Navid Kermani, born in 1967, gained his doctorate in the study of Islamic history and is a commentator on Iranian and Islamic affairs in Germany. In the academic year 2000/2001 he worked at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. Among his published works are (in German) God is beautiful: aesthetic experience of the Koran (C.H. Beck, 2000) and The revolution of the children (C.H. Beck, 2001).

Recent articles

After 11 September 2001 I was frequently asked, as many scholars of Islamic studies probably were, why certain people are prepared to hijack an aeroplane and plunge themselves and all the other passengers to certain death. I do not have an answer. What I have done instead is to tell three stories – about the cult of martyrdom in Shi’ite Islam, about modern fantasies of salvation through self-sacrifice, and about power politics in the Middle East – which together assemble the elements of a fourth: the unfinished story of the modern world.