Erdal Toprakyaran

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Erdal Toprakyaran (* 1974 in Grünstadt ) is a German scholar of Islam and historian . He is director of the Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Tübingen and teaches Islamic history and contemporary culture as a junior professor .

Life

Toprakyaran was born to Turkish parents in 1974 in Grünstadt in Rhineland-Palatinate. He went to school in Turkey and Germany and graduated from high school in Ludwigshafen. He then studied Islamic studies and ethnology in Heidelberg. He also spent a guest semester in the Jordanian capital Amman. After completing his master's degree, he did his doctorate in Islamic studies with a focus on Ottoman religious history.

Toprakyaran then worked at the Ruhr University in Bochum , at the Eugen Biser Foundation for interreligious and intercultural dialogue in Munich, as a religion teacher in Duisburg and as a scientific coordinator at the Institute for Studies of the Culture and Religion of Islam at Johann Wolfgang Goethe -University of Frankfurt am Main .

In April 2012 Erdal Toprakyaran was appointed junior professor for Islamic history and contemporary culture at the Center for Islamic Theology (ZITh) at the University of Tübingen. Shortly afterwards he was elected its director.

research

Toprakyaran teaches Islamic history and works out the diversity of currents and traditions. Toprakyaran: “One focus of my work is Islamic mysticism, which has a long tradition. Mysticism is very unifying and even today very diverse and widespread - also in Europe. Mystics are deeply religious, but at the same time very open to interreligious dialogue without wanting to judge or proselytize the other. In the press, mostly only the loud irreconcilable currents are taken up. "

Commitment to the reconciliation of Islam and modernity

Toprakyaran believes that the Islamic sources can be reconciled with modernity: “There is no such thing as one Islam. We have Islamic sources that allow different readings. In my opinion, these sources are reconcilable with modernity. There is Sufism, there are Islamic philosophers like Averroes. We need to bring these thinkers back into consciousness. But there are many critical Islamic theologians around the world, in Egypt, Pakistan, and Syria, for example. "

The free countries, e.g. B. Germany, would play a major role in ensuring that critical thinkers can express themselves freely: "A good example: Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, the Egyptian Koran scholar, could no longer teach in Egypt and then got a professorship at the University of Leiden."

Toprakyaran demands that politics and theology work hand in hand and believes in the spread of progressive thinking in Islamic countries as well: “You can see on IS how a primitive theology can spread rapidly. Why shouldn't the progressive forces create something like this when they network? This will not work without consistent policy. It cannot be that Saudi Arabia and other countries that disregard human rights continue to be courted. Science and politics have to go hand in hand. "

Toprakyaran is a member of the Muslim Forum Germany .

Works

  • The Ottoman petition system (mezalim) since the 18th century using the example of the city and province of Trabzon , Frankfurt a. M., 2007. Heidelberg studies on the history and culture of the modern Middle East, M. Ursinus, C. Herzog and R. Motika (eds.).
  • The relationship between orthodoxy and mysticism in the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries (habilitation thesis in progress).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Interview with Erdal Toprakyaran ZEIT November 20, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c d University of Tübingen current: Interview with junior professor Dr. Erdal Toprakyaran Newsletter Uni Tübingen current No. 5/2012 .
  3. ↑ Press release Konrad Adenauer Foundation “Muslim Forum Germany” on the initiative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation founded on April 22, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Toprakyaran, Erdal
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German scholar of Islam and historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1974
PLACE OF BIRTH Grünstadt