Ömer Özsoy

After graduating from high school in Kayseri, Ömer Özsoy studied Islamic Theology and Philosophy at the Faculty of Theology at Ankara University. In 1991, he received his doctorate with a dissertation entitled "On the Shift in Meaning of a Quranic Expression: sunnatullāh." In 1996, he became a lecturer in Quranic exegesis at the Faculty of Theology at Ankara University, and since 2004 he has been a professor there. In 2005, he conducted research as a fellow at the Department of Arabic Studies at the University of Göttingen. From 2006 to 2012, he held an endowed professorship, first in Islamic Religion, then in Genesis and Exegesis of the Quran, at Goethe University Frankfurt.^[1] Since 2012, he has been a full professor of Quranic exegesis.^[2]

Since 2009, the Institute for the Study of Islamic Culture and Religion has existed within the Department of Linguistics and Cultural Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. The endowed professorship and the endowed visiting professorship established there were funded by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri İşkanlığı).^[3] In 2012, the Center for Islamic Studies (ZEFIS) was founded as part of a cooperation between Goethe University Frankfurt and Justus Liebig University Giessen. Since then, it has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.^[4] Ömer Özsoy holds one of the five professorships at the center; the two endowed professorships funded by Turkey no longer exist.

The theological school of thought represented by Özsoy is known as the Ankara School. Regarding his theological positions, it is stated: “Only about ten percent of what the Quran intends to convey can actually be found in the text; the rest requires interpretation in the context of the respective time. Özsoy therefore does not consider the Quran to be timeless and universally valid. And with this historical-critical perspective, the Quran expert clashes with conservative Muslims who fundamentally claim all Quranic instructions for action as applicable to the present day.”^[5]

• Felix Körner: Old Text – New Context. Quranic Hermeneutics in Turkey Today. Selected texts, Herder Verlag 2006.
• Recep Şentürk: Islamic Reformist Discourses and Intellectuals in Turkey – Permanent Religion with Dynamic Law, book chapter in: Shireen Hunter: Reformist Voices of Islam: Mediating Islam and Modernity Routledge 2014, p. 227 ff.