Fatima Grimm


Fatima Grimm was a German translator, author and speaker on the subject of Islam. She gained prominence as a Muslim convert in Germany and as a functionary in the German Muslim League in Hamburg.

Life and work

Fatima Grimm, born Helga Lili Wolff, was the daughter of SS-Obergruppenführer, Karl Wolff, wartime Chief of Staff to Heinrich Himmler. In 1960 she converted to the Islamic creed in the Munich apartment of Ibrahim Gacaoglu. In 1962, Grimm moved to Czechoslovakia with her then-husband Omar Abdul Aziz, a Czech Muslim. Three years later she returned with her husband to Germany, where she was involved in the Munich municipality. Grimm and her husband divorced in 1983. On April 1, 1984, she married the widowed German convert Abdulkarim Grimm and moved to Hamburg with him.
In the following decades, Grimm wrote and translated several books and wrote numerous articles, some of which appeared in the Al-Islam magazine. For several years Grimm was also in charge of the magazine. As a journalist Grimm devoted herself mainly to issues such as education and the role of women in Islam. A short-lived children's magazine, You and Islam,) was managed by her.
In addition, Grimm worked on a German translation of the Qur'an by a group of mostly women, including Halima Frills and Eva-Maria El-Shabassy. The group planned a re-translation of the English translation of the Qur'an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. The translation contained detailed comments from Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Muhammad Asad, al-Qurtubi, Sayyid Qutb, Daryabadi, Ibn Katheer, Mawdudi, al-Suyuti, and Abdul Hameed Siddiqi, that have been adopted and translated directly to comments from Sufis or Shiites. She worked for almost 16 years on 24 booklets of Al-Islam and in five volumes in SKD Bavaria, which the publisher of Abdel-Halim Khafagy published. Grimm's translation belongs alongside that of Muhammad Rassoul. Muhammed, who was from Central Council of Muslims in Germany, wrote a guide for translating the Qur'an in 1999. According to the guide "oRIENTation," of the Institute of Islamic Studies of the Free University of Berlin, Grimm's translation was a good traditionalist and interpretive translation, and was "to the purpose of mission for orientation," describes the studies, which say she was "not recommended". The website of the ZMD, islam.de, called Hamida Behr Grimm's Koran translation, which was accompanied by contemporary comments, her "probably greatest legacy." It states that it is the first jointly Sunnis and Shiite-developed Koran translation into German. "Islamic scholar not with her work dealt," but "in the new departments for Islamic theology" says their comments.
A few weeks before his death in 1984, Grimm's father, Karl Wolff, made the Islamic profession of faith. At his grave, his daughter gave the funeral prayer in the presence of representatives of the Islamic Center Munich.
From April 1999, Grimm was an honorary member of the advisory board of the ZMD. In addition, she and her husband Abdul Karim sat on the board of the German Muslim League eV Hamburg, and was a member of the Liberal Islamic Federation.
Grimm came to prominence because of a lecture given by Grimm for the first time in 1975, which was published in 1995 under the title "The Education of Our Children" from IZM. This "controversial publication of Fatima Grimm" is characterized as a lack of Islamic education, which is causing the growth of children as a "mass of half-educated nationalists, communists or humanists."
Khadija Katja Wöhler-Khalfallah quotes Grimm in an essay on woman and family life in Islam written by her with Aisha B. Lemu as an example of fundamentalist, anti-secular and jihadist polemics: " This effort, can presently be carried out both with the sword and with the feather, with the blade as with a scalpel, or even with a sewing machine or a wooden spoon. Jihad is a struggle against all forces who attack Islam from within and without. Whether these attacks aim to mock Islam to weaken its traditions and customs or to undermine his political power, they must in any case be taken very seriously, because they seek to destroy the roots of our heritage."
The Constitutional Protection Report 2010 of the Baden-Württemberg State Office for State Protection noted that in one written by Grimm published by IZM advocates the reintroduction of the Hadd punishments.
Grimm had a daughter, deceased in childhood, and a son from her first marriage and three stepchildren from her second marriage. She died in the evening of May 6, 2013 following a long illness in Hamburg.

Publications