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Assoc. Prof. Yaşar Çolak was born in Trabzon in 1964. He graduated from Trabzon İmam Hatip High School and Ankara University Faculty of Theology. He successively served at the Presidency of Religious Affairs as Imam-Khatip, Preacher, Inspector, Head of the Directorate of Religious Publications and Religious Affairs Counselor at the Embassies in London and Washington, D.C. He possessed a Master’s Degree in Islamic Studies from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the Victoria University of Manchester in the United Kingdom (1994) and completed his Ph.D. in Islamic History at 19 Mayis University, Institute of Social Sciences (2006). From 2011 to 2018, he served as the president of the Diyanet Center of America (DCA) in Lanham, Maryland. Between 2018 and 2023, he taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the Department of Sirah and Islamic History at Ibn Haldun University in İstanbul. On November 10, 2025, he was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Islamic History and Arts at the Faculty of Theology, 29 Mayıs University. Since early 2023, he has been on academic leave from his home institutions and has been serving as Vice President at the Center for Islamic Studies (İSAM) of the Türkiye Diyanet Foundation. His research focuses on early Islamic historiography, methodological debates in Western scholarship on Islamic history, and the study of Muslim minorities.
