Bonner Querschnitte 12/2016 Ausgabe 407 (eng)

(Bonn, 06.05.2016) The Islam scholar Christine Schirrmacher, who teaches Islamic studies as a professor at Germany’s University of Bonn and Belgium’s University of Leuven, has been appointed by the German Federal Parliament as a representative for academic institutions to the Advisory Board of the German Institute for Human Rights in Berlin. The 18-member advisory board, to which representatives from general society, academia, the media, and politics belong, determines the guidelines for the work of the Institute. Schirrmacher belongs to a group of 6 individuals which the German Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) has appointed by a commission on human rights and humanitarian aid according to the June 2015 Act on the Legal Status and Tasks of the GIHR (Gesetz über die Rechtsstellung und Aufgaben des DIMR, or DIMRG). As additional academic institution representatives for human rights, the German Parliament also appointed Roland Jahn, the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Prof. Dr. Markus Krajewski (Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg, or CHREN). Furthermore, the German Parliament has appointed the lawyer Ute Granold as a representatives from general society, Martin Lessenthin, the Executive Board’s Spokesman for the International Society for human rights (ISHR), and Dr. Anja Nordmann of the National Council of German Women’s Organizations (Deutscher Frauenrat).

The German Institute for Human Rights is an institution within social society which has its headquarters in Berlin. It is intended to act as an independent national human rights organization in the sense of the ‘Paris Principles’ of the United Nations and is to contribute to informing the public about the human rights situation both domestically and internationally. The Institute is also intended to contribute to the prevention of human rights violations as well as to the promotion and protection of human rights. The Institute implements these goals through political consulting, research, human rights education, and through providing information as well as documentation. A particular concern of the Institute is to make international and European mechanisms for human rights protection better known and available in Germany.

The Institute is a non-profit organization and is politically independent. It is financed by the federal budget of the Federal Ministry of Justice, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs as well as the Federal Foreign Office. In order to ensure the independence of the Institute, agencies of the financing ministries do not have voting rights within the Advisory Board.

The Director of the Institute is the lawyer Prof. Dr. Beate Rudolf, who previously had taught public law, public international law, European law, and equality law at the University of Düsseldorf and the University of Berlin. She succeeded Prof. Dr. Heiner Bielefeldt, who was Director of the Institute from 2003 to 2009 and is at the moment the UN’s Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief for the UN Human Rights Council. 

On various occasions, Christine Schirrmacher has been invited as a consultant for hearings on human rights questions and has repeatedly grappled with human rights questions in research and in publications. She has also published writings on various Islamic human rights declarations, women’s rights, the rights of minorities as well as religious freedom and freedom of worldview in societies characterized by Islam. Recently, in 2014, she published The Oppression of Women (Unterdrückte Frauen), and in 2015 she published her revised postdoctoral thesis ‘Let there be no Compulsion in Religion’ (Sura 2:256). Apostasy from Islam as Judged by Contemporary Islamic Theologians. Discourses on Apostasy, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights. The revised postdoctoral thesis has also been released in English.

Downloads and Links:

• New Advisory Board members of the German Institute for Human Rights http://www.institut-fuer-menschenrechte.de/aktuell/news/meldung/article/neue-kuratoriumsmitglieder/
• Complete list of the Advisory Board members of the German Institute for Human Rights: http://www.institut-fuer-menschenrechte.de/ueber-uns/struktur/kuratorium/
• Download of Christine Schirrmacher’s ‘Let there be no Compulsion in Religion’ (Sura 2:256). Apostasy from Islam as Judged by Contemporary Islamic Theologians. Discourses on Apostasy, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights: http://christineschirrmacher.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Let_there_be_no_Compulsion_in_Religion_full_text.pdf
• Photo: Christine Schirrmacher, © Evangelical Theological Faculty, Leuven