The second funding phase of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) that started in 2016 promotes a new interdisciplinary junior research group with a focus on "Religion and Rationality - Belief and Reason in the Life and Thought of Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Context of Plural Societies." Four new junior researchers (Postdocs) joined the group to conduct their research towards obtaining a Habilitation degree. The interdisciplinary work is carried out via the collaboration between Center for Islamic Theology, the Department of Oriental and Islamic Studies, the Evangelical and Catholic Faculties of Theology at the University of Tübingen, and the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien in Heidelberg.
The interdisciplinary research group concentrates on the following themes:
- Concepts of rationality and mystical theological thought in the 17th century
- Islamic Thought in Germany: Perspectives at the State Universities
- The Torah as an enactive pattern - legal thought beyond natural and positive law
- The vision of God (ruʾya – visio beatifica) in Islamic thought from the 8th to the 15th centuries
