BONN, September 26 (IslamOnline.net) - Nine of German’s 16 states are currently scrutinizing requests to have a weekly class in state schools devoted to teaching Muslim students their faith.

Several Muslim societies have approached the education ministries in the nine states early in 2005 to assume responsibility for preparing the curricula and supervising the teaching process.

For as many years, Muslims have been involved in painstaking efforts to secure a right already granted by the Constitution allowing followers of all recognized religious groups to be taught their religion in public schools.

Muslim societies estimate the number of Muslim students enrolled in state-sun schools to be around one million while official statistics put the figure at some 700,000.

Islam comes third after Protestant and Catholic Christianity. There are some 3.4 million Muslims in Germany, which has a total population of some 82 million.

The education ministry in the state of Hessen is already allowing Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Orthodox and Armenians weekly religious classes.

Surprisingly, it has been, for years, giving a cold shoulder to requests by Muslims to enjoy the same right.

Muslim students in Hessen state-run schools number more than 70,000, second only to Christian students.

In the early 1990s, the state spurned requests for supervising the teaching of Islam in public schools on the ground that applying Muslim societies were not grouped under one umbrella.

When the societies joined hands in one federation in 1997, the state turned down the request claiming the 11500-member federation was not representative of the local Muslim community, estimated at 300,000.

In Baden-Wuerttemberg, the education ministry rejected five requests in the course of the past four years to supervise the teaching of Islam in state schools.

With Muslim societies meeting all conditions and putting forward a unified and comprehensive teaching plan, the state said last December that if the plan was okayed, teaching Islam would be allowed, on a trial basis, during the next school year.

The decision preceded a landmark visit by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In the Rheinland-Pfalz state, where students hailing from foreign origin make up at least 32 percent of their age group, the education ministry was relatively more understanding.

Since 1990, the ministry has been allowing the teaching of Islam, in German, to five thousand Muslim students enrolled in 110 state-run schools.

The state government hired 75 teachers, including 14 academics specialized in Islamic studies, to supervise the process in the participating schools.

The state’s two million Muslims are not very happy with the experiment, saying the authorities should have allowed Muslims, just like Christians and Jews, to prepare their own curricula.

In the state of Sachsen, the authorities started as of the 2003/2004 school year a similar experiment in eight schools.

In 2002, the education ministry in the southern state of Bavaria began teaching Islam, in German, in 21 schools in Muslim-populated towns.

The ministry is already thinking to introduce the Islam class in all state-run schools.

Authorities in the Bremen state agreed with Muslim organizations on teaching Islam, in German, as of the current school year in one school.

Under the agreement, the state’s education and scientific research minister monitors the process while qualified and university graduate Muslim teachers, as opposed to imams, are in charge of the teaching process.

Christian students are welcomed to attend if they so choose.

In the state of Berlin, all recognized religious groups are allowed a weekly class to teach students their religions.

While the state’s education ministry foots the bill for the teaching process, the religious groups are given free hand to prepare the curricula and supervise the teaching process.