Dr. Selime Hasanova – the first Muslim woman from Bulgaria with Doctorate degree in Theology

 “Seeking knowledge is an obligation upon every Muslim, whether a man or a woman.” 

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

On February 20, (Wednesday), 2019 the lecturer at theHigh Islamic Institute in Sofia Selime Hasanova defended her Doctorate degree in Hadith Sciences at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Ankara in the Republic of Turkey. The topic of her doctoral thesis was “Hadith-culture in Bulgaria”, and its development was done under the scientific guidance of the lecturer Prof. Dr. Mehmet Emin Özafşar.

The academic achievement of Dr. Selime Hasanova is the first of its kind in the history of the Muslim community in Bulgaria – she became the first female Islamic theologian with an academic degree “Doctor” in our country.  We heartily congratulate her on this occasion and wish her many other successes in her academic development!  May she with the achieve success and acquired knowledge be even more beneficial to her students and to the entire Muslim community in Bulgaria! We do hope that her example will motivate the community of the Muslim women to develop and upgrade their knowledge, as well as to remind that Islam makes no difference between men and women in terms of learning.

Dr. Selime Veysal Hasanova is currently a lecturer in “Introduction to the Hadith” and “Hadith” at the High Islamic Institute, and she is also a teacher in Turkish language at the Institute. Hadith Sciences has always been of an interest in her scientific development. In 2007 she defended her Master thesis on the topic “Yusuf Ziyaeddin Ezheri and Hadith Sciences in Bulgaria (1920 – 1950)” at the Department on Basic Islamic Sciences at the University of Ankara.   She wrote her Master thesis again under the scientific guidance of Prof. Dr. Mehmet Emin Özafşar.