Bavarian parliament debates home-grown imam training to counter extremism and 'imported Islam'

An old debate revived

The Bavarian Landtag's education committee took up the question of whether the Free State should train its own imams during a hearing on 9 July 2026. The idea has been a political flashpoint for decades, and the session was prompted by a Greens' proposal for a publicly supported training and further-education programme for imams and Islamic religious servants. Experts and community representatives presented arguments for moving beyond the current reliance on clerics sent from abroad.

The status quo: foreign-trained preachers

Many of Bavaria's mosques are served by imams who were trained overseas and, in the case of the Ditib network, paid by Turkey's Diyanet authority. The practice, critics say, encourages parallel structures and a disconnect from German society. Professor Tarek Badawia of the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg framed the choice as between "an imported Islam" and "one from a western European perspective." His university already offers a bachelor's degree in Islamic-religious studies, though it falls short of a full imam qualification.

What the Greens want

Central to the opposition party's motion is the creation of a Bavarian training pathway that equips imams to counsel and support their congregations. The proposal also insists that any imams sent from abroad must attend special integration courses and explicitly commit to the values of the free democratic basic order. The aim, the motion states, is to reduce the influence of extremist forces on mosques and community centres in the state.

Voices from the hearing

"Let us create an imam ‘made in Bavaria.'"

Yerli, a religious pedagogue and vice-president of the Islamic community in Penzberg, argued for a model that fuses scholarly grounding with practical parish work. Similarly, Weiden-based imam Maher Khedr warned against preachers who simply download sermons from the internet: "Such speeches might fit Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, but not this country." Khedr, himself a graduate of the Islamkolleg Deutschland in Osnabrück, recalled the October 2023 case in his own town, where a Syrian-German was convicted of incitement for spreading anti-Jewish hatred from a mosque pulpit. He sees proper training as the best defence against religious extremism.

Existing models and gaps

Nationally, a few structures already exist. The federally funded Islamkolleg Deutschland, founded in late 2019, offers a cross-denominational, German-language imam course. Since 2020, the Ditib network has run its own academy in Dahlem, and it now cooperates with the IKD on a new programme whose first graduates are expected in 2027. Bavaria, however, has no comparable institution, a gap that speakers said left the state dependent on partly untrained or context-blind personnel. Badawia summed up the neglect: "Imams form the most important religious and educational authority in Muslim communities, which has unfortunately been completely overlooked so far."