"Islamic Personality of the Year"

The prize-winners who have gone before him make an impressive list, including such figures as the former Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegovic. Now, at a ceremony in Dubai, Wilfried Murad Hoffmann, a convert to Islam, has received one of the most important awards in the Muslim world.

Hoffmann, who's 78 and a former German diplomat, was honoured for his life's work - and especially for his writings on Islam – by the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al Maktum.

"Of course, I don't know how they picked on me," he says modestly on being asked why he was chosen. He only knew that, by picking a Muslim from a non-Muslim country, the organisers had wanted to send a signal. It could have just as well been a Muslim from America or elsewhere in Western Europe. "I see my selection as a sign, but also as recognition of what Muslims have managed to achieve for Islam in Western Europe," he says.

More fame and honour than Barack Obama?

Wilfried Murad Hofmann converted to Islam in 1980. He is one of the best-known Muslims in Germany and is the first convert to be honoured in the context of the "Dubai International Holy Quran Award." He was surprised that he had been chosen when he found out, only five days before the ceremony. The prize was linked to a personal invitation to Sheikh Mohammed's desert tent, where he had the chance to speak at length with him.

Newspaper cuttings make clear that some print media in the Gulf consider the award of this honour to a German as more important news than the forthcoming visit of Barack Obama.

A very own way of approaching Islam

Hofmann was born in Aschaffenburg and studied law in Munich and American law at the Harvard Law School. From 1961 to 1994 he was in Germany's diplomatic service, where he was information director at NATO headquarters in Brussels, and finally, ambassador to Algeria and Morocco. Mohammed Aman Hobohm, also a convert, who has known Hofmann for many years, sees his achievement in his having found his own way of approaching Islam.

​​He had long concerned himself with philosophy. "He had studied philosophy," says Hobohm. "That's something you can tell from his writings." His first book, "A Philosophical Way into Islam," was the fruit of his first such approach to the religion, and it determined the way he looked at the teachings of Islam.

Hofmann became well-known particularly for his many publications on Islam, and his many lectures in Western Europe, the US and the Islamic world. His contribution to a translation of the Koran which appeared in 1998 is also seen as significant. The Central Council of Muslims in Germany see the fact that he is the second European and the first convert to be honoured as "Islamic Personality of the Year" as recognition of the achievements of Muslims from countries which are not the core countries of Islam as well as those of converts.

Criticism from feminists

In spite of his achievements and his reputation within the Muslim world, Wilfried Murad Hofmann remains a controversial figure. The very fact that, in 1980, while he was still a senior diplomat, he announced that he was converting to Islam, was considered a provocation. In "Islam as an Alternative", published in 1992, Hofman drew criticism when he said that the western world seemed to him degenerate.

"He analyses things very rationally, and sometimes he's so tough when he unmasks the weaknesses of our society and how it's gone wrong, that it almost takes your breath away," says Aiman Mazyek of the Central Council of Muslims. But, he adds, he does this as an observer or a reporter, and not as a know-all. However, feminists have been particularly critical of his works, saying that he fails to take adequate account of the rights of women in the Islam he represents.

The "Islamic Personality of the Year" award goes together with a prize of 180,000 euros. Murad Hofmann has said he will give some of the money to the Central Council of Muslims in Germany to start a foundation for the benefit of Islam.

Ulrike Hummel

© Deutsche Welle / Qantara.de 2009

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