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The Senior Research Seminar is intended for advanced MA students to guide them in their academic study and research. It further provides a vibrant platform for PhD and Habilitation candidates to present and discuss their ongoing research and to offer feedback on others’ ideas. For the current programme (Summer Semester 2024), please see the poster.

For registration, please send an email to sekretariat-glaubenslehre@zith.uni-tuebingen.de

Green Theology, edited by Lejla Demiri, Mujadad Zaman, and Tim Winter, will be published in April 2024 as part of the Sapientia Islamica series at Mohr Siebeck.

The contributors to this volume offer an in-depth examination of Muslim and Christian theological treatments of environmental and ecological concerns. The volume brings together a collection of articles by Muslim and Christian voices from diverse denominations and schools of thought, reflecting on environmental issues in the context of the current climate emergency. It provides a unique intellectual space for international experts in the two theological worlds as well as specialists in science and architecture to discuss the most pressing matters of ecology and care for the earth. This model of interreligious and interdisciplinary collaboration is likely to help scholars network even more closely, both inside their home traditions and with their theological neighbours.

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Lejla Demiri has been elected to the membership of the Wolfenbüttel Working Group for Early Modern Research (Wolfenbüttel Arbeitskreis Frühneuzeitforschung). This committee of various scholars aims to connect the Herzog August Bibliothek with the full breadth of research into the early modern era. With this goal in mind, the Arbeitskreis Frühneuzeitforschung was set up in 2019 as a merger of the two Wolfenbüttel working groups focusing on Renaissance research and Baroque research. The core aspects of its programme – interdisciplinarity, interepochality and internationality – are foregrounded at its regular conferences, which cover a broad range of themes.

For more information see here

Lejla Demiri (ed. and trans),ʿUbayd Allāh al-Samarqandī (d. 701/1301) on Servanthood and Repentance: A Critical Edition and Translation, Cambridge: Cambridge Muslim College Press, 2023.

With the intention to make Māturīdī literature more widely accessible and to contribute towards a better understanding of this rich scholarly tradition, the present study by Lejla Demiri aims to present two short treatises by ʿUbayd Allāh al-Samarqandī, a Ḥanafī and Māturīdī scholar who was active in 13th-century Damascus. The present book includes a critical edition and an annotated translation of two short treatises by Samarqandī, which have never been published before: (1) Risālat al-‘Ubūdiyya, ‘Treatise on Servanthood’ and (2) Risālat al-Tawba, ‘Treatise on Repentance’. The two treatises are being introduced, followed by a short description of the existing manuscripts, critical edition and annotated translation of each risāla. 

The Senior Research Seminar is intended for advanced MA students to guide them in their academic study and research. It further provides a vibrant platform for PhD and Habilitation candidates to present and discuss their ongoing research and to offer feedback on others’ ideas. For the current programme (Winter Semester 2023), please see the poster.

The international workshop ‘Muslim Readings of the Bible’ (27–29 September 2023) brought together prominent scholars dealing with the theological, historical, and interfaith elements of Muslim scholarly readings of the Bible. Focused on a number of Ottoman examples, the two-day event, held at the Center for Islamic Theology (ZITh), Tübingen, was organized by the sub-project ‘The Argument from Scripture’ (Lejla Demiri), part of the DFG funded interdisciplinary research group, ‘FOR 2828: De/Sacralization of Texts’. Alongside the invited specialists, doctoral candidates, post-docs, and other members of the research group participated. Here you can find the full workshop report.

On 11–12 September 2023, the 10th Cambridge-Tübingen Workshop took place at St John's College in Cambridge. Organized by Prof. Dr. Renate Dürr (Tübingen) and Prof. Dr. Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge), the workshop is part of the "Network Religious Knowledge in the Early Modern World", which is funded by DAAD Cambridge. The participants presented their research in four panels on the cross-cutting themes of "The Spirituality of Water", "Religion and Empire", "Spirituality, Speech, and Senses in German Protestantism" and "Cultures of Communication". From ChID, Prof. Dr. Lejla Demiri presented on "Sultan Djem and the Pope" and Lea Schlenker on "German Lutheran traditions, with special consideration of 'Christian Sermons on the Appendix to the Catechism' (Tübingen 1680)“.

The European Academy of Religion (EuARe) held its sixth annual conference between 19–23 June 2023 in St Andrews, Scotland, UK. Focusing on the topic “Religion from the Inside”, each day of the conference concluded with a keynote from a distinguished speaker representing one of the five world religions. On Thursday 22 June, Prof. Dr. Lejla Demiri gave the keynote address entitled “An Islamic Approach to Islamic Studies? Muslim Faith Commitment in the European Orientalist Sphere”. In her lecture, she reflected upon the study of Islam in European academe today, with a special focus on the creation of a new discipline, “Islamic theology”, at German universities. In conjunction with the 2023 EuARe annual meeting, the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews held a conference on “Theology in Conversation” to celebrate Christoph Schwöbel’s contributions to Christian theology. Building upon the tradition of Scriptural Reasoning seminars from 2015 to 2021 with her late colleague Prof. Dr. Christoph Schwöbel, Prof. Dr. Lejla Demiri also chaired a Scriptural Reasoning session on Friday 23 June together with Prof. Dr. Judith Wolfe. Participants read and discussed Biblical and Qur’anic texts on “divine revelation in nature”, thereby engaging with theology and religion both from the inside and in celebration of Prof. Schwöbel in dialogue.

The St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (SAET), in conjunction with the Chair of Islamic Doctrine at the ZITh in Tübingen and Cambridge Muslim College, organised an Islam Seminar Series in May and June 2023. SAET is a nascent, free-to-access online encyclopedic resource for scholars of religion and theology everywhere, for which Prof. Dr. Lejla Demiri serves as a Senior Editor for Islam. In this seminar series held in Tübingen, speakers presented their research on core topics of Islamic Theology. The first speaker, Dr. Tobias Andersson (Uppsala University) presented his work on “MacIntyrean Reflections on Islamic Systematic Theology”, reflecting on the role of Islamic Theology at European universities. The second speaker, Dr. Ramon Harvey (Cambridge Muslim College) shared his ongoing research for an entry in the Encyclopaedia on “The Fiṭra (Natural Disposition) in Islamic Theology”. Participants appreciated his systematic approach to this key concept in Islamic theology and anthropology. Finally, Dr. Najah Nadi (Cambridge Muslim College) spoke about “The Occasionalist and Foundationalist Features of Muslim Epistemology”, further contributing to an ongoing discourse about the central features of Islamic Theology.

This year’s Scriptural Reasoning seminar focused on notions of Prophethood from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives. Over the course of two weeks, led by Prof. Dr. Lejla Demiri and distinguished guest speakers, rich conversations were held about prophethood, prophets, and their roles and functions in the Abrahamic religions. Working with a broad range of texts from the Tanakh, Bible, Qur’an, and Hadith, as well as some key theological texts across the three faith traditions, participants explored narrations about prophets, their relations to God and to their communities, their specific tasks as well as the issue of false prophets. A special highlight was the session on 10 May 2023 with Emeritus Prof. Dr. Peter Ochs (University of Virginia) and Prof. Dr. David Ford (University of Cambridge), two of the co-founders of Scriptural Reasoning. Related to his award of the Leopold Lucas Prize on 9 May 2023, within the seminar, Peter Ochs shared his thoughts about the genesis and development of Scriptural Reasoning and encouraged them to do not only Scriptural Reasoning across religious traditions, but also Textual Reasoning within each tradition. As Scriptural Reasoning has become one of the most attended seminars in Tübingen, participants will always remember this historic moment which enabled them to have a first-hand experience with SR’s two very distinguished founding fathers.

Rev. Deborah Ford, an Anglican hospital chaplain from Cambridge, visited Tübingen and shared from her decades of experience in the field. In two conversations on “Chaplaincy, Practical Theology, and Community Care” on 9 and 10 May 2023, participants from among ZITh students and researchers reflected with Deborah Ford on the practical dimensions of doing theology and about community care in multireligious societies. Questions of identity and difference, and how to faithfully serve a person of a different religious affiliation were discussed. The examples ranged from hospital and prison chaplaincy to community projects of engaging persons with learning disabilities. Given Deborah Ford’s training in both psychology and theology, participants also discussed the fine line between chaplaincy and therapy, and how theologians can benefit from the tools of psychology. Overall, the conversations were full of personal experience and theological reflection, offering fresh insights and broader horizons from the field for the academic study of theology.

On 8 May 2023, Prof. Dr. David Ford (Cambridge University) presented his most recent publication, The Gospel of John. A Theological Commentary. This book, on which David Ford has worked for over twenty years, presents a theologically rich reading of the Gospel of John, written by a prolific academic writer for the broader public. In his presentation at ZITh, David Ford spoke about his passion for the Gospel of John, the inception of the book and the many transformations his commentary experienced over the course of the years. Being a co-founder of the practice of Scriptural Reasoning, David Ford said that much of his readings is informed by reading Scripture together with Jews and Muslims. He engaged vividly with the religiously diverse audience, speaking not only about his book, but also about his experiences as a theological writer within the university and beyond.

Between 28-29 April Prof. Dr. Lejla Demiri participated in an interfaith seminar, “Jesus in an Interreligious Perspective”, organised by the Ecumenical Institute of the Protestant Theology Faculty at the Charles University in Prague. She delivered a keynote lecture titled “Jesus: Saint and Prophet of Islam”, and led workshops one of which introduced the practice of Scriptural Reasoning (reading passages from the New Testament and the Qur’an on the theme of Jesus) to the students and staff of the hosting Faculty.

The Senior Research Seminar is intended for advanced MA students to guide them in their academic study and research. It further provides a vibrant platform for PhD and Habilitation candidates to present and discuss their ongoing research and to offer feedback on others’ ideas. For the current programme (Summer Semester 2023), please see the poster.