Music

Music

Music

Music

Music

Very dear ladies and gentlemen, dear guests,

It is not up to us as a university to add another argument to the richly nebulous debate

whether Islam belongs to Germany or not, or whether Muslims no longer belong to Germany.

However, we are concerned about the intercultural and inter-religious misunderstandings

which we witness in the current struggle for the Mohammed video or the circumcision.

As an academic institution, it is our job to bring reflected clarifications and reasonable arguments

into this heated discussion.

We, the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Nuremberg, have long since made the fundamental decision

that Islam should be an object of academic and scientific consideration

and a need for academic reflection,

both in the internal and external view of the Islamic scientific and theological discourse.

At the FAU, traditionally, there is a strong theological and religious research context

which has historically been based on the competences and traditions of the oriental theology.

This is to be followed, in addition to the evangelical theology and the church law,

until the founding of the FAU in 1743.

All three institutions, the oriental theology, the evangelical theology and the church law,

have continued to this day.

So, early on, in Erlangen, the idea of translating the Quran into German,

in the name of the outstanding orientalist Friedrich Rückert, who lived from 1788 to 1866,

was born, in the historical order, today with a modern translation of the Quran by Mr. Bob Zien.

The university board decided that Islam should also be part of its practice,

its religious expression forms belong to the university.

This was decided by the university board ten years ago, when in 2003

it created the first professor of Islamic religion in Germany.

This happened, by the way, long before the science council in January 2010

came to a similar result.

Let me therefore show you some of the current stations of Islamic research at the FAU.

The Interdisciplinary Center for Islamic Religion, the ICER, was founded in 2002.

Here, the scientific exchange takes place around the research and development

of an Islamic religious didactics and the education of Islamic religious teachers.

Secondly, the Erlangen Center for Islam and Law in Germany and in Europe,

in Europe in essence, the ICER, founded in 2008, a unique European institution

based on the Bavarian Innovation Fund, to the permanent interdisciplinary research

and teaching on the connections and interactions between European law

and Muslim presence and self-definition in the European framework.

The library built and carried out at the FAU for Islam in Europe

and the internationally closely connected research here,

is what researchers from all over the world are looking at.

Thirdly, the Central Institute for Anthropology of Religions, the ZDR, was founded in 2011.

With this Central Institute, a unique research institution was created in Germany.

The ZDR has the task of promoting cooperation between the oriental sciences

with theology and other Islamic research associations

and thus networking all existing Islam-based initiatives at the FAU

and thus

to