Hamed Abdel-Samad

Hamed Abdel-Samad, 2018

Hamed Abdel-Samad ( Arabic حامد عبد الصمد, DMG Ḥāmid ʿAbd aṣ-Ṣamad ; * February 1, 1972 near Cairo ) is a German - Egyptian political scientist and journalist . He is best known to the public as an author of works critical of Islam .

Life

Until 2010

Abdel-Samad was born the third of five children to a Sunni imam . In his autobiography, he mentions being raped by a 15-year-old at the age of four and by a group of five youths in a cemetery at the age of eleven.

As a student he was a member of the radical Islamic Muslim Brotherhood .

In 1995 he came to Germany at the age of 23. Soon afterwards he married a “rebellious left teacher with a penchant for mysticism” 18 years his senior .

Abdel-Samad studied English and French in Cairo as well as politics in Augsburg and later Japanese in Japan . He worked as a scientist in Erfurt and Braunschweig as well as in Japan, where he was interested in Shintoism and Buddhism . In Japan he met his future second wife, whose father is Dane and whose mother is Japanese.

He taught and researched at the Institute for Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich until the end of 2009 (dissertation topic: “Image of the Jews in Egyptian textbooks”). He did not complete the dissertation.

2010-2013

Hamed Abdel-Samad (2013)

In 2010, Abdel-Samad was appointed to participate in the 2nd German Islam Conference by the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière . Abdel-Samad has been on the Advisory Board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation since November 2011 . In 2013 he was a speaker at the 2nd Critical Islam Conference . He has been on the Advisory Board of the Raif Badawi Foundation for Freedom since September 2015 .

After Abdel-Samad had accused the Muslim Brotherhood of “Islamic fascism ” at a lecture in Cairo on June 4, 2013 and said “that this fascism was based on the origins of Islam”, calls for murder against him were published on the Internet the next day. On June 7, Assem Abdel-Maged , a leader of the Gamaa Islamija and an ally of President Mohammed Morsi , called for the murder of Abdel-Samad on Egyptian television because his statements were an insult to the Prophet. Usual whereabouts of Abdel-Samad in Cairo have been published on the Internet. Abdel-Samad called on Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle publicly to criticize the call for murder in the strongest possible terms and to call on Egyptian President Morsi to also condemn it. Mahmoud Shaaban , professor at al-Azhar University in Cairo, repeated the appeal for murder. In the newspaper al-Ahram, Abdel-Samad called for his protection by the Egyptian judiciary. The Federal Government’s human rights commissioner approached the Egyptian government through the Süddeutsche Zeitung , and the Foreign Office told the Egyptian embassy charges that the Egyptian government should stop the publication of calls for murder. Meanwhile, Assem Abdel-Maged announced that his supporters were not responsible for the violence in the demonstrations against President Morsi announced for June 30th. Abdel-Samad was meanwhile in hiding in Egypt and reported both the false equation of the opposition with his opinion and the support of those who think differently. Neither the president nor the judiciary of Egypt responded to his threat. Finally, Foreign Minister Westerwelle demanded via Facebook that the Egyptian government should take action against the originators of the murder call, that the Foreign Office was in direct contact with Abdel-Samad and had offered him concrete help. When the announced demonstrations against President Morsi took place, Abdel-Samad was back in Germany and began a lecture tour. On July 7, 2013, an arrest warrant was issued on Assem Abdel-Maged for street battles after President Morsi's dismissal, calling for the murder of Abdel-Samad.

On November 24, 2013, Hamed Abdel-Samad was abducted in front of Al-Azhar Park in Cairo and held for two days in an undisclosed location. Shortly afterwards, the federal government demanded the "fastest possible investigation" of Egypt. The Federal Foreign Office confirmed that it had contact with him shortly before Abdel-Samad's disappearance. Abdel-Samad's brother stated that he had told him that he felt persecuted. Shortly afterwards, Abdel-Samad could no longer be reached. On November 26, 2013, Abdel-Samad reappeared with injuries to his eyes and head, according to his brother, and placed himself in the care of the German embassy. It turned out that he had been kidnapped not by opponents for political or religious reasons, but by acquaintances because of money disputes.

Since 2014

On July 14, 2014, Abdel-Samad announced on the social network Facebook that he would leave Germany after living there for nineteen years. One of the reasons he gave was that Germany was becoming more and more uncomfortable for people like him and that it would be under unbearable pressure. The entry was subsequently deleted, but numerous blogs and online newspapers had already published the report.

On the occasion of his book Mohamed - Eine Abrechnung , he gave a lecture in Dachau in 2015 at the invitation of Alternative für Deutschland . There were protests beforehand. He also appeared in October of the same year at the AfD Berlin. Samad said in an interview about his appearance: “I am not an AfD member, I will not vote for the AfD in the near future either because I do not agree with the direction. But that's exactly why I'm coming; that's why we have to talk to each other. Who else should we talk to if not with people who disagree? "

Together with Ahmad Mansour , he received the Josef Neuberger Medal in October 2015 for their work against anti-Semitism in the Islamic world.

In 2016, based on statements made in the book, a criminal complaint was brought against him for sedition because he had labeled Mohammed a "mass murderer". The interrogation carried out by the Berlin public prosecutor's office was criticized by Michael Wolffsohn in der Welt and by Abdel-Samad himself as an inadmissible restriction on freedom of expression . The proceedings were discontinued a few months later.

In September 2017, Abdel-Samad published a video on YouTube and Facebook in Arabic, German and English to Muslims all over the world in which he warned young Muslims not to allow imams to instrumentalize them in suicide attacks. The German speech reached more than 200,000 in two days, the Arabic speech over a million viewers in five days. In November 2017, the short message service Twitter temporarily blocked his user account. According to his information, an Algerian Islamist and his friends attacked him online for publishing pictures and texts according to which the Algerian had been in prison for violence against religious minorities and has now applied for asylum in Germany. In contrast to Twitter, Facebook did not react. Abdel-Samad then stated that he had been warning against the infiltration of social networks by Islamists for years: “Often, accounts of Islam critics on Facebook and Twitter are blocked and videos of them are deleted on YouTube, while Islamist, anti-Western and anti-Israeli accounts that stir up hatred, remain untouched. ”The reason is the ideological orientation of some employees of these media, who have an Islamic or left-liberal background.

On June 17, 2019, Hamed Abdel-Samad's YouTube channel called Hamed.TV with around 125,000 subscribers, on which he primarily publishes videos in Arabic critical of Islam , was deleted without comment, but again soon afterwards due to numerous protests by more or less prominent personalities Put online.

Positions

Abdel-Samad is of the opinion that Islam contains spiritual, political and legal facets and, as an overall concept, cannot be reformed. But Muslims could reform their thinking and acting. He supports the Reformation-humanistic approaches of the Austrian theologian Mouhanad Khorchide . At the same time, he objects that Korchide's “humanistic reading” is not compatible with large parts of “authentic” Islam.

He is also of the opinion that boy circumcision for ritual reasons is an illegitimate act.

In the course of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Chancellor Merkel's confession that Islam belongs to Germany from former Federal President Wulff was criticized by Abdel-Samad as being helpless and unimaginative. Rehabilitation from religion is not the job of politicians. Islam also includes the separation into believers and unbelievers and that women have almost no rights. There are questionable passages in the Koran, the Sunna and the Hadith , which terrorists also refer to, which should be questioned and which require an explanatory distancing.

He also criticizes the fact that the churches in Germany rely too much on dialogue with Islamic associations such as the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion (DITIB) instead of talking to individual people. Because the goal of this political Islam is not integration, but rather it hides behind the churches and uses gray areas in the Basic Law to build its own infrastructure.

plant

Abdel-Samad became known to the general public through his autobiography Mein Abschied vom Himmel (2009). It is neither a reckoning with his culture nor a call to renounce faith. He just wants to understand the contradictions of his life. After the publication in Egypt, a group issued a fatwa against Abdel-Samad. He was then placed under permanent police protection.

Abdel-Samad is of the opinion that only an “Islam light” in Europe has a future, an Islam without Sharia , jihad , gender apartheid , proselytizing and claiming mentality. He criticizes that out of fear or political and economic calculation , a policy of appeasement is pursued towards Islam , while the fears of the own population (of Islam) are hidden from the political debate. This behavior turns into resentment in the German population .

From autumn 2010, he and the journalist Henryk M. Broder undertook a more than 30,000 km long road trip through Germany with a detour to Denmark to visit Kurt Westergaard for the 14-part TV series " Entweder Broder - Die Deutschland-Safari " . For this, both received the Bavarian TV Prize in 2012 .

Abdel-Samad is present in the German media, for example as a guest on talk shows and through interviews on Islam. As a political scientist from Egypt, he was often asked about the Arab Spring .

During the revolution in Egypt in early February 2011, he traveled back to his homeland and sided with the protesters. He was available as an interview partner for the German media during the reporting. He mentioned in the daily topics that Hosni Mubarak was "not a stability factor for Egypt and the region". He hoped that Mubarak's rule would come to an end.

He clearly supported the 2013 military coup in Egypt . He said the action was "not a real coup, but a hostage liberation operation," referring instead to Morsi's previous behavior as a coup against democracy.

The work Islamic Fascism: An Analysis emerged as a result of the lecture given in 2013. Abdel-Samad sees in it, in addition to the coinciding date of origin in the 1920s, content-related similarities between Islamism and fascism . The work was widely received within the mass media and became a bestseller .

Since June 2015, Abdel-Samad released his weekly Arabic-language YouTube telecast Box of Islam . He is also one of the regular guest authors of the Axis of Good .

In his work Mohamed - Eine Abrechnung , published in autumn 2015 , Abdel-Samed takes the view that Mohammed was an insulted outsider, a pathological tyrant , narcissist , paranoid and mass murderer. What the Islamic world is suffering from can only be cured if Muslims are free from the multiple illnesses of the Prophet: overestimation of themselves, paranoia, inability to criticize and the tendency to be offended. The distorted image of God, which has become a model for despots , must also be called into question. The book was a bestseller shortly after it was published. In the 3Sat broadcast on April 10, 2016, Mohammed - End of a taboo? Peter Voss asks Hamed Abdel-Samad , he commented again in detail.

Books

• My farewell to heaven. From the life of a Muslim in Germany . Torch bearer, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7716-4419-2 (Knaur, 2010: ISBN 978-3-426-78408-2 ).
• The fall of the Islamic world. A forecast . Droemer, 2010 (Knaur, 2010: ISBN 978-3-426-78406-8 ).
• with Henryk M. Broder : Either Broder - The Germany Safari . Albrecht Knaus, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8135-0421-7 .
• War or Peace: The Arab Revolution and the Future of the West . Droemer, 2011, ISBN 978-3-426-27558-0 .
• with Herfried Münkler and Juli Zeh : What is the choice ?: About the future of politics . Herder, 2013, ISBN 978-3-451-30913-7 .
• Islamic Fascism: An Analysis . Droemer, 2014, ISBN 978-3-426-27627-3 .
• Mohamed - A settlement . Droemer, 2015, ISBN 978-3-426-27640-2 . ( 1st place on the Spiegel bestseller list from October 10th to 16th, 2015 )
• with Mouhanad Khorchide : Freedom includes criticizing the Koran . Herder, 2016, ISBN 978-3-451-27146-5 .
• with Hans Rath : An Arab and a German have to talk . Rowohlt, 2016, ISBN 978-3-499-63198-6 .
• The Koran: message of love. Message of hatred . Droemer, 2016, ISBN 978-3-426-27701-0 .
• with Mouhanad Khorchide : Can Islam still be saved ?: A polemic in 95 theses . Droemer, 2017, ISBN 978-3-426-27734-8 .
• Integration: A Protocol of Failure . Droemer, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-426-27739-3 .

TV documentaries

• Either Broder - The Germany Safari . (with Henryk M. Broder ), ARD 2010/11.
• Either Broder - The European Safari. (with Henryk M. Broder), ARD 2012.
• Europe's Muslims (with Nazan Gökdemir ), ZDF 2016
• The Eternal Anti-Semite (with Henryk M. Broder and Leon de Winter , Director / Production: Joachim Schroeder ), BR 2017.

items

• From belief to knowledge . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , December 3, 2009
• Islam has a problem with itself. In: Die Welt , January 29, 2010
• Goodbye, Abraham! In: Jüdische Allgemeine , September 23, 2010
• Lost Alexandria . In: Die Welt , January 6, 2011
• One perpetrator is not enough . In: Die Welt , July 30, 2011.
• Much ado about nothing . In: Die Welt , August 18, 2011
• Sharia or Sharia light? In: Die Welt , November 3, 2011
• The popcorn of the revolution. In: Welt am Sonntag , January 29, 2012
• My dear Muslim Brotherhood . In: Welt am Sonntag , December 30, 2012
• In the hostage of Islam . In: Focus , August 19, 2013
• Enemy as a role model. In: Jüdische Allgemeine , April 3, 2014
• The new religious wars . In: Die Zeit , No. 39, 2014
• Hypocritical officials. In: Die Welt , October 6, 2014
• Erdogan, the lonely sultan. In: Welt am Sonntag , December 7, 2014
• IS, homemade. In: Die Welt , December 17, 2014
• Stop hating: recipes against radicalism . In: Der Kurier , January 11, 2015
• Mohammed had the blasphemers killed. In: Die Zeit , No. 3, 2015
• Learning to laugh at Mohammed. In: Welt am Sonntag , February 1, 2015
• The dangerous prophet. In: Die Zeit , No. 38, 2015
• The long arm of Islam. In: Die Welt , September 26, 2015
• We have a real epidemic of violence in the heart of Islam. - Interview with Lisa Nimmervoll. In: Der Standard , October 25, 2016

Awards

• 2012: Bavarian TV Prize for the TV documentary Entweder Broder - Die Deutschland-Safari (together with Henryk M. Broder )
• 2015: Josef Neuberger Medal of the Düsseldorf Jewish Community (together with Ahmad Mansour )

Others

The asteroid (249010) Abdel-Samad , which was initially called 2007 QE5 or 2007 QK3 , is named after Hamed Abdel-Samad.

Web links

Commons : Hamed Abdel-Samad  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Hamed Abdel-Samad in the catalog of the German National Library
• Hamed Abdel-Samad in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Short biography and reviews of works by Hamed Abdel-Samad at perlentaucher.de
• Hamed.TV (Arabic) - Hamed Abdel-Samad's website
• Hamed Abdel-Samad | Islam and Islamic criticism (NZZ Standpunkte 2017) , YouTube video - 50-minute detailed conversation with Abdel-Samad
• Hamed Abdel-Samad on the website of Droemer Knaur Verlag
• Vita Hamed Abdel-Samads on the website of the Giordano Bruno Foundation
• Hamed Abdel Samad - From Freedom and Liberation , Interview with Angela Krumpen, Domradio , June 10, 2018.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hamed Abdel-Samad. In: Droemer Knaur. Retrieved January 7, 2014 . 
2. ↑ From Criticism of Islam to Post-Salafism. In: qantara.de , accessed on December 5, 2015
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} I have converted to knowledge . In: taz.de , September 8, 2009, accessed January 8, 2010.
4. ↑ https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/nzz-standpunkte-hamad-abdel-samad-islam-und-islamkritik-ld.149073
5. ↑ Hamed Abdel-Samad. In: Droemer Knaur. Retrieved January 7, 2014 . 
6. ↑ Short biography on the occasion of the review of “My farewell from heaven. From the life of a Muslim in Germany ”. In: swr.de , September 8, 2009, accessed October 1, 2015
7. ↑ Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich: hit for search term Abdel-Samad , accessed on October 1, 2015
8. ↑ See what is available for choice. About the future of politics. In: Neuhardenberger Talks at the moment . Herder, Freiburg 2013, p. 11.
9. ↑ Abdel-Samad: was appointed to the advisory board of the “Raif Badawi Foundation for Freedom”, Abdel-Samad's own statement in: Facebook
10. ↑ Ulf Kalkreuth: Arab Ice Age - The publicist Hamed Abdel-Samad is threatened with the fatwa . ARD . June 23, 2013. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
11. ^ Criticism of Islam: Open call for murder against publicist Abdel-Samad . In: Spiegel Online . June 9, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
12. ↑ Appeal for murder: Islam critic Abdel-Samad disappeared . In: Spiegel Online . June 11, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
13. ↑ Islamists call for the murder of German Egyptians . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 11, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
14. ↑ Islamists brace for June 30 . In: Daily News Egypt . June 11, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
15. ↑ "This is where diplomacy ends for me!" . In: The world . June 12, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
16. ↑ "He must not live" . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . June 12, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
17. ↑ I condemn the call for murder against ... ( Memento from July 15, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
18. ↑ Egypt: "This mass movement is enormous" . In: Deutschlandfunk . July 1, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
19. ^ Arrest warrants issued for Islamist leaders . In: Daily News Egypt . July 7, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
20. ↑ Islam critic Hamed Abdel-Samad: "One word and you are dead". In: Spiegel Online , November 20, 2013, accessed October 1, 2015
21. ↑ ^{a b} German-Egyptians reappeared. In: welt.de , November 26, 2013
22. ↑ Missing publicist. In: taz.de , November 25, 2013.
23. ^ Federal government demands clarification about the fate of Abdel-Samad. In: faz.net , November 25, 2013, accessed October 1, 2015
24. ↑ No trace of Abdel-Samad , tagesschau.de from November 26, 2013 ( Memento from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
25. ↑ Kidnapped publicist Hamed Abdel-Samad reappears. In: Zeit Online , November 26, 2013, accessed October 1, 2015
26. ^ Injured Abdel-Samad wants to speak in Germany. In: welt.de , November 27, 2013, accessed October 1, 2015
27. ^ Alleged kidnapping in Egypt: Islam critic Abdel-Samad in the care of the German embassy. In: Spiegel Online , November 26, 2013
28. ↑ Dispute over money: Abdel-Samad was kidnapped by friends. In: Spiegel Online , November 27, 2013, accessed October 1, 2015
29. ↑ Islam critic Hamed Abdel-Samad: "One word and you are dead" . In: Spiegel Online, November 30, 2013
30. ↑ BEST-SELLING AUTHOR: Hamed Abdel-Samad now wants to emigrate. In: taz.de . July 15, 2014, accessed January 12, 2017 . 
31. ↑ Islam critic Hamed Abdel-Samad: Tumults at the vigil. In: Merkur.de , October 30, 2015
32. ↑ Hamed Abdel-Samad at the AfD in Berlin "... because I take freedom seriously." In: hpd.de
33. ↑ Muslims honored for the first time. In: Jüdische Alltemeine , October 29, 2015, accessed March 10, 2018
34. ↑ Michael Wolffsohn: The Islam critic as a seducer? In: Welt Online. March 16, 2016, accessed April 12, 2016 . 
35. ↑ Hamed Abdel-Samad: Facebook post from October 11, 2016
36. ↑ “Young Muslims, do not be seduced!” WeltN24, September 13, 2017.
37. ↑ “Islamists are protected, but critics are banned” , In: WeltN24 , November 3, 2017.
38. ↑ Islamic critic Abdel-Samad temporarily blocked on Twitter , In: General-Anzeiger , November 3, 2017.
39. ^ Twitter account of the Islamic critic Abdel Samad blocked - and released again , In: Medienmagazin pro , November 3, 2017.
40. ↑ Youtube deletes Hamed Abdel-Samad's channel at tichyseinblick.de.
41. ↑ Bernd Kammermeier: Humanism as Islam's last chance? (1). (Interview) With Hamed Abdel-Samad and Prof. Dr. An interview with Mouhanad Khorchide. In: Humanistic press service. Volker Panzer, October 19, pp. 1 and 2 , accessed on October 25, 2015 . 
42. ↑ Bernd Kammermeier: Humanism as Islam's last chance? (2). (Interview) With Hamed Abdel-Samad and Prof. Dr. An interview with Mouhanad Khorchide. In: Humanistic press service. Volker Panzer, October 20, pp. 1 and 2 , accessed October 25, 2015 . 
43. ↑ Dietmar Neuerer: Confession of Islam by the Chancellor: "Ms. Merkel, you are wrong!" In: Handelsblatt . January 14, 2015, accessed January 15, 2015 . 
44. ↑ Political scientist Abdel-Samad warns of political Islam , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 7, 2017.
45. ↑ “The Koran is taken too seriously”. Hamed Abdel-Samad in conversation with Korbinian Frenzel. Deutschlandradio Kultur , October 6, 2016, accessed on February 21, 2017 .  
46. ↑ Hamed Abdel-Samad: And it does exist - Islam! In: Tagesspiegel , January 5, 2010.
47. ↑ Hamed Abdel-Samad: The Muslims are too sensitive. In: Tagesspiegel , December 1, 2009.
48. ↑ Interview with Abdel-Samad September 13, 2010. In: Spiegel Online .
49. ↑ Hamed Abdel-Samad: “Ideas don't die anymore”. Interview with Thomas Geisen. In: Kölner Stadtanzeiger , February 11, 2012, accessed on December 12, 2017
50. ^ Political scientist Abdel-Samad on the possibilities of forming a government. In: tagesschau.de , January 31, 2011, accessed October 1, 2015
51. ↑ Hamed Abdel-Samad: “Unrest in Egypt. The fanatics will lose ”. Guest article in Spiegel Online , July 6, 2013, accessed October 1, 2015
52. ↑ Box of Islam on YouTube (Arabic).
53. ^ Articles by and about Hamed Abdel-Samad at the Axis of the Good .
54. ^ Review of a preprint of "Mohamed: Ein Abrechnung". In: Die Zeit No. 38/2015, September 17, 2015, online September 28, 2015
55. ↑ Interview with Abdel-Samad about his work “Mohamed: Eine Abrechnung”. In: Die Welt , September 27, 2015
56. ↑ 3sat.de ( Memento of the original from April 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
57. ↑ Mona Sarkis: Hamed Abdel Samad's "My Farewell to Heaven". In: Deutsche Welle. December 21, 2009. Retrieved August 28, 2012 . 
58. ↑ Wolfgang Günter Lerch: The "Fall of the Islamic World". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. November 17, 2010, accessed August 28, 2012 . 
59. ↑ Walter Laqueur: Hamed Abdel-Samad prophesies the end of Islam. In: Welt Online. November 19, 2010, accessed August 28, 2012 . 
60. ↑ Hasnain Kazim: Islamic critic Hamed Abdel-Samad: Uncomfortable key witness , Spiegel Online , April 9, 2018
61. ↑ https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ixisq
62. ↑ Main-Belt Asteroid "249010 Abdel-Samad (2007 QE5)", in: Small-Body Database Browser of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology . NASA . February 22, 2011. Retrieved October 1, 2015.