Dr. Hureyre Kam
Hureyre Kam, PhD is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Islamic Theology and Religious Education of the University of Innsbruck in Austria and Series Editor of Islam, Science and Ethics of Emerging Technologies at Trivent Publishing.
A scholar of Islamic theology (kalām), Islamic philosophy, and ethics, he examines how the intellectual resources of the Islamic tradition can address the moral questions raised by artificial intelligence, human enhancement, and the post- and transhumanist movements.
Hureyre joined the University of Innsbruck in November 2023, where his postdoctoral research explores the complex interplay between theology and science with a particular focus on post- and transhumanist ethical discourses.
In February 2025, together with his Innsbruck colleague Abdullah Takım, he organized the international conference Sacred Cyborgs: Exploring the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Transhumanism and Religion, which the university describes as the first conference of its kind to be hosted by an institute of Islamic studies. The conference opened with a keynote by our Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and closed with a roundtable on the future of religion in a technological world moderated by Hureyre. Read Sacred Cyborgs: Exploring the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Transhumanism and Religion.
In the 2026 summer semester, he lectures in the institute's public lecture series on transhumanism on the tension between Islamic anthropology and visions of AI superintelligence.
Hureyre served as Guest Editor of Transhumanism & Islam, a special issue of the Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies published by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, which brought together scholars on radical life extension, deep brain stimulation, space travel, and Islamic law in a transhumanist age.
His own contribution argues that an ethics of responsibility is a necessary moral orientation for Islamic thought in the Anthropocene. Read Navigating the Anthropocene: Responsibility Ethics as a Necessary Moral Orientation in a Transhumanist World.
In 2026, he launched Islam, Science and Ethics of Emerging Technologies, an interdisciplinary book series that brings kalām, Islamic philosophy, jurisprudence, ethics, and Sufism into critical dialogue with artificial intelligence, biotechnology, neuroscience, and environmental science.
The series appears under a Trivent imprint headed by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, its editorial board includes James Hughes, Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and astrophysicist Nidhal Guessoum, and Hureyre is editing a related volume for Routledge. He is also coediting, with Nuha Alshaar, Between Soul and Algorithm: Religion and the Humanities in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, a special issue of the journal Religions.
His research articles bring classical Islamic theology into conversation with contemporary technology debates. In the Journal of Posthuman Studies, he offered one of the first systematic treatments of post- and transhumanism from the perspective of kalām. Read New Bottles for Old Wine? On Playing God: Post- and Transhumanism from the Perspective of Kalām.
In the Journal of Muslims in Europe, he reads the Simulation Hypothesis as a modern metaphor for spiritual truth. Read The Matrix: a Modern-Day Metaphor for Spiritual Truth? Islamic Theological Reflections on the Simulation Hypothesis. In the Journal of Islamic Ethics, he surveyed contemporary Islamic responses to evil and suffering amidst global crisis. Read Theodicy between Apology and Cosmology. In 2025, he examined the future of Sufism between its Neoplatonic roots and panpsychist perspectives on consciousness. Read Wie den Zauber in die entzauberte Welt zurückholen?
In 2021, Hureyre was awarded the Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and conducted postdoctoral research at Yale University's Department of Religious Studies, hosted by the historian of Islamic philosophy Frank Griffel. In the fall semester of 2024, he held the Guest Professorship for Islamic Theology and Education at the University of Zurich's Department of Religious Studies.
From 2018 to 2021, he was Visiting Professor at the Academy of World Religions of the University of Hamburg, an interdisciplinary research institution devoted to interreligious dialogue. He has also lectured at the Swiss Centre for Islam and Society of the University of Fribourg, where he led numerous workshops on Muslim chaplaincy, a field he explored in the journal Spiritual Care. Read Innovation durch Tradition? Auf der Suche nach zeitgenössischen Konzepten für die muslimische Seelsorge.
Hureyre studied Philosophy and Islamic Studies at the Technical University of Berlin and the Free University of Berlin, and earned his PhD from Goethe University Frankfurt with a dissertation on the theodicy of Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī, the tenth-century theologian whose school of thought remains influential among Sunni Muslims from the Balkans to Central Asia.
The dissertation was published as Das Böse als Gottesbeweis: Die Theodizee al-Māturīdīs im Lichte seiner Epistemologie, Kosmologie und Ontologie, a study that reconstructs how al-Māturīdī's epistemology, cosmology, and ontology together frame the problem of evil.
Watch his conference talk Islamic Thought in a Transhumanist World and his lecture Vom Menschen zum Übermenschen. Listen to Wir waren schon immer Cyborgs, his conversation about transhumanism, Islamic theology, and The Matrix on the podcast of the University of Zurich's Faculty of Theology and the Study of Religion, or watch the video version.
An avid street photographer, Hureyre exhibited his photographs from a study trip to Ethiopia in Frankfurt am Main in 2018.
Visit his University of Innsbruck page, ResearchGate profile, SciProfiles page, ORCID profile, and LensCulture portfolio.