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PD Dr. Manfred Sing

Research Coordinator

Office: 03 305
+49 6131 39 39475
e-mail

Born in 1966 in Aulendorf, Baden-Württemberg; 1994-2000: studied Islamic Studies, Sociology and History at University of Freiburg and the University of Damascus; 2005: doctoral dissertation in Islamic Studies at the University of Freiburg; 2005-2007: lecturer at the University of Freiburg; 2007-2008: postdoctoral project “Die Neuorientierung arabischer Post-Kommunisten im Nahen Osten nach 1989” at the University of Freiburg, funded by the German Research Foundation; 2009-2012: research associate at the Oriental Institute in Beirut. October 2020 to March 2023 Professorship in Islamic Studies and History of Islam at the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg
Sing has been working at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) since February 2013. Research Coordinator at the IEG from January 2025.

  • Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vorderer Orient
  • Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG)

  • Transformations of Muslim Societies since Modern Times
  • History of ideas, ideologies and concepts in Arab countries
  • Marxism in the Arab World
  • Multireligious spaces
  • Islam in Europe

  • Arab Feminism and Islamic History: The Transnational Life and Work of Lebanese-Syrian Writer Widad Sakakini (1913–1991), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2022, https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666573347
  • Arabische Sozialismen. Von antikolonialem Widerstand zu autoritärer Politik, von is­la­mi­scher Selbstvergewisserung zu postkolonialem Protest. Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte Oktoberheft 70, 4 (2022): 779–792, https://doi.org/10.1515/vfzg-2022-0044
  • The Politics of Religious Outrage: The Satanic Verses and the Ayatollah’s Licence to Kill, in: David Nash und Eveline Bouwers (Hg.): Demystifying the Sacred: Blasphemy and Violence from the French Revolution to Today, Berlin: De Gruyter 2022, 247–276, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110713091-012
  • Against All Odds: How to Re-Inscribe Islam into European History, in: European History Yearbook 18 (2017), S. 129–161
  • Dis/Connecting Islam and Terror: The “Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi” and the Pitfalls of Condemning ISIS on Islamic Grounds, in: Journal of Religious and Political Practice 2, 3 (2016): S. 296–318

Arab Feminism and Islamic History

The Transnational Life and Work of Lebanese-Syrian Writer Widad Sakakini (1913-1991)
Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz, 255: Abt. Abendländische Religionsgeschichte
Manfred Sing
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,2022
ISBN: 978-3-525-57334-1
DOI: 10.13109/9783666573347
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Ongoing
Sep. 2021 - Aug. 2029
GesellschaftReligion

Leibniz Research Alliance “Value of the Past” / Leibniz-Forschungsverbund “Wert der Vergangenheit”

The research consortium founded in 2021 investigates the question of what value the past holds for earlier and contemporary societies. A focal point in the second funding phase concerns current debates on climate change, on the postcolonial responsibility of the Western world, on the use of the past in the growing right-wing populism, and on the historical legitimization of war.
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Completed
2020 - 2024
GesellschaftReligion

Debates on Citizenship and Secularism in Semi-Colonial Egypt

Egypt became the main center of Arabic literary production and Islamic reform at the end of the nineteenth century. Various actors freely discussed the meanings of democracy, secularism, and independence as well as the significance of diverse cultural and religious identities. In the national independence movement and the political system, a secular consensus prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century. However, the 1929 Egyptian Nationality Law stipulated that only a person whose family had lived in Egypt since 1848 without interruption was an Egyptian. Thus, it discriminated against mobile Jewish, Greek, Italian, Armenian, and Syrian minorities, residing in Egypt since Ottoman times. By discussing the scope and limits of such concepts as democracy, secularism and citizenship in public debates, the research project aimed to take a fresh look at the emergence of modern Egypt.
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Completed
2020 - 2024
GesellschaftReligion

Self-Determination under Occupation? Formation of the Modern Egypt, 1879–1956

As an internationally intertwined part of the British Empire, the Arab world, the Islamic reform movement and the (post-)Ottoman region, Egypt was a meeting point for both mobile actors and globally circulating concepts at the beginning of the 20th century. Against this background, the IEG project, which is part of the Leibniz cooperation project HISDEMAB, investigated how global concepts of health and nationalization policy were implemented in local contexts, whereby differently mobile actors renegotiated their affiliation to modernity, but also to their local context.
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Completed
2013 - 2019

Säkularisierung in Ägypten zwischen Grenzüberschreitung und Grenzziehung

Untersucht wurde, wie sich arabische Intellektuelle und Religionsgelehrte seit dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts mit europäischen Religionsbegriffen auseinandergesetzt haben. Bei dieser Auseinandersetzung war es ihnen einerseits darum gegangen, negative Wertungen von außen gegenüber Muslimen, arabischen Gesellschaften oder dem Islam zurückzuweisen, und andererseits darum, nach innen Gesellschaftskritik zu üben und religiösen, sozialen und politischen Reformbedarf zu begründen.
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