This woman is supposed to be dangerous?

Her contribution to the discussion on the talk show “Hart aber fair” is making waves. Does Khola Maryam Hübsch trivialize Islamists and extremist theses? An approach.

But Hübsch avoids it and instead tries to spell out the terms and look at them in a differentiated way. “If a Muslim is good to his neighbors, if he works for the common good, if he does volunteer work, then he follows Sharia.” She does not see a contradiction between Sharia and the state; according to Sharia, believers must adhere to the laws of the country. Caliphate and Sharia are completely normal terminologies in the Islamic world.

Now a debate is breaking out about Khola Maryam Hübsch. The 43-year-old has been active as a broadcasting councilor for the public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk (HR) since 2021 and represents the Muslim religious communities on the broadcasting council. Hübsch advises, among other things, the director Florian Hager on questions of Islam – as desired in the spirit of the diversity requirement prescribed by law.

So does the HR director get tips on program design from a woman who trivializes Sharia law? Is Khola Maryam Hübsch a danger to the public broadcaster, which is financed with radio contributions? At least that’s how it must have seemed to readers of a major German tabloid newspaper in the past few days. “Islamist shocks with caliphate speech on TV” was initially read there, then a day later: “How can an Islamist be a broadcasting councilor?”

At Hessischer Rundfunk there is calm instead of excitement. When asked, the broadcaster t-online simply said: “The posting and naming of people is solely a matter for the organizations named in the HR Act. Ms. Hübsch was sent by the Muslim religious communities in Hesse as a representative on the Broadcasting Council.”

In this very “hr law” the Hessischer Rundfunk stipulates: “Respect for the objective value decisions of the Basic Law on which fundamental rights are based, in particular the freedom of expression, press and broadcasting guaranteed in Article 5 Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law, is a prerequisite and basis for membership in the Broadcasting Council.” This also applies to Khola Maryam Hübsch.

The Frankfurt native knows what that means. She studied journalism, German, book studies and psychology at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and writes for newspapers from the conservative spectrum of opinion such as the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and the “Welt”. It is considered moderate, not extreme. She has been giving lectures and lectures on Islamic topics for decades. In terms of content, these revolve around complexes such as “Islam and Enlightenment”, “Emancipation in Islam” and “Human rights and tolerance in Islam”.

When t-online asked her for an interview on Thursday in view of the mood and the demands that she should be removed as broadcasting councilor, she agreed. During the phone call she seems concentrated, but also unsettled and almost angry. She sees the reporting as a massive campaign against her. She has been receiving a lot of hate messages since the “Bild” newspaper called her an “Islamist”. Immediately after the “Hard but Fair” broadcast, the mood against her was not so aggressive.

But why all this? Why didn’t Hübsch manage to distance himself clearly enough during a TV discussion about an obviously extremist demonstration? She says: “For me it is completely self-evident that extremists who want to infiltrate our state should be condemned, whether they are Islamists or Reich citizens.”