Bekim Agai - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Bekim Agai

Islamic Studies in European Higher Education

In ihrem Gespräch beschäftigen sich Prof. Dr. Bekim Agai, geschäftsführender Direktor des Institu... more In ihrem Gespräch beschäftigen sich Prof. Dr. Bekim Agai, geschäftsführender Direktor des Instituts für Studien der Kultur und Religion des Islam, und Ulrike Jaspers, Redakteurin von "Forschung Frankfurt", mit dem Wahrheitsanspruch der Religionen, der Debattenkultur in Deutschland, der jungen islamischen Theologie, den fundamentalistischen Strömungen und anderem mehr

Journal of Muslims in Europe

Looking at the fragmented documents of Muslim community life at mosques, bringing together differ... more Looking at the fragmented documents of Muslim community life at mosques, bringing together different types of materials and creating mosque archives is a challenging endeavour, as shown by the contributions in this volume. This contribution asks for the implication the archives, once collected and considered as parts of a larger picture, can have for the formation of a Muslim collective memory. Connecting different archives – with their singular experiences – into collective forms of memory, similar experiences and ruptures come to the surface and a new perspective on a shared German history is articulated. As the collective memory is a reservoir to understand the past, giving meaning to the present, and a source for the future, this process has a social and political dimension. The process of creating a Muslim collective memory will fill blanks within German history and add new chapters, but will at the same time change Muslim self-perception and self-positioning by recentring thei...

Turkish Islam and the secular state, 2003

Journalisten-Handbuch zum Thema Islam, 2016

Donated by Klaus KreiserReprint from : Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 2004

Venturing beyond borders, 2013

Throughout history there has always been cultural contact to a varying extent between those regio... more Throughout history there has always been cultural contact to a varying extent between those regions today referred to as the Near and Middle East on the one hand and Europe on the other. Despite political, geographical and religious obstacles, goods were exchanged, ideas and knowledge were transferred, people travelled and migrated across borders, while borders themselves changed their course and people stayed or fled over to the other side. In this sense the boundaries proved to be porous, but they became considerably more permeable from the 19 th century onwards. The reasons were twofold. On the one hand, developments in infrastructure and transport technologies, such as railways and steamers, rendered previous notions of distance obsolete. Then again this development went hand in hand with political developments. To an increasing degree, the Near and Middle East became part of the European political sphere while the relationship to the European states became more and more vital for the Middle Eastern centres of power on a political, economic and cultural level. This paper will discuss the influence of the Islamic religion in the ability of Muslims to get into contact with non-Islamic Europe as well as the role of religion within the perception of "the Self " and "the Other". Does an understanding of the classical positions of Islamic law help us to comprehend historical developments? Bernard Lewis suggests that a "Muslim worldview" based on Islamic doctrinal positions determined cultural contact with Europe and prevented Muslims from broadening their horizons. His line of argument claims that unlike for Europeans, religion for Muslims has always been and still is the essential category of identity and restricted cultural contact. I want to question the idea that Islam (as a normative religious tradition) is per se the predominant determiner for "the Muslim" (as a historical and social being) in cultural contact. I will do so by first discussing Bernard Lewis's line of arguments. This will be followed by a theoretical frame for dealing with identity, alterity and the mechanisms involved in the process of the imagination of Self and Other. By taking identity and alterity not as a feature of the entities themselves, but as a feature of their relationship that is determined by both sides, we may understand how much the "Muslim" traveller is or is not determined by ideas prefigured by religion. This will question Lewis' assumptions on a theoretical level. With this back

Islamischer Religionsunterricht in Deutschland, 2010

Bildung und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in der Türkei, 2011

Ein traditioneller Gelehrter stellt sich der Moderne, 2017

The Religious Impact of Science and Natural Science in the Writings of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

The Piety of Learning: Islamic Studies in Honor of Stefan Reichmuth, 2017

Science, as a cultural and social practice, inevitably takes shape and is performed within contex... more Science, as a cultural and social practice, inevitably takes shape and is performed within contexts,1 and reflecting upon its own circumstances, conditionality, and not least its functionality, forms a necessary part of any self-conscious academic discipline, complementing, accompanying, and affecting the scholarly endeavor to which it is committed. Any inquiry into the establishment of Islamic Theological Studies2 in Germany thus has to acknowledge the fact that the presence of Islam has become a demographic and social reality in that country. It is estimated that around 4 million Muslims currently live in Germany, not including the vast number of Muslim refugees who arrived over the course of 2015 and 2016. These numbers are mostly, although by no means exclusively, the result of processes that began with labor migration to Germany in the 1950s. Muslims in Germany practice their religion in different ways and on various levels, in the family, privately at home, in mosques, or in other forms of religious organizations.3 Their average age is 30.1 years, which is younger

Toronto Journal of Theology, 2015

The academic discipline of Islamic theological studies is a latecomer to Germany. When the German... more The academic discipline of Islamic theological studies is a latecomer to Germany. When the German Council of Science and Humanities published its “Recommendations on the Advancement of Theologies and Sciences Concerned with Religions at German Universities” in 2010, it included a recommendation to establish Islamic theological studies, on par with Christian theologies, at German universities. In this blueprint for the speedy introduction of this new discipline, certain expectations at the scientific and social levels were expressed. The introduction of the discipline into German universities is an interesting interplay of state, science, and religion within a secular setting and has to be understood in the context of recent developments to integrate citizens of Muslim belief as Muslims into German society at large. These recommendations also affected the academic field. Discussions took place within the established Orientalist discipline of Islamic studies (Islamwissenschaft) regard...

Muslims in Interwar Europe

© bekim agai, umar ryad and mehdi sajid, ��6 | doi �0.��63/978900430�979_00� This is an open acc... more © bekim agai, umar ryad and mehdi sajid, ��6 | doi �0.��63/978900430�979_00� This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License. chapter 1

Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte / European History Yearbook (2011), 2011

Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 2002

... His past, present and aim] (Istanbul: Ozan, 1998); and Emin M. Deger, Bir Cumhuriyet Düsmanõ ... more ... His past, present and aim] (Istanbul: Ozan, 1998); and Emin M. Deger, Bir Cumhuriyet Düsmanõ n Portresi ya da Fethullah Gülen Hocaefendi'nin Derin ... 39 Fethullah M. Gülen, Ruhumuzun Heykelini Dikerken [Setting up the monument of our spirit] (Izmir: Nil, 1998), p. 128. ...