Cosenza, Italia
In the frame of European Islam, imams assume a fundamental socio-theological relevance. In a minority context, they have to face the main task of, on the one hand, preserving religion, on the other, adapting God’s message to daily life, filtering it between different universes of sense, elaborating new interpretations to legitimate diverse practices and habits. The increase of imams’ tasks and skills has raised the question of their training, in particular that provided in European Institutes. Using an approach conjugating an islamological analysis with some concepts of the phenomenological sociology, the article analyses the history and the training programs of the main institutes for imam in France, in order to highlight their main limits, opportunities and risks.