Department of Near Eastern Studies

I still enjoyed the classical German university system in the humanities which was void of such fancy ideas like an undergraduate education. That meant a lot of freedom and seven years until graduation which I spent in Erlangen, Damascus (IFPO), Durham (Duke), Tehran (Dekhoda) and, finally, Tübingen. There I wrote my Magister Artium thesis "Proper Signposts for the Camp: The Reception of Classical Authorities in the Ǧihādī Manual al-ʿUmda fī Iʿdād al-ʿUdda" (Ergon: Würzburg 2011). My current interests still deal with modern negotiations of the Islamic tradition, albeit more in its Shīʿī manifestation. More specifically, I am interested in theological debates among Pakistani ʿulamāʾ and the struggle for Imāmī orthodoxy since 1947, combining thereby fieldwork in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad with a more textual approach.