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Mehmet Karabela

Dr. Karabela’s work centers on early modern Islamic intellectual history with a focus on the interplay between religion and knowledge, affecting both religious and philosophical inquiry at the eve of modernity. In a separate line of research, Dr. Karabela is working on a book on the conceptual dichotomy between the religious and the political manifested in the post-Cold War scholarship and the evolving juxtaposition between Islam and politics in modern Islamic thought.

Essays

Wittgenstein’s Ladder

…I see my list on political theology functioning like Wittgenstein’s ladder metaphor in his Tractatus. Once graduate students read and grasp these important texts, they should “throw away the ladder”, so to speak, and deconstruct all they have learned about political theology to illuminate contemporary problems on their own. Once they reach the top, they can throw away the ladder.