Ayyub Axel Köhler

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Ayyub Axel Köhler (born 3 April 1938 in Szczecin as Axel Köhler) is an official of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany. He was its chairman from 2006 until September 2010, before he was replaced in this function by Aiman Mazyek. From 1999 to 2004, Köhler was a member of the FDP parliamentary group in the district representation of Cologne-Nippes.

Live life
During the Second World War, Köhler was relocated with his family to Schönewalde in the course of expulsion, and in 1951 he moved to Halle (Saale). After graduating from high school in 1956, he fled from the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he studied geophysics at the universities in Freiburg and Kiel and in 1968 at the University of Cologne in this subject. He is a member of the Corps Alemannia zu Kiel (Weinheimer Senioren-Convent). Köhler converted to Sunni Islam in 1963 at the age of 25 during his student days and now called himself Ayyub Axel Köhler (the name Ayyub is the Arabic variant of the biblical Job).

Subsequently, he worked for a short time at the German Aerospace Center in Cologne to work as an assistant professor at the University of Tehran in 1970 and from 1973 until his retirement in 1999 at the Institute of German Economy in Cologne. He also advised the International Association of Islamic Banks (IAIB) of the OIC in Cyprus and Cairo until 1992.

From 1988 to 1993, Köhler was co-founder and spokesman of the Islamic Working Group, a precursor organization of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (ZMD), founded in 1994. From 2000 to 2002 he was Chairman of the German Muslim League e.V. (DML Hamburg).
Before he took over the chairmanship of the ZMD from Nadeem Elyas in February 2006, he served as its Secretary General and Chairman of the Advisory Board for five years. From April to September 2007, Köhler was the first spokesman for the Coordinating Council of Muslims, which was founded in 2007 with the support of his wife Asiye Köhler. He held this office from 1 April to 30. September 2009 again. On 18 September 2010, he was voted out of office as Central Council Chairman in a battle vote in favour of Aiman Mazyek. Köhler also joined the ZMD advisory board.

Köhler is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Christian-Islamic Society.

Publications
Ayyub Axel Köhler has published numerous articles mainly in Islamic journals such as Al-Islam of the Islamic Center Munich, “Al-Fadschr” of the Islamic Center Hamburg and in newsletters of the Muslim League, in which he mostly deals with the integration of Islamic ways of life into German society. In it, Köhler opposes, among other things, a bureaucratization of Islam through recognition as a corporation under public law and against state models of “Islamic instruction” such as in North Rhine-Westphalia (“with flimsy reasons betrayed the Muslims”) or LER in Brandenburg and Hamburg (“blatant lack of development”)