“An independent voice”

Ring of Tolerance for Islamic theologian Prof. Dr. Mouhanad Khorchide

In addition to the Islamic theologian Prof. Dr. Mouhanad Khorchide, the cultural scientists Prof. Dr. Aleida Assmann and Prof. Dr. Jan Assmann as well as the journalist Richard Chaim Schneider have also received awards (from right to left).
© Europäische Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste

In Cologne, the Islamic theologian Prof. Dr. Mouhanad Khorchide of the University of Münster’s Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” has been awarded the “Ring of Tolerance” of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. With this award, the Academy honours personalities who work for transnational dialogue and against racism.

Mouhanad Khorchide has been teaching and researching as a professor of Islamic religious education at the University of Münster since 2010. He heads the Centre for Islamic Thoelogy at University of Münster and is project leader at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”. “It is Mouhanad Khorchides’ special concern to raise an independent voice in religious dialogue and in the everyday life of religious policy,” said Prof. Dr. Stefan Zimmermann, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, in his laudation. “He aims at contributing to a non-violent understanding of his religion in the political environment – a religion that he understands to be a religion of peaceful coexistence, which respects the views and rights of the individual and the religious freedom of those who think differently.”

The other awardees of this year’s Rings of Tolerance are the cultural scientists Prof. Dr. Jan Assmann and Prof. Dr. Aleida Assmann as well as the journalist Richard Chaim Schneider. Furthermore, the University of Cologne and the Academy awarded the Prize for Tolerance to three Cologne schools.

The European Academy of Sciences and Arts has been awarding the Rings of Tolerance annually since 1997. In the past, awards went to Cardinal Karl Lehmann, to the former Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Hans-Dietrich Genscher and to the conductor Daniel Barenboim, among others. (upm/maz)