Essays

All essays in chronological order — the most recent first.

26/02/2026
God Doesn't Wear a Watch

This essay shows how the modern clock brought with it a new, ideologically loaded sense of time that suddenly treats prayer and fasting like minute by minute obligations. Premodern sources, by contrast, mark time through natural signs like brightness, the position of the sun, or visibility, and deliberately leave room for flexibility. This openness also shaped the science of legal norms: different definitions of when prayer and fasting times begin and end were normal and tolerated. Modern precision, on the other hand, creates a false sense of certainty that breeds conflict, mistrust, and fear of so called mistakes.
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05/12/2025
The Illusion of the Majority

This essay critically examines a common argument in Muslim discourse, the appeal to "the majority", which is often used to dismiss differing views without examining them on their merits. It shows how logical fallacies and a selective reading of history turn a snapshot of the 19th century into a supposed timeless tradition. The essay also pushes back against familiar counterarguments such as theological consensus or the fear of being too "Westernised", and shows that rationality is deeply rooted in Muslim intellectual history. In the end it argues for recognising the real diversity inside the Muslim world, rather than wielding an imaginary unity as a tool of power.
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04/12/2025
Interfaith Marriage for Muslim Women

This essay presents two ways of approaching the question of whether a Muslim woman may marry a non Muslim man. One is a traditional view that sees earlier norms as timeless and binding. The other is a historical and critical view that reads these norms in the context of their origin. It shows that the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet make no clear statement about this specific situation, and that the prohibition only solidified later through transmissions and processes of power. The earlier reasons for the prohibition, social status, the loss of legal rights, patriarchal hierarchies, and troubling ideas about sexuality, no longer fit, in this essay's view, our contemporary constitutional and plural societies. Instead, the essay emphasises that nikah is at its core a contract, one that a civil marriage in Germany legally and practically fulfils. In the end it argues for rethinking interfaith marriage, taking self determination and equality seriously, and clearly criticising patriarchal mechanisms of control directed at Muslim women.
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02/12/2025
The Old Testament in Muslim Sources

This essay shows that the Quran explicitly recognises earlier revelations such as the Torah and the Psalms, and that Muslims understand themselves as part of a longer prophetic history. Instead of speaking of the "Old Testament", the Muslim tradition uses terms like tawrāh, zabūr, and isrāʾiliyyāt, each of which opens a different way of relating to Jewish and Christian writings. The Torah in particular appears in the Quran as a scripture of "guidance and light", grounded in a heavenly archetype and suited for legal decisions. At the same time, research and the available sources make clear that the term tawrāh in the Quran is often broader than just the Pentateuch and includes other Jewish traditions as well. The isrāʾiliyyāt and the storyteller figures known as the Quṣṣāṣ finally show how intensely Jewish and Christian narrative traditions flowed into early Muslim exegesis, preaching, and popular piety. In this way it becomes visible that the Muslim world and the traditions of the Old Testament stood in close exchange across centuries.
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11/03/2019
Menstruation and Making Up Fasts: The View of the Human Being Among Muslim Legal Scholars

This essay takes an Instagram question on menstruation, fasting, and making up fasts as its starting point and shows how strongly bodily experience, a sense of duty, and guilt are intertwined in the Muslim world. It traces how ritual acts of worship were historically turned into "foundations" that may hardly be questioned. Along the way, processes of power, the role of early dynasties, and the narrowing of the Quran's openness become visible, with fasting as the main example. In the light of modern realities, mental health pressures, and changed working lives, the question of what "not being able" to fast actually means is opened up again. The essay argues for a theology that takes ritual seriously, but at the same time thinks about the vulnerability of people and the historical processes involved. In the end it comes down to a central question: who is your God, and what image of God shapes the way you deal with fasting, menstruation, and feelings of obligation?
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