Dr. Elif Emirahmetoğlu
Elif Emirahmetoğlu completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology at the University of Münster in 2024 with a comparative religious studies dissertation on the conception of humanity in Islam and Buddhism. Prior to that, she earned a bachelor’s degree in “Islamic Theology” and master’s degrees in “Islamic Philosophy” and “History of Religion” in Turkey. As a research assistant, she worked at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology, the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Münster, and the Department of History of Religion at Ondokuz Mayıs University (Turkey). Her essay “The Human Self and Personhood in Akbarian Sufism and Chinese Buddhism,” in which she presented some findings from her dissertation, received a “Highly Commended” distinction in the international “Ibn ‘Arabī Society Young Writer Award 2023” competition. Her comparative religious studies focus on questions of the philosophy of religion and theological anthropology, and she is currently engaged in the study of concepts in the philosophy of the subject. During her fellowship she is working on an
Investigation of the Qur’ānic Concept of “nafs” in Intertextual Contexts
The project “An Investigation of the Qur’ānic Concept of nafs in Intertextual Contexts” aims to analyze the Qur’ānic concept of nafs (person/self) and its multifaceted, ambivalent use in relation to pre-Islamic understandings of nafs and relevant biblical concepts (nefeš and psychē). First, the concept of “nafs” in the Qur’ān is examined and contextualized diachronically, enabling an understanding of this idea within the dynamics of Qur’ānic development. It is then analyzed according to its thematic application. This investigation explores various dimensions of the human nafs—eschatological, existential, epistemological, psychological, and ethical—as presented in the Qur’ān.
As a next step, the concept of nafs will be comparatively analyzed using the intertextual method with relevant pre-Islamic and biblical terms. The project thereby aims to demonstrate the parallels and differences between nafs in the Qur’ān, nefeš in the Hebrew Bible, and napšā in Syriac Christianity, and to explore the implications of the distinctive features that differentiate nafs in the Qur’ān from the latter two for the Qur’ānic portrayal of humanity as a whole.
A diachronic reading of nafs and its examination within intertextual contexts constitutes a significant contribution to research on nafs in Qur’ānic studies and other Islamic disciplines, given that existing analyses are largely confined to thematic arrangements and representations. This project aims to demonstrate that a multidimensional analysis of the Qur’ānic nafs and a holistic, constellation-based reading of this concept can offer new perspectives for discussing human subjectivity in Islamic theology.