Dr. Motadel will not only discuss Berlin’s attempts to promote Nazi Germany as a patron of Islam, including the collaboration of prominent figures like the Mufti of Jerusalem, but also show that the realities on the ground were often very complex. In North Africa, the Balkans, and the Eastern front, German soldiers were confronted with heterogeneous Muslim populations, including Muslim Roma and Jewish converts to Islam.

This summer, David Motadel will take up an Assistant Professorship in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. He completed his M.Phil. (2006) and Ph.D. (2010) in history at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar. He subsequently took up a Research Fellowship in History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge (2010-15).

In addition to Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Harvard University Press, 2014), on which his talk is based, he is the editor of Islam and the European Empires (Oxford University Press, 2014). His articles have been published in a number of journals and periodicals, including Past & Present, the Journal of Contemporary History, and The New York Times.