(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - "We live in Germany, so we have to be able to represent our religion in German,” Aysen Yüsra Yilmaz, who has enrolled in Germany’s first publicly funded university Islamic theology department, connected to Tübingen University, told Christian Science Monitor.
For Yilmaz, the daughter of Turkish immigrants who came to Germany as guest workers, the new course in one of Germany's oldest universities answered the demands of thousands of German Muslims who wanted to have German imams.
The bachelor’s degree program is the first in a series of other programs which would be launched in Osnabrück, Nürnberg and Frankfurt.
The new programs, funded by the government to the tune of €20 million ($25.4 million) for the next five years, are aimed at qualifying a new generation of Islam religious leaders and scholars in German culture.
Playing the role of counselors, community organizers, and youth workers, imams have been forming a bridge between mosque and day-to-day life in Germany.
With most of Germany’s 2,000 imams coming from abroad, mostly Turkey, some critics said the predominance of foreign imams in the education of Germany's Muslims might add difficulties to integrating Muslims into German society.
"Most deal with their home culture, their home language, their homeland,” says Bülent Ucar, a professor of Islamic religious education at the University of Osnabrück, which last year pioneered a crash course for foreign imams on German society and language.
"Imams have good intentions but they can't fulfill their jobs. They can't fulfill the conditions to bring about integration because they don’t speak German,” says Mr. Ucar.
The rarity of German-speaking imams who can connect with young German Muslims is also a problem in Germany.
"Young people don’t know anything, and ignorance is dangerous. When you can’t explain something you become aggressive,” said Zahic Sicic, who enrolled in the Tübingen program.
"That’s why young people should know more about Islam – so that there isn’t this aggression potential.”
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