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So, welcome everybody to this session, to this interesting session.

I would like to briefly introduce the presenter, Professor Muhannad Koshide.

Welcome also, you have just arrived today.

Muhannad Koshide studied Islamic theology in Lebanon and sociology in Vienna,

where he also took his PhD in 2008.

His dissertation was a very interesting empirical study on the attitudes of Islamic religious education teachers in Austria.

For several years, he himself taught Islamic religious education at Austrian schools

and was involved in teacher training for Islamic religious education also.

Since 2010, he has been professor of Islamic religious education at the University of Münster,

which entertains one of the meanwhile five centers of Islamic theology at German universities.

Professor Koshide has published a number of important books, among them in English,

Islam is Mercy, Essential Features of a Modern Religion, published in 2014,

and up to now only in German, but hopefully also coming up in English,

God Believes in Humans with Islam Towards a New Humanism.

You will see from these titles that he is a very progressive Islamic theologian

and hopefully contributing to the further development of Islam in Germany.

His paper today will be on the topic Islamic Contributions to the Common Good of Public Education.

We are very glad you are here and the floor is yours.

Thank you Manfred. I already told Manfred I will need 40 minutes, not 30 minutes.

Islamic Contributions to the Common Goods of Public Education.

In my talk to the topic, the rule of Islamic – of Islam in public education,

I would like to focus in greater detail on some observations regarding the important rule

of Islamic religion – religious education in public schools in Germany.

The arrival of Muslims in Germany following the job migration in the 60s and 70s

of the past century has changed the face of Germany.

In fact, Germany turned soon into more than one way increasingly pluralistic society.

This fact became particularly visible in the 80s when for the first time

due to the law of family reunification from 1981, Muslim schoolgirls and boys entered

the public schools in Germany.

It needs to be remarked that the schoolgirls and schoolboys were in the beginning

not identified as Muslims.

In the 80s, these people were labeled as children of foreign workers, as foreigners,

as migrants, even as Germans with migration background.

And little later, the same individuals, now adults with or without own families,

were still stigmatized as members of the second and third generation of migrants.

Only after the terrorist attacks of 9-11, the label Muslim emerges in the public debate.

But this label obviously points to the same stigmatized group for formerly known

as foreign workers and their progeny.

This marks an important shift which almost unnoticeable turned foreigners into Muslims.

The often typical problems of social integration were now explained by the otherness

of newcomers due to religious convictions.

Almost all problems regarding the social sphere were explained by means of Islam.

Today we hear often arguments as they speak hardly or any German at all precisely

because they are Muslims or they have difficulties to gain higher ranks in the public education system

or at work precisely because they are Muslims.

Altogether, the category of being Muslim emerges as one of the most important interpretive

paradigms for social deficits of the migrant community, constructing an otherness

grounded in religious otherness which ultimately come into conflict with German standards.

It's thus postulated that Islam, a construct that is not far defined,