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This paper asks the question, 'What does Islamic education mean for the 21st century university?' To begin with, the paper addresses the modern university as an institution facing numerous challenges, which can be conceived of by understanding the nature of the 'academic imagination'. In so doing, this argument draws on the fundamental elements of thought itself by foregrounding imagination as a primary route by which knowledge is conceived, created and disseminated. At root, it is an argument that suggests that to understand the university is to apprehend its imaginative functions. 'Problems of the imagination' are thereafter defined as 'depth perception', 'vertigo' and 'paralysis', respectively. In light of these challenges, the rise of Centers of Islamic Theology in Germany, and Islamic education as a discipline in particular, are considered as uncharted paths towards a discussion of the dilemmas of contemporary academia. Methodologically, the paper is a philosophical reflection on the role of the future of the university and the place of Islamic Theology and Islamic education therein. As such, use of the contemporary literature on higher education, as well as classical works on Islamic education, shall be employed for the purposes of the argument. In so doing, this paper turns the normative discussion of contemporary Islamic education on its head: from how we may make room for such education in the modern university, to consider how its presence may help the institution and its imaginative conundrums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration to Germany has been a fact of life for the average German since the 1960s. Immigrants started arriving from countries like Turkey, Spain, Greece, or Italy as a post-war labor force was invited to Germany to address workforce shortages. Many of these immigrants ultimately brought their families to live in Germany. One group of these newcomers was Aramean families of Syriac Orthodox faith, forced to flee the Tur Abdin region in southeast Turkey via Syria, Lebanon, and Northern Iraq. This paper will discuss the background and impetus for moving to the West for this immigrant group in detail. It will review the impacts on the life of devout Syriac Orthodox families while living in Germany, a secular country. It will also take an initial look at whether evangelical communities in Germany can come alongside this group, still suffering from a different kind of persecution: the "otherness" of living in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a conversation is initiated about the relationship between religious education (RE) and comparative theology (CT). It is the first time that these are both addressed explicitly in an international academic discourse. The authors are colleagues in a university setting of RE teacher education and are both involved in local RE research programs. Our approach is theological, and our shared interest is the existential lifeworld of children and young people. Firstly, we wish to bring RE and CT into conversation with each other, based on five common characteristics. Secondly, we describe how this conversation can possibly stimulate discussion on new pathways of intercultural encounters in the RE classroom, and this not only from a German (mainly confessional) perspective but also in light of other forms of non-confessional RE. After a (1) contextualization of RE in Germany, the authors describe (2) five central features of contemporary RE, followed by (3) five CT observations, connecting to these features. In (4), the relationship between the two is discussed as common ground for intercultural encounters and as a promising praxis and research field awaiting further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an outgrowth of globalization, religious globalization has significantly transformed the religious landscape worldwide. Contemporary societies exhibit religious pluralism, posing challenges for services such as spiritual or pastoral care. This study aimed to investigate how pastoral/spiritual caregivers of divergent cultural and religious backgrounds navigate religious diversity and how their religious location influences their inter-religious relations. Data were gathered through a standardized open-ended interview protocol. The study sample consisted of German Christian pastoral caregivers and Turkish Muslim spiritual caregivers from Germany and Turkey, respectively (N = 67). Overall, the entire sample expressed a generally positive attitude towards providing spiritual/pastoral care (S/PC) to individuals of other religious affiliations. German participants emphasized a human-centered approach towards individuals from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds, whereas Turkish participants placed greater emphasis on the qualifications of the caregiver. Turkish participants exhibited less exposure to other cultures/religions compared to their German counterparts, yet both subsamples responded positively to requests for care from individuals of different faiths. Both subsamples adhered to standard procedures during S/PC visits. German participants were more inclined to incorporate elements from other religions/cultures into their S/PC work compared to Turkish participants. The majority of participants regarded their respective institutions (Church/Diyanet) as responsible for addressing the spiritual needs of others. However, the German subsample displayed greater reluctance towards the employment of pastoral caregivers from different religious backgrounds by their institution, as opposed to the Turkish subsample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deriving from the growing cultural and religious diversity in Germany and the need for educational professionals to be able to deal with heterogeneous groups and communicate to children about how to coexist peacefully with others, this essay focuses on the relationship between common sense and tolerance, particularly in places of inescapable dense coexistence characterised by religious and cultural diversity. Using institutions of preschool and primary education as an example, the extent to which peaceful coexistence and conflict resolution is borne by common sense and supported by practices of tolerance is discussed. Subsequently, the significance of a common-sense approach to practices of tolerance for conceptualising ethical judgement in intercultural and inter-religious education is explored. The article closes with thoughts on the contribution of religious ethics to questions of human coexistence in highly dense and conflict-ridden contexts and briefly addresses aspects of Protestant social ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores a remarkable manuscript, the so-called Hileq and Bileq Haggadah (Paris, BnF Ms. Hébreu 1333), illuminated in southern Germany in the fifteenth century. Our focus, in particular, is on the image that accompanies the Shefokh ḥamatkha prayer, an invocation of God's vengeance upon nonbelievers. Here, we posit the role of the Shefokh ḥamatkha folio within the context of the Hileq and Bileq Haggadah, suggesting that its prominent position and extravagant visual program involve the reader–viewer in a performative scenario that inflects the meaning of the other images in the book as well as the enactment of the Seder ritual itself. The messianic import of the folio is underscored by its enactive language, both visual and oral, and predicated on the emotional communities that coalesced around the Passover ritual in the later Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To effectively carry out its tasks, the church needs a stable financial system. The aim of this article is to present issues related to ensuring the stability of the Catholic Church financing system in times of significant demographic and socio-cultural changes. This study identifies and characterizes the main sources of income and directions of expenses of the available financial resources. The challenges faced by church authorities in this regard are also described. State authorities finance places of prayer for social, cultural, and psychological reasons. Churches have been places of support in difficult times for centuries as well as places of survival and mental support for society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst increasing globalization and religious diversity, acknowledging and embracing openness towards religious and/or cultural others has become crucial for societal cohesion and international relations. Theological scholars, holding significant potential in mitigating inter-religious and intercultural prejudices, can play a pivotal role in addressing this challenge. However, it is acknowledged that theologians themselves may harbor such biases. This study, conducted within the framework of the Religious Openness Hypothesis, employed an online questionnaire among theology students, seen as future multipliers of religiosity, in Germany and Turkey (N = 513) using convenience sampling. The results reveal the consistent relation of religiosity to all forms of prejudice among German Christians, with a linked defense against secularism potentially leading to self-isolation and the protection of their own worldview against religious or cultural outgroups. In contrast, the (generally high) prejudice among Turkish Muslims appears to be rooted not primarily in religiosity or defense against secularism but in fundamentalism and, most likely, in other socio-cultural factors such as politics and education. For both subsamples, religiosity was positively linked with xenosophia, particularly when accounting for fundamentalism. The article concludes by proposing curriculum implications for universities and schools in both cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The church's synodal conversion requires a reform of its decision-making processes. Facing the challenge of keeping in balance the common dignity of all the baptized and the value of the hierarchical structure of the church, the participation of all the faithful in decision-making processes is grounded in biblical and theological arguments and defined as a co-responsibility in taking joint decisions. The analysis of two synodal bodies recently established within the Catholic Church in the Amazon and Germany delineates new directions for the renewal of decision-making structures in the church. These directions entail reforming the existing participatory structures and creating new deliberative bodies in the church. Looking at church reality and the practice of consultation and decision-making, synodal conversion ultimately requires the reform of training for church leaders with a view to changing church mindsets and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the life and thought of two important figures in the history of Austrian socialism-Victor Adler and Otto Bauer-as a prism through which to examine the complex relationship between German nationalism, the Jewish Question and pro-Habsburgism among the early leadership of the Austrian Social Democratic Party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New School for Social Research's University in Exile accepted more German and European exiled intellectuals than any other American institution of higher education. This paper argues that transnational, cosmopolitan ideological and interest-based affinities shared by left-leaning American progressives and German-Jewish intellectuals enabled the predominantly Jewish University in Exile to become a vibrant intellectual space accepted by the community of largely anti-Semitic American academics. These affinities also illuminate why, despite the fact that the émigrés' exile was in large part the result of National Socialist hatred of Jews, Alvin Johnson (the founder of the University in Exile) and the faculty members that comprised it seldom discussed the University's Jewish demographics. The Jewish faculty members ignored the relationship between their ethnicity and exile because to focus on it would have been to admit that the cosmopolitan project they had embraced in Central Europe had failed. Johnson ignored the faculty's Jewish heritage for two reasons. First, he endorsed a cosmopolitan American nationalism. Second, he understood that the generally anti-Semitic community of American academics would have rejected the University in Exile if he stressed the faculty's Jewishness. In ignoring the University in Exile's Jewish demographics, Johnson and the University's faculty successfully adhered to a strategy designed to foster the exiles' entrance into the American intellectual community. Thus, while cosmopolitanism failed in Germany and Central Europe, the exiles' later influence on the American academy indicates that it partially succeeded in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper pursues the question of the relationship between secularization, religious denominations, and regional characteristics. A literature review leads to the formation of six hypotheses. The analysis of regional statistics for Germany shows clear regional differences in the distribution of the denominational affiliation as well as the secularization of the population. Traditional differences between the federal states and their sub-regions are still recognizable. In particular, there is an obvious difference in secularization between the East German and West German states in relation to the significance of the two large Christian denominations. These differences between the paths of regional development and degree of secularization are so large that most of the hypothesis testing on the association between religious affiliation and demographic and socio-economic variables resulted in different findings for the two areas. Further research is required to pursue more regional differentiation and to include non-Christian faiths in the investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political secularism can be defined as a kind of political philosophy that sees the secular state as setting the terms of encounter between the secular and the religious. However, religion and religious organisations are not necessarily seen as oppositional to the secular state; there can be myriad forms of coexistence between secular and religious authorities. The argument forwarded in this article is based on ethnographic research focussing on the presence and social significance of religious materiality in the region considered to be one of the most secularised worldwide—the north-eastern part of contemporary Germany. I investigate the strategies of actors socially recognised as either religious or secular towards each other, looking at how secular actors assign a place to religious symbols, materiality, theological concepts, organisations, and communities; on the other hand I investigate strategies that religious actors adopt in a context of political secularism. Even if political secularism presupposes supremacy of the secular state over religious actors and the right of the former to make legally binding decisions concerning the latter, those religious actors are not passive—they react to secular initiatives and they try to carve for themselves a space in a public sphere, while at the same time the secular or rather nonreligious actors mobilize religious elements for a variety of reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical/extremist Islamist actors use social media to disseminate uncompromising stories of monist religious political orders and identities. As a reaction, counter-movements to online Islamist radicalism/extremism emerged in Western societies (and beyond), while uncertainty about effective outcomes remains widespread. In a bid to understand how inclusionary and exclusionary discursive spaces are created, we ask: How do some Muslim actors create discursive spaces open to self-reflection, pluralism and liberal-democratic principles, while others construct illiberal, particularistic and non/anti-democratic spaces? To respond to this question, we compare two contrasting storytellers, one who agitates for exclusionary Islamist radicalism/extremism (Generation Islam) and one who offers inclusionary prevention and deradicalization work against that (Jamal al-Khatib). We draw on novel narrative approaches to the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), via which we compare text-level and context-level narratives disseminated about three Muslim-related crises: the racist terrorist attacks/genocide to represent the national, European and global level. Our two-layered, DHA-inspired narrative analysis illustrates that, at the level of text, narrative persuasion varies between both contrasting actors. While Jamal al-Khatib disseminates persuasive stories, Generation Islam is much less invested in narrative persuasion; it seems to address an already convinced audience. These two text-level strategies reveal their meaning in two antagonistic narrative genres: Jamal al-Khatib's "self-reflexive savior" creates an inclusionary discursive space represented in a self-ironic narrative genre, while Generation Islam's "crusading savior" manufactures an exclusionary discursive space represented in a romance featuring a nostalgic return to the particularistic Islamic umma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My contribution will focus on secular and non-religious worldviews and will aim to reconstruct secular relationships with the world that develop from lived values and their transmission in the family. I will try to show in detail how a non-religious habitus develops in socialization over several generations, becomes entrenched in later biographical positioning, and shapes how a person relates to the world, including their view of religion. After a brief outline of the religious field in Germany, I will concentrate on a family case whose first generation (grandparents) grew up in the GDR. This family has had no religious socialization or child baptisms for three generations and secularity has become a positive point of reference for how its members justify their own life patterns. For the members of this non-religious family, religion still becomes selectively relevant. Using concrete situations and contexts where the family has contact with religion, I will show how these encounters become a marker for drawing boundaries. In conclusion, I will follow Quack and Schuh's distinction between "indifference to religiosity" on the one hand, and "indifference to religion" on the other, and argue that indifference to religiosity, but not indifference to religion, can be clearly identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of social inequality has so far received little attention in religious education research, although this phenomenon has been studied in educational science and sociology of education research for fifty years. This article therefore aims to clarify the explanatory power of this research approach for research in religious education. Based on Bourdieu's theory of cultural and social reproduction, a structural equation model is used to examine the extent to which students' sex, socioeconomic status, and religious socialization determine unequal learning opportunities in religious education. The data basis of the study is a sample of 952 students from Germany who were interviewed by means of questionnaires. The results show that religious socialization and the students' sex are relevant to unequal learning conditions, whereas the socioeconomic status of the family has a marginal influence. Unequal learning conditions are created in the classroom by differences in the perception of the relevance of the subject matter, and in the understanding of learning processes. Religious students are in both cases at an advantage compared to non-religious students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of Muslim-interfaith couples in European countries has become significant due to transnational migration and a growing number of Muslims living in Muslim Minority countries. While the challenges for partners in such unions are complex, this article focuses on the lived experiences of Muslim women in interfaith intimate relationships in Germa ny. Drawing on field interviews with women in mixed-faith relationships, the following questions are central: How do Muslim women conceptualize religious identity and practices? Do they face challenges from different groups (Muslim communities, their families, friends, etc.) and if so, how do these challenges manifest? If respondents create concepts of being Muslim for themselves, how do these evolve in their narratives? How do they question, adapt or discard theological and social demands? Preliminary results illustrate that some respondents would appreciate a Muslim community that accepts their positionality as intermarried Muslim women. Looking at the narration of religious practices and concepts of Muslimness in the interviews, it becomes clear that a classification as haram, or legally forbidden, puts a simple categorical bar in front of a socially and theologically complex context. The inquiry combines interview analysis with situational mapping and is informed by Grounded Theory methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have invested much effort in the understanding of acculturation-relevant factors that influence immigrants' psychological and socio-cultural adaptation. Factors that might have an impact on immigrants' product consumption decisions have comparatively received scarce attention by acculturation and marketing researchers. Immigrants show different product consumption patterns and therefore constitute big consumer groups that can have an impact on both the economy of immigrants' culture of origin and the host society. The present study investigated Turkish immigrants' product consumption ethnocentrism. The sample consisted of 599 youth and adult Turkish in Germany drawn from Cologne, the city with the highest ratio of Turkish people in the country. The study sample represented a very similar demographic make-up of the Turkish people in Cologne. The associations between acculturation strategies, loyalty to religion, and product consumption ethnocentrism were quantitatively analyzed based on a field survey. Research findings indicated that participants in the acculturation mode of separation scored significantly higher for consumer ethnocentrism than those showing other orientations, and those with an assimilation orientation scored the least for consumer ethnocentrism. Among the three religiosity dimensions (behavioral, emotional, cognitive) investigated in the present study, analyses controlling for a range of socio-demographic variables revealed a positive relationship between the behavior dimension of religiosity and consumer ethnocentrism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most European scholars, the scope of Comparative Theology is not very clear. They see big differences between the notion of Comparative Theology among its protagonists, e.g., between Keith Ward or Robert Neville and Francis Clooney or James Fredericks. That is why I will try to define a certain understanding of Comparative Theology which can be defended in accordance with strong European theological traditions. I want to show that Comparative Theology can be understood as one of the best fruits of liberal theology and of a Wittgensteinian interpretation of transcendental philosophy--and that it opens new perspectives for confessional theology. The current development of Islamic theology in Germany is especially challenging for Comparative Theology and the best opportunity to develop it into a project undertaken by scholars of different religions and different intellectual traditions. I will argue that Comparative Theology is not a new discipline within the old disciplines of theology, but that it can give new perspectives to all theological disciplines and thoroughly change their character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]