Religious scholarship can be offensive tobelievers, as conflicts from the time ofGalileo and Spinoza to the recent critiqueof Danish religious scholars in the wake ofthe infamous Muhammad cartoons haveshown. Studies of this type of scholarshiphave been appropriated by believers as ameans of reinventing their own identities– as the training of twentieth-centuryMuslim clergy demonstrates. This volumeoffers a unique collection of training materialsfrom European Muslim clergy sincethe 1940s – including Third Reich reports on debriefing imams, surveillance files onMuslim activists, and information onBosnian clergy and their training centres– as well as an exploration of religion andacademic freedom in general, accompaniedby appendices in both Arabic and English.

Willem B. Drees holds the chair in philosophy of religion and ethics at Leiden University. From the middle of 2009 he will become editor-in-chief of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.

Table of Contents - 8Preface and Acknowledgements - 12Acaddemic and Religious Freedom: An Introduction - 14Part One: Academic Freedom and the Study of religion - 301. Academic Freedom and Competing Authorities: Historical Reflections - 322. Freedom of Thought and the Authority of Tradition in Modern Jewisg Philosophy: The Cases of Spinoza and Mendelssohn - 483. Academic Freedom and the Symbolic Significance of Evolution - 604. The Dismissal of A.J. Wensinck from the Royal Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo - 925. The Historical Method of Biblical Interpretation: Its Nature, Use, Origin and Limitations - 1366. Trial of Thought: Modern Inquisition in Egypt A Case Study - 1547. Academic Freedom in Islamic Studies and the Surveillance by Muslim Activists in Indonesia - 1808. Historians of Religion as Agents of Religious Change - 1969. A Passing Storm or a Structural Shift? Challenges to Academic Freedom in the United States After September 11 - 22010. In the Wake of the Cartoon Crisis: Freedom of Expression of Academics in Denmark - 244Part Two: The Academic Training of Muslim Clergy n Europe - 27611. History of the Institutionalized Training of Imams in Bosnia-Herzegovina - 27812. The Training of Imams by the Third Reich - 33413. The Academic Training of Imams Recent Discussions and Initiatives in the Netherlands - 37014. Non-Formal Islamic Higher Education in the Netherlands: With Some Comparative Notes on France and the United Kingdom - 40415. Islamic Religious Pedagogy at the University of Vienna - 42816. Legitimizing Islamic Theology at European Universities - 44617. The Training Programme of Immams in Italy - 470Index - 486Contributors - 500