Europäer wollen islamische Geistliche selbst "züchten"

--- Europäische Regierungen setzen im Kampf der Kulturen verstärkt darauf, eine westlich geprägte Sorte Imame hervorzubringen, berichtet die New York Times. Radikale Prediger von Hass und Terror sollen damit in den Hintergrund gedrängt werden. Unumstritten ist das aber nicht: On a wooded hillside in deepest rural Burgundy sits a modest 19th-century chateau with a daunting mission: the training of imams to minister to the Muslims of Europe. Here, for $3,200 a year, about 150 French and foreign students study and live in a damp, dilapidated former corporate summer resort with a tiny library, few computers, no television and no cellphone reception. The goal of the European Institute for Human Sciences, as the coeducational school is known, is an urgent one shared by political leaders and intelligence and law enforcement authorities across the Continent. They believe that the growing Muslim population of Europe must stanch the migration of Muslim clerics who often are self-appointed, unfamiliar with the West, beholden to foreign interests and in the most extreme cases, full of hate and capable of terrorist acts. To that end, they say, a homegrown breed of imams must be created. ... But creating an army of learned, law-abiding, Europeanized imams is not easy. State involvement in religion in the Arab world is commonplace, but in Europe a government role can be seen as a violation of privacy and human rights. Spain's interior minister, José Antonio Alonso, set off a firestorm of criticism in May when he proposed the creation of a mandatory registry of clerics and places of worship and the monitoring of sermons. The Netherlands is experimenting tentatively with required government-financed programs to teach imams "courses of integration" about newer Dutch values, including a greater acceptance of euthanasia and drug use. ..."The idea of producing imams is still controversial," said James P. Piscatori, an American who is a professor of Islamic politics at Oxford University. "On the one hand, you want your own imams because the imported ones are seen as conveyor belts for bad ideas. On the other hand, the communities say, 'Who are you to tell us who our imam should be or how he should be trained?' ''