BORN IN 1967 IN SIEGEN as the fourth son of Iranian parents, Navid Kermani—author, journalist, and academic—is one of the bestknown intellectuals and specialists on Islam in Germany today. A member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Literature) and the Akademie der Wissenschaften (Academy of Sciences and Humanities) in Hamburg, he has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Buber-Rosenzweig-Medaille (2011), the Hannah-Arendt-Preis (2011), and the Kleist-Preis (2012). He was invited to give lectures on poetics in Frankfurt in 2010 and in Göttingen in 2011. Kermani has been at the forefront of recent debates about Islam; its role in Germany's political, social, and cultural life; and the dialogue between religions. Among other things, he chaired the project “Jewish and Islamic Hermeneutics as Kulturkritik” (cultural critique) and promoted— together with Wolf Lepenies—the establishment of a Jewish- Islamic Academy in Germany. He initiated the program West-Östlicher Diwan (West-Eastern Divan), an exchange program that brings together German and Arabic writers in their home towns. He has cohosted Der Literarische Salon (The Literary Salon), a series of readings by international authors followed by discussion, in Cologne and Essen since 2005. Most recently, Kermani was invited to deliver the keynote speech to the German parliament on the sixty-fifth anniversary of the German constitution (the Grundgesetz or Basic Law), for which he received much praise (Kermani, “Rede”).

Kermani's literary, journalistic, and academic work is of special interest to an anthology about ethical questions and social justice in Germanspeaking countries because he not only challenges traditional concepts of Heimat and national belonging, but also—and more importantly— he questions the Western notion of a clear dividing line between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, highlighting instead their mutual permeation. In addition, he reads the cultural history of Germany as a quarrel with its own culture and—with reference to the Enlightenment writer and philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing—pleads for tolerance and a patriotism that challenges one's national self-image. According to Kermani, the task of the intellectual is to engage critically with his or her culture and to promote equal dignity for all members of society.