Seyran Ateş
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In June 2017, female human attorney, author and human rights activist Seyran Ateş opened the Ibn Ruschd-Goethe mosque in Berlin in which worshippers of all Islamic sects and homosexuals were welcome to worship. Men and women pray together unlike in other mosques while face-covering veils such as burqas and niqab were banned on the premises as such garments are by Ateş considered political statements rather than religious clothing. This caused outrage in the Muslim world and the founder of the mosque received hundreds of death threats from Muslims across the world. The Egyptian Fatwa Council of Al-Azhar University in Egypt issued a fatwa against the mosque along with all other liberal mosques. |
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Seyran Ateş (born 20 April 1963) is a German lawyer and Muslim feminist born in Istanbul, Turkey of Kurdish descent. Her family moved to Germany when she was six years old. She studied law at the Free University of Berlin and has practiced law since 1997, specializing in criminal law and family law. Ateş, a renowned civil-rights activist, is best known for demanding equal rights for Muslim women and girls.
Her views, highly critical of an immigrant Muslim society that is often more conservative than its counterpart in Turkey, have put her at risk. Her German language book Islam needs a sexual revolution was scheduled for publication in Germany in 2009. In an interview in January 2008 on National Public Radio, Ateş stated that she was in hiding and would not be working on Muslim women's behalf publicly (including in court) due to the threats against her. In one particular incident, she and her client were attacked by a woman's husband in a German courthouse in front of onlookers who did nothing.
Ms Ates opened the Ibn Ruschd-Goethe mosque in 2017. It's the first liberal mosque in Germany where men and women pray together and women can take the role of imam leading a prayer. The Turkish religious authority and the Egyptian Fatwa Council at the Al-Azhar University have condemned her project and she has received death threats. The fatwa encompassed all present and future liberal mosques.
Selected works
- Bei Trennung: Tod, in: Robertson-von Trotha, Caroline Y. (ed.): Tod und Sterben in der Gegenwartsgesellschaft. Eine interdisziplinäre Auseinandersetzung (= Kulturwissenschaft interdisziplinär/Interdisciplinary Studies on Culture and Society, Vol. 3), Baden-Baden 2008
- Große Reise ins Feuer: Die Geschichte einer deutschen Türkin, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2006
- Individualität: Ich sein oder Ich haben?, in: Flensburger Hefte, Nr. 87, Flensburg 2005
See also
