The first university centre for the training of teachers in Islam in state schools has been opened at the University of Münster, in Germany. The centre was inaugurated at the very time that a debate is going on in the Region about whether it is appropriate to teach Islam in state schools. Hitherto only the Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church have had the right, in the majority of Länder, to teach religion in schools. They supply the teachers and establish the syllabus, whenever schools make due provision for religious education. But the question of the teaching of the Koran at school is still open: the administrative court of the State of Rhineland-Westphalia in which Münster is situated recently decided that Moslem organizations cannot yet have the right to teach in schools, since they exercise “more a political than a religious function”.
