850 public figures, including many university professors, are calling on politicians and the University of Frankfurt to protect the director of the Frankfurt Research Centre for Global Islam (FFGI), Susanne Schröter, against defamation. The statement is prompted by the attacks on Schröter after an event with the former Green politician Boris Palmer, which had caused a great stir in the media.
As the organiser of the conference “Managing Migration, Shaping Plurality”, Susanne Schröter was not responsible for the fact that her discussion partner Boris Palmer used the “N-word” and let himself be carried away by an inappropriate Holocaust comparison. Nevertheless, the event, which took place under the patronage of the Prime Minister of Hesse and at which renowned experts spoke about the chances of a more humane and sustainable immigration policy, is now being used to discredit Susanne Schröter and undermine her important research work on Global Islam.
Strange alliances have been formed in the process: Islamists, left-wing identitarians and so-called ” critics of Israel” have been trying for a long time to ward off any criticism, however restrained, of “political Islam” as an expression of “anti-Muslim racism”. Boris Palmer’s statements come just in time for this faction to increase the pressure on Schröter and the research centre. As the psychologist and migration researcher Ahmed Mansour noted in a video contribution, another “N-word” is often used in these attacks, which unfortunately hardly meets with any criticism: Namely, the participants of the conference, many of whom, like Mansour, have a “migration background” themselves, are labelled “Nazi” because they insist on being able to continue to distinguish between Muslims who are loyal to the constitution and Islamists who are hostile to the constitution.
Unfortunately, the academic system has not reacted adequately to the threat to academic freedom that this poses, but has, as all too often in the past, buckled before the wave of indignation of the protests. This is what the statement of the 850 supporters, who express their solidarity with Susanne Schröter, is directed against. They resolutely oppose “any defamation of academics critical of Islamism”, especially “demands for the closure of the Global Islam Research Centre”. After all, “a critical debate on political Islamism and current migration policy is essential”.
The statement goes on to say that criticism of the standpoints of Islam and migration researchers such as Susanne Schröter, Ralph Ghadban, Ruud Koopmans or Ahmad Mansour is of course legitimate, but that it should be carried out in “argumentative debate” and not slide into demands for the abolition of conferences or even into personal defamation campaigns. Accordingly, the statement ends with an appeal to politicians as well as to the Goethe University Frankfurt, where Susanne Schröter holds the chair for “Ethnology of Colonial and Postcolonial Orders”, to protect the director of the Research Centre Global Islam against defamation, to continue to support her in her research work and to defend her academic freedom.
The statement was signed by well over 200 university professors, including the lawyer Ebrahim Afsah (Copenhagen), the physician Heike Allgayer (Mannheim), the lawyer Britta Bannenberg (Gießen), the philosopher Maria-Sibylla Lotter (Bochum) and the historian Sönke Neitzel (Potsdam). Advisory board members of the Giordano Bruno Foundation have also expressed their solidarity with Susanne Schröter, including the ethnologist Christoph Antweiler (Bonn), the evolutionary biologist Axel Meyer (Constance) and the criminal law professor Holm Putzke (Passau). gbs board spokesperson Michael Schmidt-Salomon has signed the declaration not only personally, but also on behalf of the Giordano Bruno Foundation.
https://hpd.de/artikel/solidaritaet-islamforscherin-susanne-schroeter-21291