The 6th Annual Hadith and Seerah Studies Award Ceremony took place on April 12th at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall as part of the Meridyen Association’s website project Lastprophet.info.
The Ceremony started with the screening of a brief film introducing the projects of Meridyen Association and Lastprophet.info. Following an introduction speech by the Association’s President Saliha Büyükdeniz, Prime Minister Prof. Ahmet Davutoğlu addressed the audience. In his speech Mr. Davutoğlu said: “Being his follower, being a follower of his footsteps, being the earth on which his footsteps take form is the greatest honor for all of us. There can be no greater honor imaginable. It is of great importance to reevaluate his special position in the history of mankind- a position that we, as people who already believe that he has come as a mercy to all mankind with divine revelation, have taken for granted. However, beyond our faith, his position has to be examined from the vantage point of the objective realities of the history of all mankind. Anybody overviewing our common human history from an objective perspective, whether he is a follower of the Prophet Muhammad or not, cannot fail to notice that the Prophet stands as a unique and different figure in all this history.”
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Following the Prime Minister’s speech, he and his wife Sare Davutoğlu were invited to the stage to present the awards to their recipients. The award for best PhD dissertation went to Mahmut Yazıcı and Fatma Kızıl. The award for best Master’s thesis went to Fatma Betül Altıntaş, while the MA Special Mention Award was presented to Özlem Demir. The Lifetime Achievement and Service in Hadith and Seerah Studies Award was present to Professor Raşit Küçük. The Meridyen Association Special Award, which was presented for the first time this year, went to the President of Religious Affairs Prof. Mehmet Görmez.
After the awards were presented, the program ended with a Mawlid-i Sharif ceremony conducted in both Turkish and English.
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