Gudrun Krämer

Gudrun Krämer in April 2015 at the Römerberg Talks

Gudrun Krämer (born August 3, 1953 in Marburg ) is a German scholar of Islam . She was head of the Institute for Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin .

Live and act

Gudrun Krämer studied history , Islamic and political science and English from 1972 to 1978 at the Universities of Heidelberg , Bonn and Sussex . After the state examination in 1978, she received her doctorate in 1981 . From 1982 to 1994 she was a consultant at the Science and Politics Foundation . 1994 habilitation them at the University of Hamburg and took over the same year a professor of Islamic Studies in Bonn. From 1996 to 2019 she was director of the Institute for Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin, and since 2007 director of the “Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies”, which was founded as part of the Excellence Initiative.

Krämer is a member of the advisory boards of numerous institutions, including the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and the Federal Agency for Civic Education . She is a member of the board of the "Science and Politics Foundation". She is also co-editor of the Encyclopaedia of Islam and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences . Today she is one of the best known German scholars of Islam and often appears as an expert on the radio. In 2018 , Thomas Kerstan included your History of Islam (2005) in his canon for the 21st century , a selection of works that he believes "everyone should know".

Focus and positions

The focus of Krämer's research and publication activities is the modern history of the Middle East , in particular the complex of topics Islamism and Islamic political theory. She has repeatedly published and offered courses on politically highly explosive topics such as Islamic anti-Semitism, the role of non-Muslims under Muslim rule or the compatibility of Sharia law and human rights . In the most recent debate about the theses of the German Islamic scholar Muhammad Kalisch , who questioned the historical existence of Muhammad , she defended him, but also said that under these circumstances she viewed him as a trainer for Islamic religion teachers as problematic.

With her work Democracy in Islam (2011), Krämer presents a collection of early essays on the topics of democracy , secularism , the state and tolerance in the Islamic world. The texts are written soberly and factually and, in addition to the relevant basic information, also contain critical assessments which, despite all the stated diversity of Islam, show the limited freedom in the societies it dominates.

On June 4, 2019, she signed an appeal for the BDS campaign and criticized Israel's government policy, which aimed to dramatically escalate the Middle East conflict. In addition, Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs would initiate campaigns aimed at discrediting criticism of Israeli government policy as anti-Semitic, demonizing critics as terrorists or anti-Semites, and intimidating their supporters.

Honors - awards

• 2010 Gerda Henkel Prize . At the award ceremony, Michael Hanssler, Chairman of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, paid tribute to Krämer's “courage to speak clearly in public”. They never tire of reminding them that Islam in itself is not violent and dangerous ”.

Publications

• Egypt under Mubarak. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1986, ISBN 3-7890-1313-7 .
• The Jews in Modern Egypt, 1914-1952. University of Washington Press, Seattle 1989, ISBN 1-85043-100-0 (limited preview on Google books ).
• God's state as a republic. Contemporary Muslims on Islam, Human Rights and Democracy. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1999, ISBN 3-7890-6416-5 (also habilitation thesis at the University of Hamburg 1993).
• History of Palestine. From the Ottoman conquest to the establishment of the State of Israel. Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47601-5 .
• History of islam. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-406-53516-1 .
• with Sabine Schmidtke (Ed.): Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies. Brill, Leiden 2006, ISBN 978-90-04-14949-6 .
• Democracy in Islam. The struggle for tolerance and freedom in the Arab world , Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62126-0 .
• New Fischer world history. Volume 9: The Middle East and North Africa from 1500 , S. Fischer, ISBN 978-3-10-010829-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Gudrun Krämer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website at the FU Berlin
• "A civil state with an Islamic frame of reference" derorient.com, Interview with Gudrun Krämer on the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (December 2011)
• Distancing yourself from the jihadists is not enough Qantara.de, Interview on Islam and Violence (2015)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Organs of the Foundation - SWP
2. ↑ Prof. Dr. Gudrun Krämer website at the FU Berlin
3. ↑ A just Quran. In: tagesspiegel.de. Retrieved December 15, 2014 . 
4. ↑ Th. Kerstan: What our children need to know. A canon for the 21st century. Hamburg 2018. p. 11, 190f.
5. ↑ Training of religious teachers: Islamic associations end cooperation with only institute. In: Spiegel Online . September 13, 2008, accessed December 15, 2014 . 
6. ↑ Armin Pfahl-Traughber: Characteristics of the Arab World Review of Gudrun Krämer's publication Democracy in Islam . hpd , August 25, 2011.
7. ↑ 16 so-called Middle East experts: Israel boycott. In: The time. June 4, 2019, accessed June 4, 2019 . 
8. ↑ "Islam is a new element of German culture". In: welt.de . November 8, 2010, accessed December 15, 2014 .