LASTPROPHET.INFO

 

About Us

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Links

 

 

Advisor to the Editor-in-Chief
H. Hümeyra Şahin
Fatma Ekinci

 

Editors
Dr. Ayna Askeroğlu
Turgay Bakırtaş
Dr. Nur Kançal
Merve Tosun

 

Visual Design
Tart New Media

Development and System Administration
Erdoğan Hancıoğlu

Calligraphies Used for the Page Design
Ali Toy

SEERAH FOR KIDS

Advisor to the Editor-in-Chief: Hatice Uğur

Editor: Mehlika Vurgun

Illustration and Animation: Sarmad Mohammed

ONLINE HADITH PLATFORM

Editor: Dr. Serkan Demir

 

ACADEMIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Prof. Dr. Ahmet Kavas
Prof. Dr. Ali Akyüz
Prof. Dr. Bedreddin Çetiner
Prof. Dr. Hayrettin Karaman
Prof. Dr. İbrahim Hatipoğlu
Prof. Dr. İsmail Lütfi Çakan
Prof. Dr. Mehmet Görmez
Prof. Dr. Mustafa Fayda
Prof. Dr. Raşit Küçük
Prof. Dr. Recep Şentürk
Prof. Dr. Şinasi Gündüz
Prof. Dr. Tahsin Görgün
Prof. Dr. Yaşar Kandemir
Doç. Dr. Casim Avcı
Doç. Dr. Gülgün Uyar
Doç. Dr. Halit Özkan
Dr. Hilal Görgün
Dr. Hilal Kazan
Dr. Nihal Şahin Utku
Fatma Bayram
Meral Günel
Nevin Meriç

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About Us

The Lastprophet.info web portal was launched with a ceremony attended by the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and leading names in the fields of business, art, science and thought on April 19, 2007. Lastprophet.info, founded by the Meridyen Association, started out its life with the slogan “Unbiased Islam”.  In the first two days 3.5 million guests visited the site, thus setting an important national record; Lastprophet.info has continued to make important progress since its inception.

Daily and dynamic publications in five different languages

The Lastprophet.info web portal exerts great efforts to act in an international framework; currently it is being published in five different languages: English, Turkish, French, German and Russian. In addition, preparations are underway to launch the site in Spanish, Chinese and other languages.

The Lastprophet.info website, which appeals to a wide range of people around the globe, is determined to present the message that was brought by the Last Prophet to Muslims and non-Muslims alike in the most accurate and reliable fashion; this will be done by using works published in English from Europe, the US and elsewhere.

A portion of the writers at Lastprophet.info are names renowned throughout the academic world, while other writers come from a variety of walks of life; what the writers all have in common is that they share the message of the Last Prophet, transmitting it through the lens of everyday life.

International Awards

Unique content, distinctive design

Both the content and design of the web portal, which was launched to introduce the Messenger of Allah from all aspects and in the light of scholarly information to the entire world, were prepared with a great deal of care. The site was launched following consultation with academics, all of whom are considered to be authorities in their own fields; it has marked a place for itself in the international arena by becoming a pioneer in the world of Internet publications. The visual layout of the site was prepared by the famous Turkish designer Emrah Yücel, who has gained a great deal of recognition in this field.

A special site for children

One of the projects that set Lastprophet.info apart from others is the children’s page which has been prepared with a great deal of attention and pedagogical care. The children’s page draws an increasing number of young visitors with continually updated and unique information.

The online hadith platform

One of the important pillars of the Lastprophet.info project is the Online Hadith Platform. The platform is an information-sharing program that provides users with scholarly hadith information under the guidance of a theologian competent in this field. The purpose of the platform is to allow users to gain a level of hadith knowledge that is equivalent to graduates from theology schools. As the platform conducts its sessions over the Internet, it is possible to partake from all over the world. While the current sessions are only conducted in Turkish, work is being carried out -- preparation of content and the establishment of the infrastructure -- to start sessions in English.

An international first place award

During the first year of its launch the www.lastprophet.info web portal was awarded with first place in an international competition. Lastprophet.info won the “The Mass Media Award” for its efforts to describe and narrate Prophet Muhammad to the world. The competition was held under the auspices of Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayed al-Nayhan and the honorary chairmanship of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Al Mahabba awards were given to works that best embody love of the Messenger of Allah, selected by a group of eminent jury members; the first award ceremony was held in Dubai in 2006. In 2008, a total of 200 works from 28 countries were included in the event. The works were evaluated by a prestigious award committee, headed by Dr. Timothy Winter, also known as Abdul-Hakim Murad, a faculty member of Cambridge University.

Organizational structure and financing

Lastprophet.info is a project of the Meridyen Association and conducts all of its activities under the banner of the Meridyen Association. The portal, which publishes its work under an independent civilian framework is a non-profit organization. Under no conditions are advertisements accepted. All of the project’s financing is provided by the supporters of the project, starting with the members of the Meridyen Association.

Work mechanism

The publication of the pages and projects of Lastprophet.info are overseen by a professional editorial board, which in turn is guided by a highly experienced academic consultative committee. In addition, Lastprophet.info and Meridyen Association volunteers also play an active role in publishing.

Academic projects at Lastprophet.info

The Lastprophet.info web portal, having filled a large void in the Internet world since its inception, aims to contribute work in the fields of Hadith and Seerah through various projects.

The Hadith and Seerah research awards

Lastprophet.info set forth with the mission to form a bridge to enable the accumulated academic wealth about Prophet Muhammad  to be transmitted to society; however, it did not stop here. Long term projects were designed to encourage new work in these fields. The first three of the “Hadith and Seerah Research Award” competitions, which took place in 2008, 2009 and 2010, were all held in Istanbul.  The competition gave awards in two separate categories of academic theses at both the master and doctoral levels. Aiming to incorporate international academia in the near future, this project will also include a category for articles in 2011, 2013, and 2015.

Hadith and Seerah service honorary award

The winner of the “Hadith and Seerah Service Honorary Award” is determined every year by votes from the Turkish readers of Lastprophet.info. The award has been given to Professor Yaşar Kandemir in 2008 and Professor İsmail Lütfi Çakan in 2009; in 2010 it was awarded to the late Professor İbrahim Canan, in 2011 Emin Saraç, in 2013 Professor Mustafa Fayda, and it was awarded to Professor Raşit Küçük in 2015. The award is given annually to the name voted as the most deserving by the readers of the Turkish website.

The Seerah workshop

The first step of the “Seerah workshop,” an event that is to be held every year by the Turkish Sonpeygamber.info website, was made at an in-depth consultative meeting. As a result of this meeting it was decided that the main goal of the workshop will be to evaluate the literature of Seerah, which is rapidly increasing throughout the world, in terms of type and quantity and to underline the needs of this field in our current day. The workshop’s first meeting took place in April of 2009 under the banner “The Evaluation of Turkish Academic Seerah Literature in the Republican Era.” The workshop, which is to take place every year with a different theme, was convened in 2010 under the banner “The Relationship between Seerah and Literature”. The communiqués presented at the Seerah workshop sessions have been published by the Meridyen Association.

Conference on Seerah Studies in Turkey

Meridian Foundation, which has developed and supported many projects addressing the issue of presenting the Prophet Muhammad's (s.a.w) message to the world under the roof of the lastprophet.info webportal, plans to add a new title to its academic work and conclude the "Seerah Workshops" that have been focusing on 5 main themes and taking place since 2008.

The international symposium that will take place from 10 to 12th April 2015 and will be titled "Seerah Studies in Turkey in all its Aspects" aims to evaluate all the works of seerah produced in academic, popular, literary, visual, digital, educational, children's literature, etc. fields with an international perspective and to subject the Turkish seerah literature, the quantity of which has dramatically increased in the recent years, to a content criticism. It also aims to bring forward constructive proposals and guidelines that will inform future studies in this field. One of the explicit concerns of the conference is to be open to the perspectives of social sciences and humanities outside of Religious and Islamic Studies (i.e. literature, sociology, intellectual history, philology, communications, psychology, pedagogy, etc.) and to evaluate the works of seerah that will be analyzed as part of the conference from the perspectives of these disciplines as well.