Europe’s first: Germany’s Münster University to open full Faculty of Islamic Theology
New faculty elevates Islamic scholarship to the same institutional standing as Catholic and Protestant theology
MÜNSTER, Germany (MNTV) — The University of Münster will open Europe’s first fully independent Faculty of Islamic Theology on July 1, elevating the study of Islam to the same institutional rank as the Catholic and Protestant theological faculties that have been fixtures of German academia for centuries.
The announcement was made on April 22 by rector Johannes Wessels, who called the establishment “a milestone for Islamic theology” and “a call for more tolerance in society and politics, which will be noticed far beyond Münster.”
The new faculty will be the university’s sixteenth — the first to be created in 22 years — and will give Islamic theology full academic autonomy for the first time at any state university in Europe.
That means the power to grant its own doctoral degrees, conduct postdoctoral qualifications, appoint its own examination boards, and make independent decisions on academic appointments and curriculum design. Until now, the university’s Centre for Islamic Theology, established in 2012, operated under the umbrella of the Faculty of Philology.
From refugee camp to founding dean
The founding dean is Mouhanad Khorchide, an Austrian-born theologian of Palestinian origin who grew up in a refugee camp in Beirut before moving through Saudi Arabia and Austria to eventually settle in the German university town.
Khorchide has held the chair for Islamic religious education at Münster since 2010 and has been one of the most prominent — and at times controversial — voices advocating for a progressive, European-rooted approach to Islamic scholarship.
Khorchide described the faculty as “an impressive signal of recognition for many Muslims in Germany” and said it would strengthen dialogue with Muslim communities in a rigorous academic setting.
In separate remarks, he called the institution a “lighthouse for an enlightened, cosmopolitan Islam” and said it should play an active role in broader social debates around integration, extremism prevention, and religious education.
Eight professorships, one shared campus
Funding has been secured from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for eight professorships — to be split equally between four women and four men — spanning Islamic history, ethics, philosophy, Quranic studies, and Islam in social work.
Around 450 students are currently enrolled in teaching degrees and standalone theological programmes, and that number is expected to grow.
The faculty will be a centrepiece of a new “Campus of Theology and Religious Studies” at Münster, where Islamic, Catholic, and Protestant scholars will share a common library and canteen.
The campus is also set to house one of the world’s largest research libraries on religion. The symbolism of the location is not lost on anyone: Münster is the city of the Peace of Westphalia, where the treaties ending the Thirty Years’ War — fought in large part over religious division — were signed in 1648.
A unique governance model
Since Islam has no centralised institutional authority equivalent to the Christian churches, the faculty operates through an advisory council composed of Muslim organisations including DITIB (the Turkish-Islamic Union), the Islamic Council for the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Central Council of Muslims in Germany.
This body has a role in appointments and curriculum decisions, and can exercise a veto on religious grounds — a governance arrangement that has no direct parallel in Catholic or Protestant faculties and has itself been a subject of debate.
Wider significance
The faculty’s stated ambitions extend beyond academia. Its leadership hopes to train imams, religious educators, and community leaders within Germany, reducing reliance on religious instruction and leadership imported from abroad — a long-standing concern for both German policymakers and Muslim communities alike.
Full academic operations will begin in the winter semester of 2026-27, once all committees have been constituted. The first elected faculty council is expected in the summer semester of 2027.
For Germany’s approximately five million Muslims — and for Muslim communities across Europe watching the experiment closely — the new faculty represents something that goes beyond curriculum and committee structures.
It is the first time a European state has placed the academic study of Islam on genuinely equal institutional footing with Christianity, treating it not as a subject to be studied from the outside but as a living theological tradition deserving of the same scholarly infrastructure afforded to the faiths that have shaped the continent for centuries.
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