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Abdel-Samad, Hamed

Hamed Abdel-Samad, political scientist, historian, author

Hamed Abdel-Samad was born in 1972 in Giza (Egypt) as the son of an imam. He studied English and French in Cairo; in 1995 he came to Germany and studied political science in Augsburg. After completing his studies Hamed Abdel-Samad worked as an academic in Erfurt and Braunschweig as well as in Japan, where he was engaged in Eastern spirituality. Until the end of 2009 he conducted research and taught at the Institute for Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich. Then he decided to become a full-time writer.

Abdel-Samad became known to a wider public through his work "Mein Abschied vom Himmel" ("My Farewell to Heaven", 2009). After publication of the book, in which the author critically discusses Islam on the basis of his own background, a fatwa was pronounced against him in Egypt, so that he had to live under police protection afterwards. The Egyptian political scientist and historian also became known through his appointment as a participant in the 2nd Islam Conference in Germany (2010) and his speech at the University of Cairo in February 2011 during the protest movement against the Mubarak regime. He was featured in a TV series with journalist Henryk M. Broder "Entweder Broder - Die Deutschland-Safari" (2010) and is a coveted interview partner in the press, radio, and television. His most recent publications include the two books "Der Untergang der Islamischen Welt " ("The Downfall of the Islamic World", 2010) and "Krieg oder Frieden: Die arabische Revolution und die Zukunft des Westens" ("War or Peace: The Arab Revolution and the Future of the West", 2011).

Today Hamed Abdel-Samad is regarded one of the most distinguished experts on Islam in the German-speaking world. With statements like "Islam is not on the rise, we are rather experiencing the decay of a religion that cannot offer constructive answers to the questions of modern life," he frankly criticizes his religion of origin as only few others have.

Hamed Abdel-Samad has been an advisory board member of the Giordano Bruno Stiftung since 2011. In 2013 he took part in the 2nd Critical Islam Conference in Berlin. A few weeks later he had to go into hiding in Cairo after Islamists demanded his assassination.

Book publications

  • Mein Abschied vom Himmel. Aus dem Leben eines Muslims in Deutschland, 2009
  • Der Untergang der islamischen Welt, 2010
  • Entweder Broder. Die Deutschland-Safari (with Henryk M. Broder), 2010
  • Krieg oder Frieden: Die arabische Revolution und die Zukunft des Westens, 2011
  • Der islamische Faschismus: Eine Analyse, 2014
  • Mohamed – Eine Abrechnung, 2015
  • Zur Freiheit gehört, den Koran zu kritisieren (with Mouhanad Khorchide), 2016
  • Der Koran: Botschaft der Liebe. Botschaft des Hasses, 2016
  • Ist der Islam noch zu retten?: Eine Streitschrift in 95 Thesen (with Mouhanad Khorchide), 2017
  • Integration: Ein Protokoll des Scheiterns, 2018