KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2009, Lecturer, State Islamic University, Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Al Makin is currently teaching classical Islam, tafsir, hadith and tarikh literature at the faculty of Ushuluddin of the State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga in Indonesia. He also is a regular contributor to op-ed column of The Jakarta Post. Before his Fellowship in Bochum and his doctoral studies in Heidelberg he had been an undergraduate lecturer at the State Islamic University and the Catholic University of Sanata Dharma Yogyakarta. Throughout his academic career Al Makin had been awarded several scholarships and grants.

The main focus of Al Makin’s research is the history and literature of the formative period of Islam. He proposes that during the birth of Islam, there were many local Arab cults with Judeo-Christian colors, which, however, did not survive. Thus, there were more than one claimant to prophethood, one Abrahamic religious movement, and one quran (reading), as other figures, e.g. Musaylima and Umayya, claimed to be prophet in more or less the same way as Prophet Muhammad did. Al Makin is also interested in modern Indonesian Islam in general. During his time in Bochum he had been investigating the parallels and differences between the poems of Ummayya, a claimant to prophethood contemporary of Muhammad, and the Qur’an. 

Education

Ph.D. Islamic Studies, Ruprecht-Karls University, Heidelberg, Germany, 2008

M.A. Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 1999

B.A. Islamic Studies, State Islamic University, Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 1996

KHK Fellowship

Duration: April 2009 – March 2010
Project: Rethinking Other Claimants to Prophethood: The Case of Umayya b. Abi Salt

External Website

Al Makin's Blog