"Germans guided by Allah": Muhammad Rassoul and the Islamic Library publishing house

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Johanna Pink
• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 556145625

In 1981, Egyptian-born Muhammad Rassoul (1929-2015) founded the IB Verlag Islamische Bibliothek in Cologne, which is still among the most important players in German-language Islamic publishing today. This constituted a central moment in the history of German Islam. From the very beginning, the publishing house Islamische Bibliothek was concerned with daʿwa - the call to Islam - and provided a forum for German converts as well as for immigrant Muslims who were not members of Turkish associations. Its portfolio covered a broad spectrum, of which Rassoul's writings made up a significant proportion. From the outset, he tried to position Islam as a German religion. In contrast to some advocates of a "Euro-Islam", however, who were concerned with the moderate adaptation of Islamic legal norms to the conditions of democratic, liberal, predominantly non-Muslim societies of the 20th century, Rassoul postulated a special affinity of "the Germans" to an Islam that he understood as monolithic and unchanging. In doing so, he increasingly espoused anti-Christian, anti-liberal and anti-democratic views. In addition to Rassoul's works, the publishing house published books by numerous other authors, most of whom were converts and Muslims of Arab origin with a similar conservative or Islamist orientation. Many of these titles are widely distributed in mosques and Islamic bookshops. However, the history of the Islamische Bibliothek and of Islamic publishing in Germany in general, as well as of Rassoul's publications has not been investigated yet beyond cursory summaries. Against this background, the project aims to research the history of the IB Verlag Islamische Bibliothek, including its organization, financing and distribution, and to embed this in the history of the organized Islamic mission in Germany. In addition, selected corpora of publications by the publishing house will be examined: Children's books, marriage and family advice literature as well as writings on the Prophet Muhammad and pre-Islamic prophets. In addition, Muhammad Rassoul's oeuvre will be analyzed in detail for the first time. The focus will be, first, on his writings on the Qur’an, including his popular Qur’an translation, and, second, on writings relating to German society, which for the first time will be read not only as ideological texts but also as historical sources. On this basis, the project aims to make an important contribution to elucidating the history of Islamic publishing in the German language and the Islamic mission in Germany.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants