Proposal for the Ghazi Husrev-bey University

12. Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld

The Training of Imams by the Third Reich

Appendix: Extract of a document from the Bundesarchiv

13. Mohammed M. Ghaly

The Academic Training of Imams: Recent Discussions and Initiatives in the Netherlands

14. Firdaous Oueslati

Non-Formal Islamic Higher Education in the Netherlands: With Some Comparative Notes on France and the United Kingdom

15. Ednan Aslan

Islamic Religious Pedagogy at the University of Vienna

Appendix: Overview of the Study Modules

16. Birgitte Schepelern Johansen

Legitimizing Islamic Theology and European Universities

17. Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini

The Training Programme of Imams in Italy

Index

Contributors.