Posted on December 9, 2020 (Updated on 12/9)
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By Drafting Reform
The last five issues of Reform contain numerous articles and letters from readers on Islam in France, its relations with Protestantism, as well as on radical and even terrorist Islamism.
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In this regard, I would like to mention the very avant-garde project developed by Etienne Trocmé, Protestant historian and theologian, professor of the New Testament at the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Strasbourg, and twice President of the Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg. Everyone knows indeed – but we sometimes forget it! – that in Alsace, under the Concordat regime, the Catholic and Protestant theological faculties are an integral part of the State University.
As early as 1988, Etienne Trocmé, concerned about the growing importance and questionable influence in France of foreign imams having no training in French and republican values, had the idea of creating a faculty of Muslim theology within the ‘University of Human Sciences of Strasbourg (now Marc Bloch University). It was not a question of directly training imams, but of creating a university framework, open to all for the scientific study of Islamic theology. The structures existed, the skills also with excellent libraries and research centers, and within the University, a department of Arab and Islamic Studies, as well as Turkish and Iranian language institutes.
In 1988, therefore, during his second term as President, and while he was vice-president of the Conference of University Presidents, he submitted this project to the ministerial authorities. He then gathered the enthusiastic support of some of his colleagues, including Professor Mohammed ARKOUN, director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Paris III. In spite of this rather favorable reception, the project remained without follow-up, in part because of the unfortunate affair of the Islamic headscarf which in 1989 mobilized all the energies of the Ministry of National Education.
But after his retirement, Etienne Trocmé resumed his project and at the request of his successor as president of the university, he presented it in 1997 to the Board of Directors of Marc Bloch University, where he received a welcome. favorable, without however resulting in a decisive vote. The Alsatian Muslim leaders are however also very favorable and the regional press reserves positive pages for it. In 1998, a colloquium was organized in Strasbourg by the Club Témoin, in collaboration with the GERI (Groupe d’Etudes et de Recherches Islamologiques) of the Marc Bloch University and the ACFTMS (Association for the Creation of a Faculty of Theology Muslim in Strasbourg) chaired by Professor Ralph Stehly. But once again the project is postponed, the context not being judged “mature” enough by some.
This is why, shortly before his sudden death in the summer of 2002, Etienne Trocmé, told us of his deep disappointment at the slowness and reluctance of the reactions aroused by this great project.
Even if since 2002 certain advances have taken place in Strasbourg, with in particular in 2009 the creation of a Master of Islamology, Law and Management within the Faculty of Law, and more recently in 2018, a License and a Master of the Worlds Muslims at the Faculty of Historical Sciences, the Faculty of Muslim Theology at the University of Strasbourg therefore never saw the light of day. Unlike its Catholic and Protestant sisters, and unlike the institutions set up in other countries of the European Union, Muslim theology still does not benefit from university education in France: a missed opportunity, which is undoubtedly worth mentioning in the current context.
Helene Trocmé
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