Germany’s foremost Muslim organizations recently cut their ties to Germany’s only professor of Islamic religion, charging that Muhammad Kalisch of the University of Muenster had questioned the existence of the Prophet Mohammed and Muslim beliefs about the origin of the Koran.

One Muslim leader objected that “Kalisch calls fundamental teachings into question in such a stark way that it’s not possible to go along with him.”

Kalisch responded, “A university is not there to teach the content of faith, nor to approve the opinions of a professor as correct. Rather, the task of a university is to conduct independent, open-ended research” and to train students “to reflect critically and achieve intellectual independence.”

It is somewhat surprising that Germany has only one such professor, and not so surprising that the Muslim establishment there takes a stand against independent, open-ended research.