EUME
2016/ 2017

Abdulrahman Helli

EUME Fellow of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), Doha 2016/17; EUME Fellow of the Freie Universität Berlin 2014-16

The Status of Conscience in Religiosity: A Study of the Concept of Piety (Taqwā) in the Qur'an

Previous Fellowships: 2015/ 2016, 2014/ 2015, 2013/ 2014

Abdulrahman Helli was Associate Professor in the Department of Islamic Theology (Uṣūl al-Dīn) at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Aleppo University, Syria. He was assigned as head of it in the academic year 2012/2013 and has participated in the commissions for curriculum development of his faculty. He holds  a PhD in Islamic Studies from Zaytouna University, Tunis. Dr. Helli was a founding member of the “Syrian Writers Association” in 2012, and a founding member of al‐Multaka al‐Fikri li-‘l-Ibda’(Intellectual Forum for Innovation) in 2000.He has been a EUME Fellow in the academic year 2013/14 and a EUME Fellow of the Freie Universität Berlin in the academic years 2014-16. He focused on the issues of freedom of belief and religious pluralism in the Qur'an. He has published widely in Arabic in the field of Islamic and Qur'anic studies. Among his books are: The Messages of all Prophets: One Religion and Many Laws (2015), Tafsir: A Textbook (Aleppo University, 2012), On Qur'anic Concepts (2011) and The Dilemma of Religious Education in the Muslim World, a Debate with Khalid as-Samadi (2007). Forthcoming studies are: Introduction to Curriculum of Research and Writing (book), Qur'anic Vision of the Prophet’s Callsand the Universality and Approaches to Qur'anic Purposes: A Historical Study.

2016/ 2017

The Status of Conscience in Religiosity: A Study of the Concept of Piety (Taqwā) in the Qur'an

"Taqwā/Piety" is a central ethical-religious concept in the Qur'an. Its use and meaning among the Arabs before Islam had an ethical dimension. It appeared early on in the Meccan suras and was used frequently until the end of the Medinan suras. The Qur'anic contexts of the concept of "taqwā/piety" raise complex questions about its significance. It appears to have had a deeper significance than the meaning on which it settled in the Islamic tradition. This study explores the concept of “taqwā/piety” and its function within the semantic-field of Qur'anic ethical concepts, focusing on the issues of individual religiosity, ethical responsibility, and the status of conscience in religiosity.
The work will contribute to the study of ethics as well as to the field of Qur’anic Studies. It intertwines historical and linguistic methods as well as an analytical study of the concept in the text.

2016/ 2016

The Freedom of Belief in the Qur'an

In February 2014, an of the so called “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) court sentenced Dr. Hassan Khattaf (Imam and deputy dean of the Faculty of Islamic studies at Aleppo University) to death. They denounced him as a grave apostate with no chance even to repent. A few years ago (2007) Dr. Kattaf had published a long review of Helli’s book The Freedom of Belief in the Qur'an (2001), where he intolerably criticized every attempt to reread the issues of apostasy and war in the Qur’an that contradicts the conventional opinions of most classical Muslim scholars. Unfortunately, many of the traditionalists are themselves threatened by the same punishment they ever defended. The book’s new approach to the Qur’an was based on separating the issue of war from its supposed religious settings and re-embedding it into the main ethical values of freedom and justice.

As a EUME Fellow Helli will work on publishing a new and revised edition of his book incorporating the debates about the religious freedom in Islam that it invigorated. With the current stirring of utmost extremism, the issue of religious freedom is not anymore a scholarly topic of discussion. It has become not just a public concern but also an existential matter for many Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

2014/ 2015

The Hermeneutics of the Absolute and the Relative “The Religious Pluralism in the Traditional Hermeneutics of the Qur’an”

With a stipend of the Freie Universität Berlin he will continue his EUME fellowship in 2014/15 and expand his previous project on “The Hermeneutics of the Absolute and the Relative: Religious Pluralism in the Hermeneutics of the Qur’an” with a focus on traditional hermeneutics, to be a book. With this project  he continues his work on rethinking Quranic concepts, the questions of  freedom, pluralism in the Qur'an and it’s interpretations, and the theories of exegesis and methods of Qur’an commentators in light of today’s challenges.

2013/ 2014

The Hermeneutics of the Absolute and the Relative: "The Religious Pluralism in the Modern Hermeneutics of the Qur’an"

As a EUME Fellow, he will study “The Hermeneutics of The Absolute and the Relative: Religious Pluralism in the Modern Hermeneutics of the Qur’an”. This project is an extension of a series of studies concerned with two issues: firstly, religious pluralism, a subject of his MA thesis that dealt particularly with “Freedom of Religious Belief” in the Qur’an. And second, the absolute and the relative, which he discussed in two recent studies: “The Absolute and Relative in the Qur’an: An Application on Sura al-Tawba”, and “The Absolute and the Relative in the Sunnah”.