Seyran Ateş, Lawyer, Women´s Rights Activist, Writer and Founder of the liberal Ibn Rushd-Goethe-Mosque in Berlin, Award Winner 2008

Seyran Ates is always on the move and never keeps quiet. That makes her a highly controversial, polarising and public person, facing criticism from a lot of different directions. For orthodoxe Muslims she´s the personalised destruction of Islam. For radical secularists she´s too religious. Turkey calls her a terrorist. Traditionally orientated men don´t like her progressive attitude as a women´s rights activist. Many left-wing politicians don´t understand her criticism on misunderstood tolerance in the headscarf-debate. She tries to protect her family from all that and is permanently accompanied by personal security. After all, she says clearly: "It´s absolutely worth it. I have the power to work on things, that are important to me, now. Some day, I won´t have it any more or I will have to use it for other things. Then I still can back down. But right now, I feel oblieged to act."

Homepage of Seyran Ates

Article in The Independent: "After taking a bullet, a Muslim woman created her own mosque"